This summer, Say Anything’s Max Bemis will hit the road to perform sounds as both Maxim Mental and Say Anything.

Maxim Mental’s forthcoming album Make Team Presents Maxim Mental in Maximalism is out July 8 via Dine Alone Records. The album was co-written and produced by Grammy nominated producer Will Yip (Code Orange, Title Fight, Turnstile) who is also a longtime collaborator of Max Bemis.

STREAM first singles off the new album: “Girl’s The Truth,” “Grace Beyond Christ,” and “Evermore (and the Grammy goes to).”

Say Anything was, despite its place in a genre known for sincerity, somewhat of a satire of the quintessential emo band. Bemis being the Andy Kaufman of it all was enough to delight and confuse an entire generation as to whether he was a “real boy” or Ziggy Stardust infused with Curb Your Enthusiasm and the Vagrant Records discography. The final Say Anything LP was written from the point of Oliver Appropriate, a personification of this intentionally confused public persona; his death during climactic “Sediment” echoed the end of an era for the band itself. 

When ready to recover from twenty years of trauma making music, Max’s answer was more natural than obvious. Bowie and other musicians invented “characters” to escape pigeon holes; with Maxim Mental for the first time, Max had to be solely himself.