For those who grew up in the '90s and spent any time trekking in from the suburbs to see bands at Selynn Hall, the New York Theatre, or the Hastings Community Centre, Vancouver's Daggermouth will immediately return you to the halcyon days of smelly punkers, broken curfews, and budding teenage rebellion. Hell, even if you're too old (or too young) to have been there the first time around for d.b.s., Ten Foot Pole, Lagwagon, and all those other wonderful bands, give Daggermouth's new record, Turf Wars, a spin, and you'll feel like you were there. The group makes gloriously old-school hardcore with just the right amount of snot-nosed pop punk.

Sitting over coffee on a sunny Sunday afternoon, singer Nick Leadlay and guitarist Kenny Lush are refreshingly spirited and free of cynicism. Alongside guitarist Stuart McKillop, drummer Dan Donald, and bassist Jarod Moschenross, they fly the flag for a style of music they have undying faith in, and Daggermouth has found a fan base.

"We started in December of 2004, and Stu was playing in a screamo-type band, and eventually they broke up, and he just wanted to play something fast and fun," says Lush, as affable a brat as ever you'll meet. "We all grew up really liking d.b.s., and no bands at the time were really doing that style.…At the time, everyone was all, like, swoop hair and screamo bands, but we were like, 'Let's just play punk rock that we listened to when we were 15!'"

And so, McKillop and Lush set about forming Daggermouth, with few goals beyond making the music they had loved as kids. They went through several staff changes before they shaped the band as it exists today–in addition to six bass players over two-and-a-half years, the group originally had a different singer. That changed when Lush met Leadlay.

"We met at a wrestling match," Lush says of his and Leadlay's first encounter. "Like the WWF, yeah, but with people you've never heard of. People like me. He got dragged out to see me."

"I think we were in Abbotsford or something," Leadlay adds. "I thought it was, like, Olympic wrestling or something. My friends wanted me to come check this guy out.…Yeah, it was pretty much the most random way to meet ever."

In case you missed it, yes, Lush was one of the wrestlers. The gregarious guitarist actually went to professional-wrestling school and, at one point, hoped to make it to a theatrical league like the WWE or WCW.

After Lush met Leadlay, the two joined up with Donald and bassist Moschenross for what would soon become more than a part-time, just-for-laughs endeavour. The group's first record, Stallone, was well received, and after a year of steady touring it had a loyal following, with kids all over North America tracking the band down on MySpace and downloading its songs. Overwhelmingly, Daggermouth was praised for its irreverent approach to hardcore. Stallone, an album dominated by one-minute songs, opens with the band announcing "Ain't no party like a Daggermouth party, 'cause a Daggermouth party don't stop!" With song titles such as "I Dance to Trance in Garbage Bag Pants" and "Does Anyone Know What Snfu Stands For?" the group could have been just another silly band with silly songs, but their rock-solid musicianship drew praise and favourable comparisons with acts such as Comeback Kid and New Found Glory.

On Turf Wars, that irreverence is still there–song titles include "You Can't Soar Like an Eagle, When You Hang Out With Turkeys" and "Glendale P.D. Hates Daggermouth"–but the group seems to have grown up. Lyrics are more sophisticated and dark; songs like "Hawt Lixx" and "Hey Nelson, Go Jump in the Garbage", daftly named though they may be, cover some serious terrain (vengeance and envy), and the music is more ambitious, with the arrangements more complicated, the drums more ferocious, and the recording quality far superior to Stallone's.

"The first record was the most rushed thing in the history of music," Leadlay says. "We wrote the songs in, like, two weeks, and the lyrics and vocals were sort of written in the studio while we were recording."

"Not that this record wasn't rushed," Lush says of Turf Wars, Daggermouth's first album on Winnipeg's Smallman Records. "We wrote half the songs in one week, took a couple months off to tour, and then Stu wrote the other half in, like, two days. But with the first record, we thought we were just going to make it, play in Vancouver, and that would be it."

"But with this one, we had a label, and we actually had a fan base, so we thought we should actually do it right," Leadlay continues. "We had a lot more things we wanted to do on this record, and I feel like we did that. That sounds really bad, but I guess there was just more pressure. Before, we were just making it for ourselves."

Daggermouth could easily have disappointed the burgeoning faithful, but Turf Wars is being hailed as the band's best effort yet. And if well-attended shows both at home and throughout the U.S. prove anything, it's that there's a new crop of students following their old-school teachings. Daggermouth may evoke Vancouver's 1990s community-centre punk past, but if the band keeps making music like that found on Turf Wars, it can expect a future all its own.