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How They Became… Circa Survive

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Welcome to the weekly SPIN.com feature “Name That Band!” inwhich we get the inside stories behind the mysterious monikers of some ofour favorite artists. (See past episodes of Name That Band! here.)

This week: Circa Survive, whose major label debut Blue Sky Noise is due April 20.

Why Circa Survive: “[Singer] Anthony [Green] and I were at some shitty dive bar in Philadelphia looking at these notebooks we had where we’d written pairings of words related to the feelings we got when we wrote music,” recalls guitarist Colin Frangicetto. “Circa Survive was one of those pairings. There were actually a bunch of ‘C’ and ‘S’ words. We had City Surrender and Cicada Survive on the list, too. We were obsessed with cicadas for a while for some reason. But ultimately Anthony picked Circa Survive from the list. We both liked the meaning of it.We looked at Circa Survive as meaning, essentially, a time period to focus on survival.”

Previously Rejected Names: “We never played a show as anything other than Circa Survive. In fact, we didn’t play any shows until after we recorded our first album. The whole thing was ass backwards with us. At some point it was like, ‘We have a recording contract — we should probably pick a name.'”

Best Band Names Ever: “Led Zeppelin: Amazing band name. Motorhead: Amazing band name. Metallica. Pantera. Almost every metal band of the ’80s had an amazing name where you knew exactly what they sounded like before you heard them. Ryan Adams is also a pretty badass name.”

Worst Band Name Ever: “Bryan Adams tops the bad list. That’s the worst. Forever the Sickest Kids — for some reason that just kills us. Something about having the word ‘kids’ in your band name is really bad. But I just want to be clear that Circa Survive is a pretty bad band name, too.”