Still Outsiders and Drawing Blood: Chicosci Celebrates 20 Years of their Self-Titled Album

Rock band Chicosci has played the DIY game for the longest time. Alongside contemporaries in emo, hardcore, and metal — Typecast, Urbandub, Greyhoundz, to name a few — they’ve extended their longevity through an uncompromising attitude in the scene. One document of that refusal to fold is their seminal 2006 self‑titled album, which housed some of their biggest hits: “Seven Black Roses,” “A Promise,” “Chicosci Vampire Social Club,” and more. Those songs won over the emo kids of the time and still are to this day. In time for the album’s 20th anniversary, Chicosci plans to play the album in full at Soundcheck Studios in Pasig City on June 6.

The band now has current‑and‑original members vocalist Miggy Chavez and guitarist Mong Alcaraz joined by newer additions bassist Eco Del Rio and drummer Victor Guison. The cover art of the self-titled album features Chavez’s mother’s rosary on a stark white background and a gothic font that spell out the band’s name. They recall that when a major label dropped them after their third album Icarus in 2004, they immediately moved to release their follow-up album independently with the help of recording studio Tower of Doom.

“Tower of Doom at the time was starting out and we had just finished record label contracts,” Alcaraz tells Rolling Stone Philippines. “Tower of Doom was crucial in being able to afford making the album, then MySpace was huge and that helped us a lot.”

As for promoting the songs and the record, Chicosci would often choose venues not typically associated with emo. Even as a heavy band flirting with the mainstream, they kept testing different venues. “We just played anywhere and everywhere,” Alcaraz says. “We tried to play in places that weren’t known for punk, like, let’s say, Capone’s in Makati.”

Why Chicosci’s Music Still Connects After 20 Years

Talking about the album’s age in 2026, newer fans still discover Chicosci’s essential songs, fall hard for them, and suddenly form bands that cover either “A Promise” or “Seven Black Roses.” “I think there’s something to be said about songs that stand the test of time,” Chavez says. “People say, ‘Chicosci songs, you know, it’s still good.’ If songs sound good, they’ll sound good 20 years on, fuck yeah.”

Chavez points out that beyond celebrating the self‑titled record, the band designed each album to sound different. Chavez, Alcaraz, Del Rio, and Guison prefer to keep things adventurous as they go through different soundscapes in their live setlists, whether attending a melodic‑hardcore show or playing in front of thousands at a pop festival. 

“We don’t want to make the same music over and over,” Chavez says. “It probably works for some bands, but yeah, we get bored. We listen to a lot of music, from death metal to pop folk. Good music is good music, and Chicosci just wants to make good music.”

Chavez also brings up how being othered fueled him to make the kind of music showcased on the album. Emo kids are outsiders by default, and he channeled that into the record so efficiently that it helped define a generation of kids who wanted to listen, and play, like Chicosci. But it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes patience to be in a band like this. There can only be one 2006 self‑titled album and twenty years makes the wait worth it.

“We’ve never set any limitations for ourselves, partly because we are not part of any scene whatsoever,” Chavez says. “We’ve never been part of a scene. If anything, we were always the outsiders. But with that, I think a sense of freedom comes along. So we do whatever we want; we write however we want.”