“This is a new gaming channel. I hope all you video game lovers enjoy this. Oh, and my alternate account is ____. I make lego stop motion.” About 3/4 of the way through Equipment’s new song “Minnow,” the voice of a 12-year-old vocalist/guitarist Nick Zander plugs the YouTube channel he started in 2008––it’s one of several times he samples his childhood self on the Ohio band’s Forthcoming album, Alt. Account, which drops on September 29 via the Ohio band’s own label Klepto Phase.

“Minnow” provides a screenshot of a time in his life where he was trying desperately hard to be a cool young adult; “the chorus is from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, analyzing my current state in life,” he explains. It speaks to the many different versions of ourselves we can be in a lifetime, and paints a picture of how far one can go from starting an innocent retro gaming channel to falling victim to the “party” culture in less than a decade.

Nick continues: “The Youtube kid was so much cooler”.

Equipment
Alt. Account
Tracklisting
Klepto Phase

1. Hot, Young Doctors
2. LO/FO
3. Hollister Henleys
4. Bad Bets
5. Jewelry
6. Minnow
7. Username
8. Your Clothes Without You In Them
9. Perfect Temperature Coffee

Equipment formed around Nick Zander’s songwriting, and brought to new heights with the addition of guitarist Jacob Scott, bassist Ellie Hart and drummer Jake Pachasa. Similar to some of his inspirations like Jeff Rosenstock, Rivers Cuomo or Dan Campbell of The Wonder Years, Nick looks at his peers in high-paying jobs and wonders if he made the right decision chasing his music dream instead. He spends the majority of Alt. Account playfully poking at this imbalance and its many nuances, constantly flowing between being a mental health hot mess and a cool, calm, and collected sort of chaos.

During the album’s writing process, Zander was diagnosed with bipolar II; his first medication is seen on the cover of Alt. Account, and the insomnia it gave him led to the creation of the majority of this album. Today he views the resulting album as a celebration of the fact that he’s now tamed the instability of his initial diagnosis, a sign of hope for those in the thick of figuring their own patterns out.

Pre-order Alt. Account by Equipment HERE