It's a newsflash straight from the heartland of St. Louis, Missouri, where the creative chemistry of five committed young musicians first reached critical mass five years ago, exploding with an original sound that pushed the stakes for pure punk energy and hard-edged live performances.

Now Story Of The Year is about to make headlines in your hometown with their Maverick Records debut, Page Avenue featuring a clutch of potent new tracks written especially for the occasion, including such front and center showstoppers as "Until The Day I Die," "And The Hero Will Drown" and "Anthem Of Our Dying Day."

Produced by John Feldman (The Used), Story Of The Year filters an all-out aural assault through a grid of razor-sharp lyrics, instantly accessible melodies and furiously focused arrangements. It is, simply put, one of the most impressive arrivals of the current musical season?and proof positive that hard work, dedication and dogged persistence are essential ingredients to great music.

"We built our audience one fan at a time," contends bassist Adam Russell. "We started our own street team, put up flyers on every telephone pole in town and burned thousands of CD's on our home computers. We designed our own website, shot our own video and put up our own money for everything. If there were dues to be paid, we paid them?and then some."

It's the kind of intense perseverance that has marked this band's trajectory from the beginning. As members in good standing on the burgeoning St. Louis music scene, Adam, along with vocalist Dan Marsala and guitarist Ryan Phillips first joined forces in the late Nineties.

The band, in various configurations, would go on to release four independent EP's, even as they built an unparalleled reputation for live performances with virtually constant regional touring and a regular slot at the St. Louis hotspot, The Galaxy. They soon recruited drummer Josh Wills and, eventually, second guitarist Philip Sneed. The Story Of The Year line-up was now complete.

Their well-earned big break came when they won a local radio contest for a place on the bill at Point Fest, a music festival showcasing the cream of the Midwestern scene. "We saturated that crowd," boasts Adam. "We handed out thousands of sampler CD's and videos to anyone and everyone we met. We were determined to make the most of the opportunity."

It was a strategy that paid off handsomely when one of the videos ended up in the hands of producer John Feldman who pulls double duty as the front man for So Cal's Goldfinger. "He asked us to go on tour with them," Adam continues, "and it wasn't too long afterwards that he took us into the label."

A showcase in late summer of 2002 for Maverick brass at Hollywood's famed Viper Room resulted in an exclusive recording and, to mark this auspicious new chapter in the Story's saga, the group relocated to Orange County to help facilitate the pre-production process with California resident Feldman. The group also found time for a solid month of touring as an opener for Goldfinger.

"We wrote and recorded that fall," Ryan explains. "Most of the time we'd hang out in John's living room with acoustic guitars, trying out new stuff. We also had a rehearsal space we'd built in a garage, and the five of us would spend eight or ten hours a day just developing songs and arrangements. We wanted to move in some new directions and at the same time get back to the basics that had brought us together in the first place. In the end, almost the whole album ended up being fresh material."

"If the song was going to be heavy, we made sure it was as heavy as it could be," adds Adam. "If it was melodic, we'd push that as far as we could, too. We wanted to make sure we were operating in the extremes of what we could do."

The result is Page Avenue, a brilliant, breathtaking exercise in musical extremes from a band whose hard won experience is matched only by their restless creative instincts. Spotlighting such live favorites as "Until the Day I Die" along with dazzling new tracks such as "Falling Down," featuring guest vocals by producer Feldman, H2O's Toby Morris and Ray Cappo from Youth Of Today, Story Of The Year's Page Avenue is a musical scoop of monumental proportions.