Five Eight

by Jason AnkenyAthens, GA emo unit Five Eight was the vehicle of singer/guitarist Mike Mantione, a self-professed manic depressive whose music exorcised his personal demons in grim detail. Debuting in 1989 with the self-released Passive-Aggressive cassette, the band -- which also comprised longtime bassist Dan Horowitz, guitarist Sean Dunn and drummer Patrick '"Tigger'" Ferguson -- resurfaced two years later with Inflatable Sense of Self. Signing to the Sky label, in 1992 Five Eight issued their first full-length CD, I Learned Shut Up, releasing The Angriest Man a year later; however, after 1994's Weirdo, the group spent the mid-1990s largely out of the spotlight, finally returning in 1997 with the Ed Stasium-produced Gasolina! That winter both Dunn and Ferguson abruptly left the lineup, and with new drummer Mike Rizzi, Five Eight issued 1999's "The Road Beat the Shit Out of My Favorite Band," a split single with Clemente. The full-length The Good Nurse followed on Deep Elm in the spring of 2000. Five Eight returned in 2004 with a self titled CD, the first to be released by the band itself.