Friday, Milwaukee post-punk quartet Temple announced the band will be ending.
After forming early iterations of the project almost a decade ago when the members were high school students in Green Bay, the longtime collaborators moved to Milwaukee, with singer-guitarist Jamie Yanda spending a few years in Madison before joining his bandmates here last year. In 2013, Temple put out its debut full-length, The Conscience Of The King, an emotive effort rife with spastic time signatures and an unabashed nod to late ’90s emo (which we named one of the 50 best Milwaukee albums of the 2010s). This spring, Temple released its Kill / Let Die seven-inch, a two-song release that featured the band’s best work to date and signaled heavier, more intricate things to come. Unfortunately, that will not happen.
Yanda tells Milwaukee Record the decision to end the band came as a result of members’ musical interests and needs growing in different ways.
“We decided to quit because we came to the realization that we all had vastly different ideas for what we wanted to the band to accomplish,” Yanda says. “These differences were causing a lot of tension between us, and were hurting our friendships. More than anything else, we wanted everyone in the band to be happy.”
Yanda plays in a solo project and is in Ash with Temple drummer Cassidy DW. Guitarist John Larkin plays in Calliope and YLLA, and founding bassist Myles Coyne already departed the band this summer to focus on his eponymous band and Ladders.
Plans for a partially-booked fall tour were cancelled. However, Yanda says Temple is planning to play one more show. There’s no date or location set, but he says “all money from the door will benefit a yet to be determined local charity.” Additionally, Yanda says to expect lo-fi recordings of new, previously-unreleased material to be put out electronically. “I think it is the best stuff we ever did and I am eager to get it out there,” Yanda says.