With their final release on Engineer Records, #1 Defender were in good company. I assume the band is named after the New End Original song of the same name, though I suppose they could both be named after some other source. The emo bands of the aughts almost always drew some level of inspiration from the midwest emo of the 90s, but generally speaking it was a surface-level homage, and they were much more punk pop and\or post-hardcore than any flavor of midwest. #1 Defender were definitely an emo pop band, but they wear their midwest emo on their sleeve; it's not just a distant influence, it's half their sound.
2004's The Diary Truthful EP was their last release. It was preceded by shattered dreams walking in a red moonlight in 2003. If anything, this release is even more directly midwest emo than its follow-up. Before that, there was The Lana Lang Effect in 2002, a demo that serves as a rougher companion to red moonlight. I suspect that a full length might have traded in their real emo roots for the glossier path that most of their peers took, but part of me hopes that they would have delivered an LP in the same vein as these EPs. Unfortunately, we'll never know. Still, three great EPs is a better legacy than most.
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