Lifetime.

IT'S NOT EVERY DAY a band sparks a full-fledged musical movement. Heck, it seems like it only happens once a generation, and it often takes time to pinpoint exactly which group ignited the smoldering embers in the first place. Take the current fixation on melodic punk rock. While this musical style dates back a couple of decades (the Descendents playing the proverbial paternal figure), the explosion of bands partaking in this format really took hold in the late '90s. Now, one cannot turn on a television set without being bludgeoned by a facsimile of the genre's pioneers. Much of the outpouring is due to the seismic influence of one of the most important bands of the past decade, Lifetime: New Jersey's inspirational creators of dizzyingly fast, melodically ambitious punk rock gems, which helped define current popular music.

All of this seems bizarre for Dan Yemin, Lifetime's veteran guitarist and Paint it Black frontman. He's seen the legacy of his highly-lauded group expand from the ranks of DIY basement show regulars during the early days to becoming fan-boy allusions years after their original demise, sweetly emanating from the lips of current underground and mainstream rock heavyweights such as Saves the Day and Fall Out Boy.

"I wish people paid that much attention originally--we wouldn't have broken up in the first place," Yemin chuckles.

Now, as 2006 hits high gear and countless clones have overcrowded the marketplace, Lifetime has decided to not only reissue a double disc of the band's rare early recordings--Somewhere in the Swamps of Jersey (Jade Tree Records)--but to reform as a cohesive unit once again and attempt to take back the sound they perfected in their heyday.

While Yemin is ecstatic to receive acknowledgement for Lifetime's musical past, he feels that many of the band's imitators borrowed the easier-to-digest component of his group's sound, saturating the market with pop-sheen minus the fury and passion.

"When people look back at the history of Lifetime, very few talk about speed, but we were fast as shit," Yemin exclaims. "A lot of people took hold of only the melodic aspect of Lifetime and things became boring. I like to think of Lifetime as a blend of Minor Threat, Dag Nasty and Elvis Costello, but a lot of people don't take all of those components. We weren't going for this slow, dismal, plodding, lower key, I-want-to-be-buried-in-your-backyard kind of thing."

Lifetime first called it quits in 1997, and underground music has surely changed since then. So what prompted the reformation in 2006? According to guitarist Peter Martin, all it took was a couple of reunion shows last summer to get the outfit's collective heart pumping once again.

"I think we were all pretty surprised at how right it felt to be playing together again," Martin admits. "Even from the first practice, it pretty much felt like zero time had passed."

Yemin concurs with his partner, and is as excited to write new material as he is to relive the feelings conjured up by playing the old standards.

"I'm really looking forward to getting things going again," Yemin enthuses. "It's going to be interesting to see what the reception will be like. The first time around, there were times we didn't fit in anywhere, but I also feel like we embodied the variety that existed in punk and hardcore in the '90s. At times we were too melodic for the hardcore kids and a little too hard for the pop-punk kids, but at the height of our era we fit anywhere."

After taking just a cursory listen to Somewhere in the Swamps of Jersey, one completely understands Yemin's perspective. The double disc is like a time machine, teleporting the listener back to when Lifetime was cutting its teeth and edging its way to newfound glory.

"When we started, we definitely weren't sophisticated songwriters. But we wanted to combine elements of melody and aggression, so we'd stick a melodic part and Duct-tape it to a mosh part and now we've got melody and aggression ... yeah!" Yemin chuckles. "Eventually, we just got better. The songs became real songs. You can hear the transition on the Tinnitus EP We took our band back and put out the record ourselves.

Martin also views Lifetime's salad days as an important era for the band, in which motivation and ambition finally started to equal solid results. "I think one of the great things about the band was that we always felt like we were in transition," Martin fondly remembers. "That meant we were going to push ourselves to make the best music possible."

But that was then. Now these seasoned veterans have achieved near legendary status, due much in part to their influence on a lot of the groups that have become quite successful in recent years. While humbling, Yemin, for one, never saw such high ranks of appreciation coming.

"I'm proud of it," Yemin says. "I never thought we'd be seeing gold-selling recording artists paying homage to our influence. I was just glad to put out records that I didn't have to give away."