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"People sometimes ask us who Justin is—I don’t think anyone’s ever kept a count,” says Corey Rockstar of justinbailey, a “24-foot 6-inch 750-pound punk rock band” who took its name from a password in the video game Metroid. Drawing from a myriad of influences as far reaching as Iron Maiden, NoFX and the Misfits, the Baton Rouge-based, high-octane four piece readily embraces the oft-shunned emo (emotional rock) tag.

“Hell yes, we are emo,” says Rockstar. “If we weren’t emo, we’d be robots. If anyone claims that they are not ‘emo,’ then they are just rebelling against what other people have told them what it means to be ‘emotional.’”

The band has built a diverse grassroots network of friends and fans across the country in its four years and bristles at the absurd pigeonholing that divides the punk rock scene into factions. “That’s the antithesis of what punk rock is about,” Rockstar says. “The Big McLargehuge-core kids can’t hang out with the Buff Drinklots-core kids, one of the stipulations of being Slate Slabrock is you have to make fun of the Stump Beefgnaw kids. If we were to have to choose a micro-genre, we would be Thick McRunfast.” Scream that three times fast.

The group has just finished tracking songs for an upcoming split 7-inch with We the Living and is planning a five-song concept EP tentatively titled Crisis From the Sky. myspace.com/justinbailey.