What's the one thing parents preach to their kids the most? Stay in school, of course. The Fall of Troy's Thomas Erak chose not to follow that advice and it's served him well, even though he's the exception and not the rule. "I didn't graduate high school," the singer told Noisecreep. "I went to a very high-end, rich and preppy high school and I was lucky enough to meet the guys that became my bandmates. I had gravitated towards them senior year."

The members of the Fall of Troy remained in the prep school, but Erak bolted in favor of an alternative school for his senior year. "It's not because I was not intelligent," Erak said. "It was just s--- to me. It was cookie-cutter mentality, where you go to high school, graduate, go to college and then waste thousands of dollars to get a degree, then get a job, get married, have a kid. I said, 'F--- that.' It's not me. It wasn't that thing for me." Erak was eventually enrolled in a "running start program," where he began college while finishing high school. But he didn't complete the curriculum.

"I wanted to get a GED, but then we got signed and got put on the road, so it was no brainer," the frontman admitted about his education. "It's not that I hate the idea of college. I hate that cookie-cutter, 'this is how you have to be' way of thinking." Obviously, Erak and his bandmates apply that mentality to their music, which is aggressively progressive, against-the-grain post-hardcore that doesn't follow any sort of expected or predictable template.

Besides, school will always be there, but the fickle music fan won't! "I can always go back to school," Erak rationalized. "What I want to study and when I want to study will come. Why waste good years being bored?" You won't be bored when listening to 'In the Unlikely Event,' the band's latest effort for Equal Vision. That's for sure.

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