Highly Suspect released MCID on November 1, 2019, through 300 Entertainment. The follow-up to 2016’s The Boy Who Died Wolf made room for hip-hop, electronic production and guest performers alongside the band’s heavier material. The clearest signal came from “16,” a lead single that carried Johnny Stevens’ account of a broken relationship without a single guitar on the recording.
For Stevens, that arrangement followed the needs of the song. As he explained to ABC Audio in 2020, “it did not need a guitar.” Getting the words right had taken much longer. He told Punktastic that roughly a decade passed before he could turn the end of an early relationship into a song that expressed what he wanted to say. By then, enough of the initial pain had receded for him to write with some distance from it.
The changes also reached the studio process. Stevens told Louder that years of working with producer Joel Hamilton had taught him how to develop demos into finished recordings, leading to an agreed co-producer role on MCID. He was learning how to shape the recordings as well as write the songs. Guitarist Matt Kofos contributed to the writing, too. In a release-era interview with Music Waves, bassist Rich Meyer described Kofos as particularly involved in the rhythm parts, with ideas developed collectively after Meyer or Stevens supplied a starting point. The album took its name from “My Crew Is Dope,” a motto that already connected the band with its friends and fans.
That willingness to share the work extended beyond the band. Young Thug joined “Tokyo Ghoul,” while “SOS” featured Gojira. Stevens’ connection with Gojira singer Joe Duplantier was already personal: they had lived in the same Brooklyn apartment complex for almost five years. He recalled to Louder that he visited Duplantier’s studio, played him the song they were developing and found an enthusiastic collaborator. They finished it that night. Nothing But Thieves singer Conor Mason had a different effect on “@tddybear.” According to Stevens’ Punktastic interview, Mason recorded his contribution remotely, and the result prompted Stevens to redo his own vocal before releasing the song. A guest appearance had changed what he expected of his own performance.
The album’s range was deliberate, right down to how listeners first encountered it. Stevens told Loudwire Nights that releasing a hip-hop track ahead of the album was a conscious way to see who would follow the band into unfamiliar territory. Within the 16-track record, shorter pieces such as “Tetsuo’s Bike” and “Juzo” gave listeners pauses between the longer songs. Meyer explained to Music Waves that those interludes provided breathing room and that the songs stood independently, rather than forming a single concept narrative.
“16” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Songs chart in 2019. Another single, “These Days,” relied on the guitar crunch that “16” had left out. Discussing both with ABC Audio, Stevens explained that each needed its own production approach; treating “These Days” like “16” would have worked against the song. By July 2020, that guitar-driven track had also reached the Mainstream Rock top 10.
