Half-Alive, courtesy Yulissa Benitez.

The road to Conditions of a Punk was long for Long Beach alt-rock trio Half•Alive.

“We really just expected to do a ‘Part 2’ of the first album,” vocalist Josh Taylor said. “Then everything changed, and it just got bigger.”

The band canceled its planned Give Me Your Shoulders, Pt. 2 album, making way for what would become the trio’s sophomore full-length release last December. Half•Alive is now touring in support of this latest album. They’ll play BottleRock Napa Valley for the first time.

“We had more songs. We had to search for the single; that prolonged the album’s release,” Taylor said. “We had so many songs; we just had to choose 18 of them, put them on a record, and put it out.”

The record fuses the seven tracks from Give Me Your Shoulders, Pt. 1 with 11 new ones. The sound is eclectic, expansive and alive—showcasing broadening musical borders with a message of love and healing.

While the band’s creative process varies from song to song, drummer Brett Kramer pointed to the success of Shoulders fused with touring alongside Twenty One Pilots as setting the foundation for the overarching sound of the follow-up.

“We wanted the next release to be huge,” Kramer said. “We wanted it to be monumental and capture something larger. … I don’t want to say we’re reactive, but I think a lot of times the environment we’re in is going to shape how we’re going to run things.”

Half•Alive performs at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco during the Outside Lands Music Festival on Aug. 9, 2019.

Taylor, Kramer and bassist J. Tyler Johnson came together after the singer’s prior band, The Moderates, disbanded. All three had grown up in Southern California and were acquainted with each other. The trio has an appreciation for art, and Taylor, who directs its music videos, has been inspired by film since high school.

“Even the band’s name is something I came up with in a film class,” said Taylor, who studied film in college in Long Beach. “Part of the vision from the start is to create a narrative through video.”

Taylor had noticed that videos were capturing attention spans in the digital space more than scrolling through endless feeds of Instagram photos. He also found that the long-form video has fallen out of favor for some artists in shaping their visual identity.

Half•Alive performs at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco during the Outside Lands Music Festival on Aug. 9, 2019.

“Even in the early part of the band, we’d empty the bank account for every music video and put it all on red in a way. We wanted to take big risks, and it worked,” Taylor said. “People can endlessly scroll TikTok and be entertained, but not necessarily connect to the heart of an artist, but it’s the live show that truly makes people become lifelong fans.”

The band’s “still feel.” video hit it big, garnering more than 72 million views on YouTube. The orange-hued video shows the trio performing a choreographed dance to the upbeat track.

“Directing it was very stressful and fun,” Taylor said. “It was the biggest budget I’ve ever had to work with and also the first time time I’ve used a lot of that kind of gear. There’s always an anxiousness and a fun part to that.”

The title of the band’s latest album is, at its core, a reference to a nickname given to Taylor from his friends growing up. But it holds a deeper meaning beyond just the moniker.

“It’s really a way of having two sides of the same coin,” Taylor said. “Punk could be this negative side, and it can also mean challenging culture.”

The band used the same concept looking at love as a self-serving emotion to something great.

“It’s also willing the good of another above my own, whatever the cost,” Taylor said. “That’s the complete death of ego and self-sacrifice.”

Half•Alive stays creative on the road, finding inspiration in the world around them.

“For instance, ‘Brighton’ was birthed just by playing the Brighton Music Hall in Boston,” Johnson said. “We haven’t written a full song on tour before, but we’re always grabbing ideas and things along the way that we can use for later.”

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.