Minus the Bear Announce Deluxe ‘Menos El Oso’

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Minus the Bear are celebrating the 20th anniversary of Menos El Oso with a deluxe reissue of the album.

In February, Best Friends Forever festival in Las Vegas, October 10-12, announced Minus the Bear as co-headliners. The band will perform their seminal sophomore release Menos el Oso in full at the festival and on an extensive U.S. tour throughout October and November. Tour dates below, tickets available for purchase here. Additionally, the band shared a new video for the album standout “Drilling,” which you can find here.
 
Today, Minus the Bear are thrilled to detail the deluxe, twentieth anniversary 2xLP vinyl reissue of Menos el Oso, out August 22, 2025 via Suicide Squeeze Records, now available for pre-order here. The 2xLP release will include a remastered version of the original album on one 12”, and 5 unreleased original demos and an etching by bassist Cory Murchy on the flip side of the other, including the demo version of “Hooray,” available to stream now for the first time. Listen here. The reissue also includes Los Archivos Del Oso, a 24-page archive photo journal from the band’s personal collection. Sign up for the band’s newsletter here to receive a sneak preview of selections from the zine.

Speaking on the reissue announcement, vocalist Jake Snider says “...Oso is a band and fan favorite! We came into our sound on this record. Excited people get to hear these demos for the first time! Revisiting demos and hearing the evolution of some of these tracks puts me right back in our early 2000s practice space. And now we’re literally back in that same practice space for rehearsals. It’s wild!”
 
Guitarist David Knudson says “We toured so much for Menos el Oso — all these songs and riffs are stuck in my muscle memory like core childhood memories. The fingers and feet instinctively know where to tap and stomp at just the right time to make the notes and melodies leap out of my guitar. We were trying to push the envelope back in 2005 on this one — incorporating glitchy guitar samples, hip hop breakbeats and more electronic elements to the sound we had established on Highly Refined Pirates. Proud to say that 20 years later it still sounds fresh and I’m grateful people keep coming back to it as one of their favorites!”

While reflecting on the album, Knudson notes “Menos el Oso put us on a trajectory that none of us were expecting. There is a “before ‘Pachuca Sunrise’ video” moment in time, and then there is an “after ‘Pachuca Sunrise’ video” moment in time. It seemed like once people heard that song, and saw that video, everyone went straight to Limewire, Napster, Soulseek, BitTorrent, etc. and shared the album immediately. Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of something this monumental in our lives is a gift. Having the chance to appreciate it with our fans, families and fellow bandmates while we are all alive and kicking is an opportunity I can’t wait to embrace.”

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