TX2

TX2 is the project of Timothy Evan Thomas, who goes by Evan: an American emo/pop-punk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from Fort Collins, Colorado, now based in Los Angeles and signed to Hopeless Records. His pre-album singles alone crossed 100 million streams and 42 million TikTok likes, his 2026 debut album End Of Us is a 13-track vampire-apocalypse rock opera featuring Black Veil Brides and Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnas, and his X Movement Discord has grown from 1,300 members to more than 17,000, a mental-health community he treats as the point of the whole platform. In 2026 he holds a Heavy Music Awards nomination for Best International Breakthrough Artist and a touring calendar that runs from his own US headline dates through Black Veil Brides arenas to Download Festival.

Early life

Thomas started on drums at age five, played in garage bands across a Fort Collins adolescence (including a stint drumming in an Asking Alexandria cover band), and gigged coffee shops, house parties and even a Colorado Eagles hockey game. His own artist bio compresses the origin into one sentence: “I started on the drums when I was 5 years old, played in several bands growing up and started TX2 at 15 years of age.” His first albums were Green Day’s American Idiot and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade, bought as an escape from school bullying: “All of that led me into darker music where I just appreciated darker things. I struggled with my mental health along the way, I still am.” He has spoken about being physically and mentally harassed through high school and about years spent trying to please a father who was never satisfied, experiences that feed directly into the catalog.

Sources split on when TX2 formally began: English-language accounts date the solo project to 2015, at 15, while German Wikipedia and several tour-circuit bios date the launch to 2018, the year he left Colorado. The likeliest reading is both: songs under the name at 15, the full project and debut album at 18. After high school he moved to Miami in 2018 to study music business, auditioning as a rapper and winning a full scholarship to the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music: “I realized rapping is just drumming with words.”

Come-up

The earliest TX2 material was actually rap: a 2016 EP, The Small Town, later pulled from streaming. The early rock records (The Modern Punk, 2018; 99 Proof, 2019) were self-produced and largely unheard; a major-label rep rejected him outright for having no social presence. His answer became the engine of the whole career: “I started making three TikToks a day and I haven’t broken that cycle.” The 2021 single “Pull the Plug”, written “at a really really low point,” drew roughly half a million views on its TikTok teaser and passed 300,000 Spotify streams by early 2022 as people started using the song in their own videos; “the song is actually about my struggles with mental health,” he told the Miami New Times, which clocked him at 200,000 TikTok followers and 9 million views that January.

February 2022 brought “Nail in the Coffin” and its music video, directed by Hattie Williams and styled as a comedic horror-movie trailer, an early signal of the horror-cinema language the project would build on. The Drop Dead EP followed the same year (“Vampire By Rumor,” “Step Over A Body,” “TRUST NO ONE”), then Say You’re Insecure (Without Saying It) in 2023. The real turn came in April 2023 with “I Would Hate Me Too”: “I wrote it when I was thinking about giving up... I literally told everyone, over a funny AC/DC butt-rock beat, that I hate myself... somehow that ended up being the thing that gave me a career.” The clip went viral, and Hopeless Records signed him in July 2023.

The band

TX2 grew from solo project to band. Guitarist Cameron “Cam” Rostami joined after a meetup first arranged over social media for band practice and rapidly became a co-songwriter; he is now Thomas’s housemate, co-director of much of the visual output, and closest creative partner: “Cam is my right-hand man. I don’t have a social life and much family right now, all I have is my band.” (Rostami also records solo as Superblood.) Bassist Courtney “Corky” Howard, who releases solo music as Corky, co-sings the 2026 single “Confession”; touring drums have rotated between Ethan Church, the most consistent recent live drummer, and Sam Palombo (ex-Blame Candy).

The records

The Hopeless era is built on front-to-back storytelling. Ghost of LA (November 2023) is a concept EP about a closeted man who moves to LA chasing rock stardom, a fictionalized twist on Thomas’s own move: “this is like why I moved to LA... I’m bisexual, this character is gay, you see where we kind of change the story.” The arc runs dark: the character hides inside a relationship with a girlfriend who becomes pregnant, is pushed into marriage, watches the music career fail, and the EP ends on closing track “6 Seconds Left,” with “Degrade Me,” “Walking Dead Man,” “Am I A Ghost?” and “Black Wedding” charting the fall. “Degrade Me,” the first song written for the EP, came from a real relationship in which he felt degraded; he has said the record “has given me a chance to heal.”

Cruel World (October 30, 2024) brought the scene co-signs: six tracks including “MAD” with Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnas, which generated more than 10,000 TikTok creations, plus “So Numb,” “Swing At Me,” “Violent Nature” and “THIS ISN’T ABOUT DRUGS (I SWEAR)” with From First to Last. A relentless 2025 single run set up the album: “The Rain” (“probably the pettiest song I’ve ever written. I was furious when I made it... someone betrayed me and my band, and this was my way of getting it out”), “HOSTAGE (they will not erase us),” “Feed” with DeathbyRomy, “Nice Guy” with Ekoh, “Murder Scene” with Magnolia Park, “Hollow Frame,” “Infamous” and the six-minute title track with Black Veil Brides.

End Of Us: the rock opera

The debut album End Of Us (February 13, 2026, Hopeless) is the full rock opera: 13 tracks following “The Resistance,” a band of survivors in a vampire apocalypse, in a sound Thomas calls “punk meets vampire-core with an Eminem edge,” citing My Chemical Romance, Green Day, Black Veil Brides and Linkin Park as the load-bearing influences; Kerrang! framed the concept-album lineage through American Idiot and The Black Parade. “The album is a concept that ends in flames and sadness,” he said ahead of release. “In the album, these characters are fighting against odds they know they’re going to lose: but at least they stood up.” The features map his whole ascent: DeathbyRomy on the opener “Feed,” Ekoh, Magnolia Park, an Ice Nine Kills instrumental of “M.A.D.,” and Andy Biersack on the closing title track, which Thomas calls “the darkest song I’ve ever written... I said ‘fuck it’ and wanted to make a six-minute epic.”

Reception was, fittingly for TX2, polarized: Kerrang! scored it 4/5 (“TX2 sounds exactly like an artist refusing to shrink himself”), GBHBL gave it 8/10, Distorted Sound landed at 6/10, and Noizze UK panned it outright. Release day found the project at 1 million monthly Spotify listeners, 1.3 million TikTok followers, and 100 million cumulative streams on the pre-album singles. The album era has kept rolling through 2026: the double single “Eat My Heart” / “Prescription For Love,” “Confession” with Corky (May 28), “Pickup Truck” (June) and “Evil Is Contagious” (July 2).

Sound & visual identity

Thomas described the formula to the Miami New Times back in 2022: “the hardboiled progressions of punk, hip-hop’s poetic prose, and the emotional vulnerability of emo lyrics.” The debut album pushes it heavier, adding metalcore-adjacent guitars and electronic production, and critics keep reaching for the same reference shelf: Kerrang!’s Rishi Shah seated TX2 “at the same table as Creeper and Palaye Royale,” colleague James Hingle recommended the album “for fans of Ice Nine Kills, Beartooth and Motionless in White,” and Distorted Sound’s Naomi Sanders heard Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance.

The visual language is horror cinema, front to back: the comedic horror-trailer video for “Nail in the Coffin,” the vampire mythology threaded from Drop Dead’s “Vampire By Rumor” through the End Of Us apocalypse, and survival-horror aesthetic cues across the album’s videos. Thomas co-directs much of the output with Rostami, including the “The End of Us” video, which the pair directed together with Andy Biersack starring.

Mission & advocacy

One sentence has anchored every interview since 2022: “My goal with my music is to make as many people as possible not feel alone.” The X Movement Discord, “a safe space for music lovers to build friendships and spread Mental Health awareness,” runs venting channels where, in his words, “everyone starts talking about how they’re struggling and realizes they’re not alone.” He started it at his own low point (“I definitely had one of those moments of like, ‘what am I doing with my life?’ So I started a mental health movement”) and frames it as the debt he owes: “There was a point in my life where I didn’t feel like I had anyone... I feel like that’s my impact and how I can give back to the world for giving me a platform.” Membership has climbed from roughly 1,300 members in early 2022 to more than 17,000.

Raised in a religious, conservative household where he internalized shame about his sexuality (“I thought there was a demon in me and something was wrong”), Thomas is now openly bisexual/pansexual and frames visibility itself as the work: “I made the change, I became the person I wanted to be... if I can talk proudly about being queer, then someone else who is struggling in the closet can be like, ‘He’s proud about it. I should be proud, too.’” The music is activism in the most literal sense: “Randy McNally (No Love Like Christian Hate)” (2023) names a Tennessee politician over anti-drag and anti-LGBTQ legislation (“so that everyone could look up his name”), “HOSTAGE (they will not erase us)” has become a queer anthem in support of the trans community, and “Confession” reclaims the religious shame he carried: “Confession was my chance to regain that power I felt like I lost when I first realized I wasn’t straight.” Corky co-sings it having, in Kerrang!’s telling, spent even longer feeling guilty and trapped by the same upbringing. At a Denver show, a survivor of a shooting at a queer club told him support groups play TX2’s music at their meetings. He keeps ticket prices low, plays protests, and stays after shows, sometimes for hours, to meet every fan.

The lightning-rod years

Few artists in the scene are argued about more. Reddit threads across r/Emo, r/poppunkers, r/Metalcore and r/blackveilbrides recycle “industry plant” accusations; one podcast asked outright whether he is “the Nickelback of emo,” and whether the internet is missing the joke in his content. The counter-evidence circulates in the same threads: a former classmate corroborated that Thomas was making emo content long before the career existed. His answer is biography: “I grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado and drummed in bands for years playing empty shows, got boo-d off stage my first show as TX2, and didn’t have a single member of the music industry know me until I started going viral from content I created myself.”

The press picture is lopsided in its own way: Kerrang! has published at least six distinct TX2 pieces across 2025-26, from a major profile to the album review, while Rolling Stone and Alternative Press have yet to run a dedicated feature. Within the scene he draws public praise from peers, including Beartooth’s Caleb Shomo on his “passion, hard work, and talent.” The stance underneath it all: “If I die standing up for what I believe in, at least I die for something instead of nothing... It doesn’t matter how I end, what matters is what I stood up for.”

Live

The touring resume escalated fast: US runs supporting In This Moment, Ice Nine Kills and Avatar (2024); the Kiss of Death tour with Ice Nine Kills, which Thomas calls “our debut into the scene,” with reports of crowds up to 6,000 a night on the biggest support dates; and sold-out UK arena support for Ice Nine Kills in December 2025 (Manchester Co-op Live, Glasgow OVO Hydro, Nottingham Motorpoint Arena, London OVO Arena Wembley).

2026 is the busiest year yet: his own headline End Of Us Tour in February with Buffalo Farm and Flat Out, running Las Vegas through San Diego, Austin, Nashville, St. Louis and Albuquerque; Australian dates with Melrose Avenue and Rain City Drive in March; then direct support on Black Veil Brides’ 24-city North American tour (April 25 to May 30, alongside From Ashes to New and As December Falls), folding in the Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple festivals and closing at Worcester’s Palladium. Summer brings a European festival sweep: Rock am Ring, Rock im Park, Download Festival, Graspop, Jera On Air and Vainstream RockFest, with a further Black Veil Brides run listed for August-September and a fall North American leg (Louisville, Cincinnati, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City) on the books. A March 2027 UK headline tour is already announced, which he calls his biggest headline show there to date. He holds a 2026 Heavy Music Awards nomination for Best International Breakthrough Artist.

Connections & inspirations

Thomas is open about who shaped him. Ice Nine Kills’ Spencer Charnas gets the mentor credit: “he stood up for me, gave me a chance.” Beartooth’s Caleb Shomo has publicly praised his “passion, hard work, and talent,” and Waterparks’ Awsten Knight once surprised him mid-interview by FaceTime. Asked by v13 in 2024 about his inspirations, Thomas also named Christian Gates: “Christian Gates is a close friend of mine and inspires me every time I have a conversation with him. He is so wise for his age.”

Streaming & community numbers

Timeline

Frequently asked

What is TX2’s real name?

Timothy Evan Thomas. He goes by Evan. TX2 began as his solo recording name and is now the name of the full band.

Is TX2 a solo artist or a band?

Both, sequentially. It started as Thomas’s solo project and grew into a band: Evan Thomas (vocals), Cam Rostami (guitar), Corky Howard (bass), with Ethan Church and Sam Palombo rotating on live drums.

When did TX2 start?

Sources genuinely conflict: Thomas says he started TX2 at 15 (around 2015), while several bios date the project to 2018, when he moved to Miami and released the debut album The Modern Punk. The most honest reading: the name dates to 2015, the full project to 2018.

Is TX2 signed to a label?

Yes: Hopeless Records, since July 2023, after the viral run of “I Would Hate Me Too.” Everything before that was self-released.

Is TX2 gay?

Thomas identifies as bisexual/pansexual and is openly queer. The gay protagonist of Ghost of LA is a deliberate fictional divergence, in his own words: “I’m bisexual, this character is gay, you see where we kind of change the story.”

Is TX2 an industry plant?

The accusation is a Reddit perennial; the record says otherwise. He was rejected by a major-label rep for having no social presence, built the audience himself with three TikToks a day, and was unsigned until Hopeless came calling after he had already gone viral on his own content.

What genre is TX2?

Emo and pop-punk at the core, with hip-hop cadences from his rap-scholarship years and, on the debut album, heavier metalcore-leaning production. His own label for the album era: “punk meets vampire-core with an Eminem edge.”

Further reading

Elsewhere on The Ring wiki, more artists from the loud end of the roster: Violent Vira, whose emo-revival come-up ran through a self-booked 34-city tour, Ally Nicholas and her grunge-gaze catalog, and Nessa Barrett, whose mental-health candor parallels the X Movement ethos. For the scene’s elder statesmen, see The Neighbourhood.

Discography