Four Year Strong in todays Boston Globe!-

With an explosive pop-punk sound and sharply honed live show, the Worcester band Four Year Strong has spent the past two years crisscrossing this country and invading Europe to pick up bundles of fans one concert at a time.

Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz happened to be one of those fans. His Decaydance imprint, part of the massive Universal Music Group, inked a deal with Four Year Strong and is releasing the band’s “Enemy of the World’’ early next year.

“FYS reminded me of Fall Out Boy during ‘Take This to Your Grave,’ only version 2.0,’’ Wentz said by e-mail when asked about his interest in Four Year Strong. “They are raw. They are authentic. They get in the van and sweat out every single fan. I love it and back it… . Besides, they can grow beards. Most of our bands can’t.’’

Four Year Strong’s songs are radio-friendly, yet the band has gotten this far with virtually no mainstream airplay. Nor was the band’s break out of Worcester particularly conventional.

FYS did not play countless band battles. It did not plug into the city’s network of nightclubs (a couple of the guys even ’fessed up to never having seen a show at Worcester’s fabled Ralph’s Diner, much less playing one there). It did not chip in songs to any of the CD compilations that area bands cranked out as promotional devices. And in the process it never got stuck in the rut that the vast majority of bands fall into in trying to get out of their own backyards.

Yet it’s not that Four Year Strong felt above it all.

“We weren’t old enough to play in clubs, and our friends couldn’t get into clubs,’’ explained bassist Joe Weiss. “We played places that were all-ages, so our friends could get in.’’

Three of the five band members attended the city’s Doherty High School, and the other two filtered in from different bands playing in Worcester’s bustling local music scene. Guitarists and singers Alan Day and Dan O’Connor and drummer Jake Massucco got the band going in 2001 while still in high school. Keyboard player Josh Lyford and Weiss were on board by the time the band made “Rise or Die Trying,’’ its breakthrough recording on I Surrender records, which has sold 50,000 copies.

“When we signed with I Surrender, the stars aligned,’’ Lyford said. “They were small; we were small. But everyone was willing to work really hard, and nobody was afraid of bigger bands and bigger labels.’’

Even before signing to I Surrender, Four Year Strong had a work ethic to go along with its distinctive hard-core-meets-pop sound.

“The live show is it,’’ Day said. “We practiced every day. We treated it like a job because we didn’t want to get real jobs.’’

A small record label in Rochester, N.Y., put out the band’s first album and helped it book shows in that city. Consequently, Four Year Strong started thinking like a touring band, and soon it was cultivating audiences around New England.

The work paid off in 2007. I Surrender signed the band in February after staffers drove from their office in New Jersey to a punk-rock haunt in Worcester to check out one of the band’s concerts. That summer, Four Year Strong landed a handful of dates along the Warped Tour, heating up anticipation for “Rise or Die Trying,’’ which came out in September, followed by a profile-boosting tour with the Starting Line. Four Year Strong returned for the entire 2008 Warped Tour and proved itself a bona fide crowd magnet. Next there was a tour of Europe with New Found Glory, a band the members of FYS used to pay good money to go see at the Palladium in Worcester.

By the end of 2008, Decaydance and Four Year Strong (plus I Surrender) agreed to a partnership. Yet because touring remained crucial to the band’s development, O’Connor said trying to produce new songs was a challenge. So as a place holder before getting out new originals, the band took two weeks to bang out a clever collection of covers celebrating its enduring love of the ’90s. Called “Explains It All,’’ the project spans Alanis Morissette to Reach the Sky, all of it twisted up into Four Year Strong’s crackling, layered sound.

“Explains It All’’ also brought together the band and record producer Machine, who has made albums with metal mavens Lamb of God, alt-pop act Cobra Starship, and many varieties of band in between. Four Year Strong and the producer continued working together through “Enemy of the World.’’ Expect Four Year Strong to debut a couple of songs from the new album when the band stages its third annual holiday show at the Palladium on Sunday. Bane, Therefore I Am, Smartbomb, and Beyond City Lights are also on the bill.

There will not be much down time for the band as touring to promote “Enemy of the World’’ starts next month. Yet a fresh set list has the band revved up for the trip.

Asked whether they’d lose their minds continuing to play songs from “Rise or Die Trying,’’ Massucco quickly replied, “Who said we had our minds in the first place?’’