Arizona post-hardcore band Scary Kids Scaring Kids seems to have adopted the Minutemen line, “Our band could be your life,” as a sort of personal mantra. Creating a sense of community among the band and fans has gained them cities of grateful fans and a spot on tour with Chiodos along the way.

The band’s newly-released self-titled CD – produced by Don Gilmore (Linkin Park, Good Charlotte) – features 16 songs with enough gusto to attract fans of emo, hardcore and punk. But it probably won’t become anyone’s favorite CD. Yet somehow Scary Kids achieves what seems – for most bands – to be so simple yet so elusive: Playing accessible music while maintaining a level of integrity.

This formula has obviously gained Scary Kids some attention. Playing small shows and making real efforts to connect with fans established the band members as hometown heroes in their small town of Gilbert, Ariz. After gaining a spot on the Warped Tour this past summer, Scary Kids is expanding its fan base while hoping to keep the intimate feel of their shows.

Recently the band launched www.scarykidssociety.com, a social networking site that allows their fans to interact. After a quick tour of the site, it’s clear that these fans aren’t casual listeners. Fans post on message boards, upload photos taken at Scary Kids concerts and even create music videos to the band’s songs. This builds a MySpace-esque virtual world where fans – mostly teenagers – meet based solely on their mutual, self-proclaimed obsessions with Scary Kids.

Whether the “obsessions” of Scary Kids fans is enough to distinguish the band from an innumerable group of other young post-hardcore groups remains to be seen. Just how far can legions of dedicated online emo kids get you? Scary Kids Scaring Kids bets it’s pretty far. Catch the band at House of Blues (329 N. Dearborn St.) Oct. 21.