The Dirty Nil, Ontario’s rock ‘n’ roll torchbearers, are emerging with their fourth album, Free Rein to Passions, and it’s a return to a more reckless approach for the JUNO Award-winning trio. In order to incinerate their apparatus, they had to destroy it completely. After experimenting with some smoother, more radio-friendly sounds on 2021’s Fuck Art, The Nil promptly returned to the studio and got back to the basics of what their band is about at its core—thrashy riffs, bashed out drums, and levels-to-the-max volume.
Set for release on May 26th, 2023 via Dine Alone Records, click here to pre-order Free Rein to Passions now.
“Fuck Art had a lot of singing on it. There were not a lot of parts where you could just jam out on riffs,” says frontman Luke Bentham. “Free Rein to Passions is a bit of a nastier record where we didn’t sweat the small insignificant details. If it sounded cool, we went with it.” The band pays homage to some of their loudest, gnarliest influences on Free Rein to Passions, with subtle nods to everything from Power Trip to the Jesus Lizard.
On the album’s catchy first single, “Nicer Guy,” The Nil reminds listeners that they also still wield the power to stitch a perfect, infectious pop hook into their rock fabric. “I’d been sitting on some of the guitar parts for a long time, husbanding them for a suitably righteous song,” Bentham explains. “In the depths of lockdown, I dusted them off and came up with the words. It was a happy day in an otherwise lonely time. Special shoutout to Kyle‘s extremely tight playing and Sam‘s stampeding elephant bass. Sincerity can feel uncomfortable, but this one feels right.”
Watch the accompanying “Nicer Guy” music video now.
Debt Cemetary strikes again with the aggressive new single “Let’s Murderlize ‘Em!”. This hard-hitting release explodes with huge vocal harmonies and ripping guitar riffs that soar throughout the track. Inspired by the height of the civil rights movements that spanned across the globe in 2020, the song reflects the thoughts and feelings of guitarist/vocalist Eddie Knowlton. Mixed and mastered by Matt Gauthier, this latest release from Debt Cemetary shows a new side to the band while keeping true to their original and unique brand of fast punk.
This latest single is further proof that Debt Cemetary is on the rise to bigger and better things.
Alberta Canada’s Trashed Ambulance has unveiled the new standalone single “Cyntax Error,” which follows on the heels of the band’s third LP, 2022’s critically celebrated ‘Future Considerations.’
The single is a loving tribute to Thousand Islands Records label co-owner and label manager Cynthia Charpentier, in honor of her recent birthday. The band says, “When a great friend/mom-ager turns 40, you have to make sure she feels the love. This song is an ode to Cynthia for always kicking ass and taking names while being the best gal East of the Saskatchewan River!”
Cyntax Error Written by Josh Hauta, Jason Ezeard, and Riley Bourne Guitar/Vocals – Josh Hauta Bass/Vocals – Jason Ezeard Drum/Vocals – Riley Bourne Additional Vocals – Casey Lewis Recorded at Echo Base Studio in Calgary, Alberta Recorded, engineered, and produced by Casey Lewis. Mixed and mastered by Casey Lewis.
Inspired by the likes of Pulley, Face to Face, and The Flatliners, Trashed Ambulance continues to churn out gloriously angry yet hopeful punk anthems! Formed in 2014, Trashed Ambulance has survived a plethora of member changes and hangovers to continue forging ahead as a reputable option in the Central Alberta punk scene.
With a handful of EPs, LPs, CDs, and cassettes already under their belt, the boys hit Echo Base Studio in Calgary to work with Casey Lewis (Belvedere) on their most recent LP ‘Future Considerations.’ To date, the band has shared the stage with such punk juggernauts as Face to Face, Belvedere, Voodoo Glowskulls, The Real McKenzies, The Murderburgers, and Ten Foot Pole and have even made an appearance at Pouzza Fest – Montreal’s annual premiere punk fest.
The guys already have some Western Canadian tour dates lined up and plan on terrorizing as many pubs, curling rinks, and bowling alleys as they can play this year.
SLUDGEWORTH, CHICAGO PUNK PIONEERS, TO RELEASE ’95 COMPILATION, LOSERS OF THE YEAR, ON VINYL FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME
For the uninitiated,Sludgeworth are Chicago punk pioneers from the 1980’s that released a posthumous collection/discography album on Lookout Records back in the day — and it sold tens of thousands of copies, which was impressive for a defunct band. With members of Screeching Weasel, they had obvious leanings towards melodic punk, but they also had a quintessential Midwest sound mixed in with some post-punk. Think Naked Raygun and Fugazi.
And now, for the first time ever, Red Scare Industries is releasing Sludgeworth’s first and only LP, Losers of the Year, on vinyl and streaming services. The CD/digital version is getting two previously unreleased tracks: “To Be The Same” and “Here For A While.”
The reissue also comes with live photos from back in the day and liner notes featuring contributions from Naked Raygun’s Jeff Pezzati, Rise Against’s Joe Principe, Mikey Erg, Dillinger Four’s Patrick Costello, and more. It comes out on Friday, December 9 (pre-order).
“This has been in the works for well over 5 years. I know Dan (Sludgeworth singer) from The Methadones records we did. He gave me the green light, but it took ages to track down the audio for this. When I finally had the good sense to contact Chrisser (Appelgren, President/Owner of Lookout Records) he immediately wrote back that he had one last shoe box of tapes, but it was unlikely. Minutes later I got an email that was basically, ‘Ope, I’ll be damned, it’s in here!’ He overnighted me the DAT tape and that was the first promising sign! He’s one of the real heroes of this salvage project. Something else I found out: not easy to transfer a DAT tape these days! I know all sortsa fancy studios, but no one can keep a machine in working order because they’re impossible to maintain. And since THE VERY LAST copy of the master audio were in my hands, I wasn’t about to put it in the mail. Next stroke of luck was that I learned Arik from Creep Records still had a working machine and he hooked me up. He’s hero #2 in this tale! When we were transferring files he was like, ‘Damn, this is good!’ Yet another promising sign! Obviously the art was lost to the winds and there’s literally no band pic or promo shot, so Eric from Wall of Youth had his work cut out for him, but he pulled it off. The final package came out great: we got a buncha live shots and some blurbs from Sludgeworth’s contemporaries. Folks like Jeff from Naked Raygun, Joe from Rise Against, Mikey Erg, Patrick from Dillinger Four, etc. It took some time to cobble together, but I think people will be stoked to finally have a vinyl copy of this.”– Toby, Red Scare
1. Waste It Away 2. Someday 3. Anytime 4. Only One 5. Another Day 6. I Analyze 7. Never Say Never 8. Follow 9. Over And Over 10. She’s Not Disposable 11. Cry Baby 12. Nearest One To Stand Behind 13. Angry Man 14. Two Feet On The Ground 15. You And I 16. To Be The Same* 17. Here For A While* *CD Only Bonus Tracks
“fast, snotty old-school melodic hardcore… even if these are middle-aged guys with decades in the game, they still bring that fired-up teenage rage” – Stereogum
“a melodic hardcore ripper that sounds like the exact middle ground between Lifetime and Minor Threat” – Brooklyn Vegan
Today, Beach Rats drop their debut album Rat Beat via Epitaph Records. An impressive lineup of punk rock lifers, the band is comprised of vocalist Ari Katz (Lifetime,) guitarist Pete Steinkopf (Bouncing Souls,) bassist Bryan Keinlen (Bouncing Souls,) guitarist Brian Baker (Bad Religion, Minor Threat) & Danny Windas on drums. Not wanting to take themselves too seriously, the band formed merely over a love of the genre. These are veterans of hardcore punk having fun and trying replicate the feeling and sound of what it was like to make punk music in the 80’s.
“You’re gonna get authentic punk and hardcore from BEACH RATS because we are all from the 80’s,” Bryan Kienlen comments. “It’s literally taking it back to some of our biggest influences like Negative Approach and Poison Idea, and of course, Minor Threat.”
Beach Rats came to be as each member found themselves settled in the beach community of Asbury Park, New Jersey. The crew started up when Pete, Bryan and Ari performed punk covers together for the first time at the funeral for Vision front man, Dave Franklin. After releasing an EP in 2018 and performing a slew of high-energy shows, the global pandemic gave the band a reason to get back to recording. The majority of the songs on Rat Beat were conceptualized and rehearsed in the basement of Brian Baker’s home and then tracked by Eric Bennett at Lakehouse Studios in only one day.
Baker recalls, “We’d go down in the basement, put on masks, open the windows and we could play – within CDC guidelines! We couldn’t go to dinner at each other’s houses but we could practice.”
From the kick-off of “Bikes Out” and “Dress for Sick Sesh” to the roughshod melodicism of “Clorox Boys” or “Heavy Conversation” Rat Beat is an in-the moment snapshot of the five members’ distinct styles with no self-editing or second guessing. “The song ‘Summer’s End’ sums up a lot of what was going on for us when we were recording,” admits Ari Katz. “It was the end of the season which coincided with a lot of things that were ending in my life. It was fun to weave in that kind of imagery. Closing the beach, the town, switching over from the summer people to the faces you see in the winter and how that mirrors what was going on personally. In that sort of in-the-moment-ness of BEACH RATS, there’s an undeniable honesty.”
“as if Taking Back Sunday had attended the Guided By Voices school of songwriting,” NYT on “Gotta Let It Go”
“a hooky, straightforward rock band that can’t seem to miss, with a signature touch you can’t mistake no matter how much they tweak the details.” – Stereogum
“a refreshing burst of off-kilter rock—whether it’s emo, pop-punk, or indie rock. It’s just an undeniable jam.” – UPROXX on “Don’t Try”
“sounds like the Joyce Manor you fell in love with from the very beginning…” – SPIN on “Gotta Let It Go”
Today, Joyce Manor unveil their 6th studio album, 40 oz. To Fresno. Seeing the band return to form after a brief hiatus, it will undoubtedly please fans who have been waiting four years since 2018’s Million Dollars To Kill Me. The much anticipated record has songs that span over the last eight years, yet achieve a cohesion that marks the next chapter of Joyce Manor.
Vocalist Barry Johnson summarizes,“This album makes me think of our early tours, drinking a 40 in the van on a night drive blasting Guided By Voices and smoking cigarettes the whole way to Fresno.”
In celebration of the release, Joyce Manor have teamed up with local Los Angeles vegan fast food establishment, Burgerlords from the weekend of June 10th through June 12th. Fans and foodies alike can stop by and enjoy a unique vegan burrito created by the band, a branded hot sauce, as well as limited edition t-shirts and only 100 prints of an exclusive vinyl variant with an alternate album cover. Both the Highland Park and Chinatown, Los Angeles locations will be participating while supplies last.
Originally planning to take a break from music, Joyce Manor brought their latest project 40 oz to Fresno to life thanks to singer/guitarist Barry Johnson’s desire to keep writing during quarantine. Produced by Rob Schnapf (Elliott Smith, Tokyo Police Club, Joyce Manor’s ‘Cody’,) mixed by Tony Hoffer (Beck, Phoenix) with Tony Thaxton of Motion City Soundtrack on drums, a sense of liberation lies at the core of this project. It’s strangely fitting that the title was taken from an auto-corrected text message about Sublime. Those types of happy accidents are all over 40 oz. To Fresnoand are worth the subsequent sonic hangover.
Since forming in 2008, the pop-punk group has proved time and time again that they can capture listeners’ attention through catchy yet thought provoking lyrics, and high energy shows. Although they have an established sound that reflects the energetic and gritty nature of the band which fans have come to expect, they push the limits by experimenting throughout the recording process.
Joyce Manor is a band from Torrance, CA consisting of Barry Johnson (vocals/guitar), Chase Knobbe (guitar), and Matt Ebert (bass). Johnson and Knobbe started the band in 2008 in the Disneyland parking lot while sharing a bottle of cheap booze. Named after an apartment complex that Johnson would walk past every day, Joyce Manor made their debut as an acoustic two-piece. Quickly they learned that playing loud was much more fun and invited friends to join the lineup. The band has since released five studio albums; Joyce Manor (2011), Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired (2012), Never Hungover Again (2014), Cody (2016), Million Dollars to Kill Me (2018), and Songs From Northern Torrance (2020). Joyce Manor has toured extensively and has made festival appearances at FYF Fest, Coachella, Riot Fest, and others. Press accolades for Joyce Manor include support from Pitchfork, Stereogum, NPR, The New York Times, Brooklyn Vegan, SPIN, Rolling Stone, The FADER, and more.
We are stoked to announce the latest addition to our Live in a Dive series with RKL! This is our tenth installment of the series, and takes us back over 30 years to Eindhoven, Holland. The 17-song tracklist is mainly culled from their 1987 album Rock’ n Roll Nightmare, and was recorded at the famed Eindhoven squat-turned-venue De Efenaar. The album cover features the incredible art by longtime RKL cover artist Dan Sites, who recently sat down with Fat Mike on Fat Mike’s Fat Mic to discuss his iconic career, and all things RKL, with founding member, Chris Rest. The album drops on June 3rd and is available for pre-order. Check out the absolute banger of a single, “Scab on My Brain,” streaming everywhere and anywhere that you can stream music!
The tenth installment of Fat Wreck’s Live in a Dive series takes us back over 30 years to Eindhoven, Holland. The date is May 12, 1989, not too long before Montecito, CA punks RKL – aka Rich Kids On LSD – will call it quits (for the first time, anyway). In fact, at this point, the wheels are wobbly and are starting to fall off the band. Their time in Europe is surrounded by hash smoke, booze, drugs, and debauchery that is only exacerbated by their youthful, carefree abandon. Strain is also taking its toll from hard van touring, sleepless nights, heavy drinking, drug use, and tension that is beginning to form like barnacles on the RKL ship. Especially between vocalist Jason Sears & drummer Richard ‘Bomer’ Manzullo who are struggling with the direction of the band seven years into its career. Not that you can tell that from these songs. The 17-song set – a good chunk of which is culled from 1987’s album Rock ’nRoll Nightmare – was recorded at famed Eindhoven squat-turned-venue De Effenaar, and is beautifully ragged and raw. In fact, it sounds like the band members are having the time of their lives. Probably because, despite everything going on behind the scenes, when they were onstage they were having the time of their lives!
“This definitely brings back the excitement of those days,” says Joe Raposo, who joined the band as a bassist in 1987. “Even the rough times, which were harsh, were still exciting, I have to admit. Having to deal with the musical direction change that Bomer was adamant about was definitely a bummer, as we all loved the sound of Rock N Roll Nightmare and wanted to pursue that sound for new songs. Which I think is kinda ironic, because Bomer was the one that wrote most of all the music on that album! But that’s just how he was, always progressing. Dealing with the escalation of heavy drug use was not fun and taking a toll on the members not participating. But listening to this album also brings back all of the wonderful memories of the fun we had on the road, touring in a van with [Destiny Records founder] Dave Pollack. We were all really young and just living life and going for it. We were in our teens and early twenties, and we were literally having the best time of our lives together, you know? It was like live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse!”
Although the band would get back together – twice! – after its initial break-up, things were never quite the same after the members went their separate ways the first time. As such, this record is a document of one of the last points before everything took a dive, of a band holding it together – incredibly well, it has to be said – before everything unraveled. And even though you can’t really hear that tension (“It was mostly in the background when we were on the road,” says Raposo, “but it became very evident when we were trying to write new songs”), when compared to the Double Live in Berlin live album, recorded the year before this one, there does seem to be an extra sense of urgency in these songs. They’re more primal and more ferocious, more intense and more nihilistic. Above all, though, they still sound fun as hell.
“I think we were all still just happy playing together,” says Raposo. “For the most part – I would say 95% of the time or even more than that – we were just having a blast playing every night together. And that was the most important thing. We were all on top of our game, Bomer was a fucking beast on the drums, and Jason was one of the best frontmen ever. He could get a crowd going, he could incite a riot, he could make everybody laugh, he could puke onstage at will!”
Even if there’s no puking at this gig, all of that is nevertheless clear, even 30-something years later and on record. But RKL’s Live in a Dive album – which features incredible art by longtime RKL cover artist Dan Sites – isn’t just a pure representation of the band in all its twisted, untamed glory. It’s not just the sound of a band about to fall off the cliff edge. It also serves as a bittersweet tribute to both Manzullo and Sears, who died in 2005 and 2006 respectively. These songs capture both members in their element – onstage, doing what they love, surrounded by people who love what they do. Just listen to the frantic run-through of “Break the Camel’s Back”, the guttural desperation of “Hangover”, the nervous energy of “Blocked Out”, the blistering frenzy of “Rock N Roll Nightmare”. It’s one of the last times – and certainly the last time caught on tape – that the band would sound this imperfectly perfect, this happily carefree.
“When the band got back together,” remembers Raposo, “drugs had taken a strong hold on some people, and at that point the addictions were just so bad that it couldn’t be resolved, not even with going to rehab or anything else like that. So that’s really sad. And then, of course, shortly after, death started occurring and that became the end of it. So what I really love about this record is that I can always play it and hear my friends playing, and me playing with my friends, hearing us all play together, and sharing that love on stage with one another. That’s the best thing ever. It’s a great memorial.
Track Listing 1. Lies 2. Beautiful Feeling 3. Break the Camel’s Back 4. Hangover 5. Coming Home 6. Lay Your Weapons Down 7. Scab on My Brain 8. Drink Positive 9. Tribute to the Jester 10. Blocked Out 11. Rumors 12. Life in a Bottle 13. Meltdown 14. Rock N Roll Nightmare 15. Pothead 16. Why? 17. Ded Teds
Today, Beach Rats announce their debut album Rat Beat, out on July 29th via Epitaph Records. An impressive lineup of punk rock lifers, the band is comprised of vocalist Ari Katz (Lifetime), guitarist Pete Steinkopf (Bouncing Souls,) bassist Bryan Keinlen (Bouncing Souls,) guitarist Brian Baker (Bad Religion, Minor Threat) & Danny Windas (Let It Burn) on drums. They also share the music video for the album’s title track “Rat Beat” which embodies the nature of punk in its purest form; hard, fast and loud.
Beach Rats came to be as each member found themselves settled in the beach community of Asbury Park, New Jersey. After releasing an EP in 2018 and performing a slew of high-energy shows, the global pandemic gave the band a reason to get back to recording. The majority of the songs on Rat Beat were conceptualized and rehearsed in the basement of Brian Baker’s home and then tracked by Eric Bennett at Lakehouse Studios in only one day.
Baker recalls, “We’d go down in the basement, put on masks, open the windows and we could play – within CDC guidelines! We couldn’t go to dinner at each other’s houses but we could practice.”
The DIY spirit of punk music is very much alive in Beach Rats. With the fervor to create something new, yet nostalgic, the band intentionally wrote the 12 tracks on Rat Beat how they used to back when they were teenagers. Or as Baker puts it, “like we did before we knew how to write songs.“
Not wanting to take themselves too seriously, the band formed merely over a love of the genre. These are veterans of punk rock just having fun and trying replicate that feeling and sound of what it was like to make punk music in the 80’s.
“You’re gonna get authentic punk and hardcore from BEACH RATS because we are all from the 80’s,” Bryan Kienlen comments. “It’s literally taking it back to some of our biggest influences like Negative Approach and Poison Idea, And of course, Minor Threat.”
