Category: News

NOFX Announce New Album

INFLUENTIAL PUNK BAND NOFX ANNOUNCE NEW FULL-LENGTH,
SINGLE ALBUM 

WATCH: AVENGED SEVENFOLD, AND MORE, IN NOFX’S NEW VIDEO FOR THEIR FIRST SINGLE, “LINEWLEUM”

SINGLE ALBUM, PRODUCED BY BILL STEVENSON & JASON LIVERMORE
(BLASTING ROOM), IN STORES AND ONLINE VIA FAT WRECK CHORDS ON
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 26 WITH PRE-ORDER AVAILABLE NOW

                                                                                               Photo credit: Jonathan Weiner


Fat Wreck Chords and longstanding California punk band NOFX are excited to announce Single Album, the band’s 14th full-length album, due out on Friday, February 26 (pre-order).  Boasting 12 new tracks and recorded at Motor Studios in San Francisco with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore (Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Teenage Bottlerocket), Single Album is their most personal album to date. Check out the new video for the lead single “Linewleum,” and get the nitty gritty from the fat one himself:

“I have no idea why “Linoleum” is THE NOFX song that is covered by so many bands while other NOFX songs get hardly any attention. “Linoleum” wasn’t a single, it had no video, it got no radio play, and most importantly, it didn’t even have a chorus!!! All popular songs have choruses! WTF! So, One night I stayed up till 4:00 am checking out all the different versions on YouTube. Watching hundreds of bands from over 28 countries (mostly Indonesia) doing “Linoleum” was a humbling experience for me. So I decided to write a song that was a shout out to all those people that learned those four chords and remembered the non-rhyming lyrics. Then I asked the biggest of all the bands (Avenged Sevenfold) to play some leads on the song. Then M Shadows suggested we do a video together. Then I figured I should put all of the bands in the video. Well, I couldn’t fit all the bands, but I picked a bunch of cool ones! A song about not playing a song that’s not a hit song with a video about other bands covering the song! This is why I love punk rock writing punk songs. Rules out the door!”

Watch the music video for “Linewleum” on YouTube HERE
and stream the track on all platforms HERE

Nearly 40 years in, what else is there to say about NOFX?

And aside from the occasional negative headline, how can one of the pioneers of SoCal punk—a style hardly known for experimentation—surprise anyone these days?

The answers lie on Single Album (Fat Wreck Chords, Feb. 26), NOFX’s 14th full-length studio album. There’s the nearly six-minute post-hardcore opener (“The Big Drag”). The meta sendoff for the band’s best-known song (“Linewleum”). The reggae-inflected song about a mass shooting (“Fish in a Gun Barrel”). Even a piano ballad (“Your Last Resort”).

It is, as frontman and bassist Fat Mike repeatedly describes, “a dark album.” That wasn’t the original intent. By early 2020, NOFX—which includes guitarist El Hefe, guitarist Eric Melvin, and drummer Smelly—had written and recorded enough songs for a planned double album to be released that fall. Like so much about 2020, those plans changed.

“When you write a double album, you write differently,” Mike says. “I was writing really different songs, and some fun songs, but you have to make a double album interesting enough to listen to the whole way. I wanted to make a perfect double album, and I didn’t accomplish that. So I decided to just make a single album, hence the title.”

Recorded at Motor Studios in San Francisco with Bill Stevenson and Jason Livermore (Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Teenage Bottlerocket), Single Album pares down the roughly 23 songs NOFX tracked. “I just kept adding songs,” Mike says. “I was maybe a little out of my mind.”

How so? “I was pretty high on drugs that year,” he adds. While fans may wonder what else is new, Single Album casts the frontman’s habits in a surprisingly harsh light. While “Grieve Soto” eulogizes beloved Adolescents founder Steve Soto, it takes a meta turn when Eric Melvin warns Mike to be “cautious, more respectful, less obnoxious.”“Birmingham” has what people in recovery call “a moment of clarity,” when he realized he was an addict.

“That was a clarity moment in my life when I was by myself, and the sun’s coming up, and I’m scraping cocaine off the floor, like, ‘Eww, gross. I shouldn’t be doing this,’” Mike says. “So what did I do? I ordered more.” After being hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer—a terrifying experience that caused him to vomit blood—Mike entered rehab in fall 2020. He promptly wrote another new album while there and has been sober since.

Unsurprisingly, Single Album represents his most personal work to date. Heartbreak permeates “I Love You More Than I Hate Me” and “Your Last Resort.” “Fuck Euphemism” dives into Mike’s sexuality for a “pronoun bar fight.” “Doors and Fours” is a grim look into the early ’80s LA punk scene, when dozens of people—many of them Mike’s friends—overdosed on a prescription drug combo. “The Big Drag” is a personal vow to make the most of life, even when it undeniably sucks. “It’s one of my favorite NOFX songs ever. I don’t get sick of listening to that song,” Mike says of “The Big Drag.” “No measure is the same length. Every time a new chord change happens, there’s a different rhythm to the guitar. The bass never stays on one note. You’re not sure when the chords are going to change because they always change at a different point.”

In other words, it’s unpredictable—just like NOFX. Turns out there is a lot to say about them, even after all this time.

Fat Wreck Chords will release Single Album on Feb. 26, 2021.
Single Album track-listing

1. The Big Drag
2. I Love You More Than I Hate Me
3. Fuck Euphemism
4. Fish in a Gun Barrel
5. Birmingham
6. Linewleum
7. My Bro Cancervive Cancer
8. Grieve Soto
9. Doors and Fours
10. Your Last Resort

Burning Nickels releases EP – Bernie Goes To College

Burning Nickels (containing members of Trashed Ambulance and The Moröns) has dropped their latest release – a 5 song EP called Bernie Goes To College via High End Denim Records. Recorded and mixed at Overserved Studios in Red Deer, Alberta, the songs are a heaping pile of fun, bubblegum pop punk. With subject matter ranging from the excellence of their niece to the unstoppable force known as Jerome the dog, listeners are encouraged to kick off their shoes, put their feet up, and forget about their worries for the 15 minutes it takes to spin this EP!


Guitarist/Singer/A-hole Josh Hauta comments on the creation of the EP.: “We had a bunch of silly songs in our repertoire that certainly didn’t fit in with our other bands so we decided that since the only rule we have in Burning Nickels is that there are no rules, we made the call to go super fluffy fun punk with this one. Walking and Waiting was actually a song that Ozone and I’s wives grandfather (they’re sisters, not the same person) had written and recorded onto a 45 back in the 50’s so we gave it the old Nickels twist. He’s sure to hate it. Then I blew my voice out singing along to the Boney M Christmas album so luckily, Rob and Ozone stepped up to write and sing on Summer Boner and Long Minute, respectively. I think it all turned out wonderful!”


You can pick up the album on the High End Denim Records bandcamp or stream it on your favourite platform. There is currently no plan to release these songs physically but stranger things have happened! Stay safe!

In Defense of Ska – Pre-order

IN DEFENSE OF SKA

By AARON CARNES

OFFICIAL RELEASE MAY 4

Print ISBN: 978-1-944866-78-5

Price: $18.95

Page Count: 330

Pre-Order the book at: Clash Books

“I DECLARE THIS THE BOOK OF THE YEAR”
-Josh Fernandez (Hard Times)

“Aaron Carnes knows that ska needs defending, and he’s highly equipped to defend it. Aaron wanted to set out to change the public’s perception of this unfairly-maligned genre.”
-Andrew Sacher (Brooklyn Vegan)

“Honestly, I wasn’t a giant fan of ska. But the stories he gives snippets, I’m definitely getting this book. It’s fucking great.”
-Mike Doyle (This Was The Scene podcast)

“I love In Defense of Ska and I can’t wait until it’s officially released.”
-Cam Brio (Cam Brio Music)

Photo by Cam Evans

Why doesn’t ska get its due as a rich, diverse genre the way punk, metal, hip-hop and electronic music does? Or more to the point, why are ska fans so embarrassed of this music they love? The era of ska shame is officially over. In Defense of Ska is the much-needed response to years of ska-mockery. No longer do ska fans need to hide in the basement, skanking alone in their sharp suits, slim ties and porkpie hats. Now the time to take to the streets and fight music snobbery, or at least crank up the ska without being teased ruthlessly.

In a mix of interviews, essays, personal stories, historical snapshots, obscure anecdotes, and think pieces, In Defense of Ska dissects, analyzes and celebrates ska in exactly the way fans have been craving for decades. This book will enlist ska-lovers as soldiers in the ska army, and challenge ska-haters’ prejudices to the core.

Author Aaron Carnes. Photo by Amy Bee

Since hardly anyone takes ska seriously, author Aaron Carnes, has uncovered a bunch of untold stories. Geoffrey Hales, the “music and surf consultant” for the film Back To The Beach speaks on why he chose Fishbone to appear in the film. His decision was in part because Walt Disney was a racist and pro-Nazi; having his darling Annette Funicello backed by a black band would make him “roll in his grave.”

There’s also the story of Fresno ska band Let’s Go Bowling who, in 1998, had their touring van shot up on the freeway as they were heading home after a show. The only injury was a bullet fragment the keyboardist found in his hand. And how about Riverside skacore legends Voodoo Glow Skulls, who abandoned their first “Fat Randy” video shoot. They cast the real-life Fat Randy—a weird Polish kid they went to school with—and a bunch of old high school friends. These old buddies got drunk and dogpiled on Randy, hurting him, shutting down the video, wasting 10,000 dollars of Epitaph’s money in production costs.

Since ska is a global phenomenon, Aaron flew to Mexico to report on biggest, and most political, ska scene in the world. Many of these bands rose from the most impoverished neighborhoods in Mexico City. Few musicians in Mexico speak on political and social issues, but the ska bands do, and they’re incredibly popular with the kids from these same poor neighborhoods. Today these bands play all-ska festivals that draw 25,000 people and more.

After the ’90s, when ska was considered dead, the music continued to have a cult audience. Current-day Pitchfork darling Jeff Rosenstock used to fronted ska-core band Arrogant Sons of Bitches in the early 2000s. They traversed the country vehemently and defiantly defending ska amidst the ska-hating early 2000s musical landscape. They played to small but devoted crowds that loved that they didn’t abandon ska in the name of “rock with horn” like so many of the 90s ska bands did. It was such an arduous task, defending ska, they ended many shows injured, usually self-inflicted.

In Defense of Ska takes readers on a journey through the last several decades of music to illustrate how important ska has always been, and highlights hundreds of great, underrated bands, completely destroying the popular narrative that ska was just a zany trend in the ’90s. It’s a way of life. It’ll never die.

Flat Planet – Somewhere in TX, 1996. Photo courtesy of Aaron Carnes

THE DIRTY NIL DROP NEW SINGLE – “ONE MORE AND THE BILL”

THE DIRTY NIL DROP NEW SINGLE “ONE MORE AND THE BILL“
WATCH LIVE PERFORMANCE ON YOUTUBE   LINKS: FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM / TWITTER / WEBSITE / MORE INFO   Today, JUNO Award-winning power trio The Dirty Nil share “One More and the Bill,” the emotional centrepiece of their forthcoming album, Fuck Art, out January 1, 2021 via Dine Alone Records and available for pre-order now.   Speaking on “One More and the Bill,” frontman Luke Bentham says:
Let’s be clear: social media hates you. “One More And The Bill“ is an ode to the primitive, casting off the shackles and enjoying life while you’ve got it. This is one of my favourite songs we’ve ever made and we hope you enjoy!   Along with the previous releases of pop-punk gem “Done With Drugs,” the hardcore basement rock ode to young love “Doom Boy,” and “Blunt Force Concussion,” a slice of ’90’s power-pop, “One More and the Bill” is a grungy drinking song that climaxes with a vow to smash my TV, smash my phone, leave politics alone, go outside for a while.
Watch The Dirty Nil perform “One More and the Bill” live via YouTube and hear their frustration towards the toxicity of social media bubble up and boil over.
Fuck Art The Dirty Nil January 1, 2021 Dine Alone Records   1. Doom Boy 2. Blunt Force Concussion 3. Elvis ’77 4. Done With Drugs 5. Ride or Die 6. Hang Yer Moon 7. Damage Control 8. Hello Jealousy 9. Possession 10. To The Guy Who Stole My Bike 11. One More and The Bill   Fuck Art is a statement of confidence and defiance from a group that’s now three albums into the game—i.e., the point where ambitious rock bands are supposed to call in the orchestra, experiment with electronics, and try to make their Ok Computer. The Dirty Nil, by contrast, have opted to perfect the formula that, over the past decade, has landed them on stages with everyone from Against Me! to The Who. Fuck Art melts down all of their favourite ingredients—classic-rock heroism, pop-punk horsepower, ’80s indie scrappiness, ’90s alterna-crunch, speed-metal adrenaline—into a radiant, chromatic solution they can then mould and harden into unpredictable shapes.

Grade 2 Share New Track “Only Ones I Trust”

GRADE 2
SHARE “ONLY ONES I TRUST”

ARTWORK BY TIM ARMSTRONG

UK punk band Grade 2 have just released “Only Ones I Trust,” an outtake from the band’s 2019 album Graveyard Island. Co-written and produced by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong, the band hopes this feel good track with stomping choruses will “unify those who have seen struggles this year, because together in this game we are damned and we are all the same. We aim to have you singing your heart out, for now just in your living room but hopefully at a show soon!”

LISTEN TO “ONLY ONES I TRUST” NOW

Grade 2 is Sid Ryan (vocals/bass), Jack Chatfield (vocals/guitar), and Jacob Hull (drums). Formed in 2013, the band met at school where they would spend their lunch break playing covers of classic punk tunes together in the music room. Since their formation, the band has released several EPs and three studio albums; Mainstream View (2016) and Break The Routine (2017), and Graveyard Island (2019). The bands’ Hellcat debut Graveyard Island was recorded and produced by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong at Armstrong’s Shiprec Studios and mixed by The Interrupters’ Kevin Bivona.

Grade 2 by Bill Chatfield 

For More Information on Grade 2, visit:
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK

The Lawrence Arms – Skeleton Coast – Out now

SKELETON COAST
THE NEW ALBUM FROM
THE LAWRENCE ARMS
OUT NOW

The Lawrence Arms’ seventh studio album, Skeleton Coast is out now. Recorded in Tornillo, TX, a border town of Mexico, at Sonic Ranch Studios with longtime producer Matt Allison, the album marks the band’s first release in six years.

LISTEN TO SKELETON COAST NOW

The album contains the elements of the band’s sound that fans have come to love for the past two decades but recontextualizes them in a way that somehow sounds perfectly aligned with this strange time in our collective history. Although it was written and recorded before the Coronavirus upended the world, the band’s seventh studio album sounds eerily prescient as it imagines an apocalyptic future where coyotes croon and wolf packs roam free. “For a band who has been around as long as us, this is about as urgent of a record as we could make,” vocalist and bassist Brendan Kelly explains. “It may be kind of dark but it’s really about searching for light in the darkness and finding it, as small as those moments may seem. That’s sort of where we’re at: Collecting the scraps of things that could make for a bearable existence in dark times.”

SKELETON COAST TRACK LISTING
1. Quiet Storm
2. PTA
3. Belly Of The Whale
4. Dead Man’s Coat
5. Pigeons and Spies
6. Last Last Words
7. Demon
8. Ghostwriter
9. How To Rot
10. Under Paris
11. Goblin Fox Hunt
12. Lose Control
13. Don’t Look At Me
14. Coyote Crown

The Lawrence Arms have never had any agenda apart from just having fun and making good music. Since forming in Chicago in 1999—the trio of bassist/vocalist Brendan Kelly, guitarist/vocalist Chris McCaughan and drummer Neil Hennessy—have made albums that continually challenge the boundaries of their sound. In the process they’ve carved out a distinctive identity in the punk community that’s simultaneously gritty, beautiful, melodic and mutinous.

The Lawrence Arms by Ben Pier

For more information on The Lawrence Arms, visit:
INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

THE LAWRENCE ARMS SHARE NEW TRACK “LAST LAST WORDS”

THE LAWRENCE ARMS
SHARE NEW TRACK
“LAST LAST WORDS”

SKELETON COAST OUT JULY 17

Today, Chicago bred trio The Lawrence Arms share “Last Last Words” off their forthcoming record Skeleton Coast out July 17 via Epitaph.

The track “is about coming to terms with your own obscurity – but like, in a pretty upbeat way,” says vocalist and guitarist Chris McCaughan. “It’s an escape dream to an edge of the world while being strangely content with some undergrown adulthood. It’s part undercover love song to the sometimes beautiful randomness of the universe and part offbeat, comical reminder to keep rewriting your unknown future. Like so much of the record, the song chases tiny flashes of light in the darkness.”

LISTEN TO “LAST LAST WORDS” NOW

Skeleton Coast was recorded 30 miles east of El Paso, TX at Sonic Ranch Studios with longtime producer Matt Allison. The album contains the elements of the band’s sound that fans have come to love for the past two decades but recontextualizes them in a way that somehow sounds perfectly aligned with this strange time in our collective history. Although it was written and recorded before the Coronavirus upended the world, the band’s seventh studio album sounds eerily prescient as it imagines an apocalyptic future where coyotes croon and wolf packs roam free. “For a band who has been around as long as us, this is about as urgent of a record as we could make,” vocalist and bassist Brendan Kelly explains. “It may be kind of dark but it’s really about searching for light in the darkness and finding it, as small as those moments may seem. That’s sort of where we’re at: Collecting the scraps of things that could make for a bearable existence in dark times.”

SKELETON COAST TRACK LISTING
1. Quiet Storm
2. PTA
3. Belly Of The Whale
4. Dead Man’s Coat
5. Pigeons and Spies
6. Last Last Words
7. Demon
8. Ghostwriter
9. How To Rot
10. Under Paris
11. Goblin Fox Hunt
12. Lose Control
13. Don’t Look At Me
14. Coyote Crown

The Lawrence Arms have never had any agenda apart from just having fun and making good music. Since forming in Chicago in 1999—the trio of bassist/vocalist Brendan Kelly, guitarist/vocalist Chris McCaughan and drummer Neil Hennessy—have made albums that continually challenge the boundaries of their sound. In the process they’ve carved out a distinctive identity in the punk community that’s simultaneously gritty, beautiful, melodic and mutinous

For more information on The Lawrence Arms, visit:
INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

THE LAWRENCE ARMS ANNOUNCE SKELETON COAST OUT JULY 17

THE LAWRENCE ARMS
ANNOUNCE SKELETON COAST
OUT JULY 17

SHARE NEW TRACK
“PTA”

Chicago bred trio The Lawrence Arms will release Skeleton Coast, their first album in six years, on July 17. The band offers fans a glimpse at the record with the release of the first single from the new record, “PTA.”

Skeleton Coast was recorded 30 miles east of El Paso, TX at Sonic Ranch Studios with longtime producer Matt Allison. It was kind of like album camp in the sense that we were in this very remote setting for two weeks and really focusing on making the record. That was a very different experience for us because we’ve always made our records in Chicago which is home and all the things about home are in the way,” says vocalist and guitarist Chris McCaughan.

The album contains the elements of the band’s sound that fans have come to love for the past two decades but recontextualizes them in a way that somehow sounds perfectly aligned with this strange time in our collective history. Although it was written and recorded before the Coronavirus upended the world, the band’s seventh studio album sounds eerily prescient as it imagines an apocalyptic future where coyotes croon and wolf packs roam free. “For a band who has been around as long as us, this is about as urgent of a record as we could make,” vocalist and bassist Brendan Kelly explains. “It may be kind of dark but it’s really about searching for light in the darkness and finding it, as small as those moments may seem. That’s sort of where we’re at: Collecting the scraps of things that could make for a bearable existence in dark times.”

SKELETON COAST TRACK LISTING
1. Quiet Storm
2. PTA
3. Belly Of The Whale
4. Dead Man’s Coat
5. Pigeons and Spies
6. Last Last Words
7. Demon
8. Ghostwriter
9. How To Rot
10. Under Paris
11. Goblin Fox Hunt
12. Lose Control
13. Don’t Look At Me
14. Coyote Crown

The Lawrence Arms have never had any agenda apart from just having fun and making good music. Since forming in Chicago in 1999—the trio of bassist/vocalist Brendan Kelly, guitarist/vocalist Chris McCaughan and drummer Neil Hennessy—have made albums that continually challenge the boundaries of their sound. In the process they’ve carved out a distinctive identity in the punk community that’s simultaneously gritty, beautiful, melodic and mutinous.

The Lawrence Arms by Ben Pier

For more information on The Lawrence Arms, visit:
INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | TWITTER

Real McKenzies – Beer and Loathing Preorder

Remember when you could safely hop on a plane and fly to the highlands of Scotland, sip whiskey, and wish you looked good in a kilt? Like you, we are anxiously awaiting the return of normalcy. Until that day, at least you can listen to a brand new Real McKenzies song! The title track is lifted off their upcoming full-length, Beer & Loathing, and it drops on July 3rd. Gadabouts, head over to our YouTube channel to get your drink on. Canadians: Stomp Records will be your source of this finely distilled recording. For the rest of the world, FAT has you covered.

PREORDER

Order here:

USA & everywhere else: FAT Webstore.

Canada: Stomp Records.

Europe: FAT Webstore hosted by Kingsroad.

Australia/New Zealand: FAT Webstore hosted by Artists First.