Preeminent Los Angeles band Bad Religion have just released “Emancipation Of The Mind,” an outtake from the band’s critically acclaimed 2019 album Age Of Unreason. The track’s upbeat messaging calls for reason and open-mindedness as a new administration is welcomed into the White House today. Bad Religion have always advocated for humanism, reason, and individualism, which has never been more essential.
“I think the song really is a celebration of enlightenment values that can be cultivated through enthusiastic learning and open-mindedness,” says co-songwriter and vocalist Greg Graffin. “So often we’re told what to think. But learning how to think (as opposed to learning what to think) is a true feeling of emancipation from the constraints of indoctrination that are so commonplace in our society.”
ABOUT BAD RELIGION Bad Religion, formed in 1980 in the suburbs of Los Angeles, has become synonymous with intelligent and provocative West Coast punk rock and are considered one of the most influential and important bands in the genre. Bad Religion has continually pushed social boundaries and questioned authority and beliefs armed only with propulsive guitars, charging drumbeats, thoughtful lyrics and an undying will to inspire and provoke anyone who will listen.
The band’s critically acclaimed 17th studio album Age of Unreason offers a fiery and intensely relevant musical response to the times, with songs that address a myriad of socio-political maladies, including conspiracy theories, racist rallies, Trump’s election, the erosion of the middle class, alternative facts and more. There is a stylistic consistency to the band’s iconic and influential sound – hard fast beats, big hooks and rousing choruses, yet each new song remains distinctive, utilizing composition, melody and lyrics to deliver a unique narrative consistent with the band’s longstanding humanist worldview.
Today, legendary punk band Descendents share their new track “That’s The Breaks.” The track follows the politically-charged two-song single Suffrage, released ahead of the 2020 general election encouraging voting to take down the Trump administration. In triumph, “That’s The Breaks” serves as a farewell to 45 ahead of the upcoming inauguration.
“Loser. Big time loser. Delusional loser. SORE loser. The time has come. The time is now. Just go, go, GO. I don’t care how. Donald J. Trump, will you please go now!,” adds vocalist Milo Aukerman. “What’s it gonna take? A gazillion dollars? (Oh wait, you already grifted that from supporters)… A get out of jail free card? (Only if our judicial system totally fails us)… A wooden stake through the heart? Whatever we can do to make you go away, we need to do it. And I don’t mean just leave the White House, I mean crawl back into your hole of hate and live out the rest of your life as a nobody. A loser. Because that’s what you are. Worst. President. Ever.”
Formed in 1978 Descendents are Milo Aukerman (vocals), Stephen Egerton (guitar), Karl Alvarez (bass), and Bill Stevenson (drums). They have released seven studio albums, Milo Goes to College (1982), I Don’t Want to Grow Up (1985), Enjoy! (1986), All (1987), Everything Sucks (1996), Cool to Be You (2004), and Hypercaffium Spazzinate (2016).
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 (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!
Here’s a quick shout out to Terminal City Rats with their new album, Year of the Rat. Hailing from Vancouver BC, these neighbors to the north have kicked out a solid punk rock record.
13 tracks of punk. largely in the vein of some of the crack rocksteady sounds of Leftover Crack, Star Fucking Hipsters, Morning Glory etc. Not a carbon copy, of course, but clearly going down that path.
It’s good, so give it a listen. You aren’t doing anything right now anyway.
Cheers! Jerry Actually
Tracks: 1. Intro 00:58 2. Year of the Rat 00:17 3. TCRA 01:11 4. Stand Proud 02:14 5. More than a Scene 01:32 6. Lion’s Roar 01:37 7. Never Surrender 02:00 8. The Struggle 01:53 9. Hastings 01:29 10. Stay Sharp 01:21 11. Here’s to You (Broken and Alone) 01:33 12. Queens 01:41 13. Wants and Needs 01:56
Bio: Started sometime in early 2018 by founding members, bassist and songwriter Jeremy Starcok and drummer Liam Ready, Terminal City Rats were just two new friends brought together by their mutual love for punk rock. The duo spent a couple of months jamming and composing ideas before guitarist Chris “Crash” Campbell (F’Neh / The Receptionists) joined. “I ran into Crash at a show and casually mentioned that I had started a new project when he pretty much informed me that he was going to be our guitar player”, recalls Jeremy. “He basically told me right there on the spot that he was coming to our next practice without me even asking.”
Having played together in the short lived Vancouver punk band Struck A Nerve years earlier, the two knew they shared some musical chemistry and common tastes. Eager to find a singer, the trio made a social media post in search of someone. Bed ridden and recovering from a nasty knee injury, Jameson Trenholm (Obscene Being) answered jokingly with “I’ll join your band”, not expecting anything to actually come of it. “…I had turned my knee into mashed potato. I somehow managed to hobble my broke self to a few jams where I was crowned the Singer”.
Now a four piece and the addition of a second songwriter in Jameson, the band spent the next few months crafting a collection of songs, three of which would be recorded on their debut self titled demo recorded at Rain City Recorders by Stu McKillop in the fall of 2018. For the next year or so, Terminal City Rats played a handful of shows at venues around Vancouver including the Have A Good Laugh festival and legendary local haunts such as the Alf house, Pub 340 and SBC. “Those were really fun shows and we played with some killer local and touring bands but when we started this band, it was always the plan to have two guitar players. Two differently styled players who complimented each other.” says Jeremy.
Enter Mandy Green (Frank Love) in August of 2019. “…having known Jameson through the Vancouver music scene, he said they were looking for a second guitarist and after hearing their fast, raw, high energy sound I said ‘I’m in.’” With the long time plan of being a 5 piece finally coming to fruition, the band set out to incorporate Mandy’s guitar playing into their set. More shows followed including a sold out night at the Cambie in downtown Vancouver playing with some of Vancouver’s finest in Space Chimp, Alien Boys, Chain Whip and The Vicious Cycles. Riding the high of that night, the band again decided to enter the studio to record the follow up to their first release.
Whilst practicing and preparing to record, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, essentially halting the band’s ability to get together and jam. Months passed, during which time founding member Liam decided that he no longer wanted to be a part of Terminal City Rats and left to focus on other areas of his life. The band, now without a drummer and quickly approaching studio time, started to consider cancelling their scheduled recording session. As some of the pandemic restrictions started to be lifted, the band was able to begin jamming again but was still without a drummer.
Through friendship and connections in the local community, Jameson approached drummer Marco Bieri (Space Chimp, ATD, The Dreadnoughts) about the possibility of helping the band in the studio. With his various projects also on hold due to the pandemic and itching to play, Marco welcomed the opportunity. Learning 5 songs in only a few practices, the band entered Rain City Recorders for two days in June 2020 again with Stu McKillop at the helm. With the reinvigorated energy of a new drummer in addition to the results of that session, Marco asked “Why not do a full length album?” 8 more songs and two weeks later, Terminal City Rats returned to the studio to finish their debut full length album “The Year of the Rat”.
Listening to Gibberish, the recently released album from Lafayette, Louisiana punk band, Subliminal Landmines. 12 tracks of bouncy, mid-tempo, rock and roll songs, with enough grit and sneer to take the more poppy edges off, and keep it just dangerous enough to not drift into pure rock territory. The sound is defiantly out of garageland, and totally suits the band. Three piece, three chords, 1. 2. 3. Go!
Everything reminds me of everything these days, but Subliminal Landmines has a vocal style that is similar to something, but I can’t put my finger on it. It’s good and it’s cool, so there’s that at any rate. Maybe I’m wrong, but as I’ve continued listening, the vocals kind of strike me as being like psychobilly/rockabilly act The Blackjakits. I dunno maybe I’m nuts.
I’ve half listened to the Gibberish a couple times now and it is growing on me with each successive run. The album as a whole sounds great and is entirely listenable, however standout Track six, Crutch, comes out of the gate like a Cheap Trick number. The intro really hooks in, and it’s totally a song about lost friendship, and about the things that you do to get by. Great stuff musically and lyrically.
The songs speak of loss, lament, drugs illicit or otherwise, and the type of soul searching that comes along with life on an isolated and often bleak planet. The effect is cathartic though. It helps to diffuse the pain of living.
From Crutch: “Staring at the ceiling while thinking bout way too much Having trouble standing without you as my crutch”
Bonus Green Day cover at the end, which I suppose puts a finer point on the sound and spirit Subliminal Landmines are trying to capture.
There’s a bunch of links below if you’d like to check them out. I think that perhaps you should.
Cheers! Jerry Actually
Tracks: 1. Criticized 02:13 2. Where’s My Coke? 03:54 3. Room for 3 02:36 4. She May Be 03:01 5. I’m Okay 02:53 6. Crutch 03:17 7. Suit Up 05:09 8. Target (Twenty-20) 02:59 9. I Love You a Camel 02:45 10. Ungrateful 01:48 11. Losing Heartbeats 03:16 12. Brain Stew / Jaded 04:30
Bio: Taking form in 2017, Subliminal Landmines exploded onto the South Louisiana Music scene with their energetic punk. Influenced by the grimey dive bars, garages, and smoke stained lungs of their youth, Subliminal Landmines released their debut EP “Captivity” which was received with open arms. Currently writing their first full length album to be called “Gibberish” which is set to release in the fall of 2020
Members: Grant Duhon: Vocals and Guitar Chris Hayes: Vocals and Bass Lee Gauthreaux: Drums
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!”
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.
I’ve been pretty uninspired for a few months now. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was pretty upbeat. Working from home, being creative, and generally enjoying things to the fullest extent possible with the obvious restrictions. As spring drifted, summer languished, somehow we careened straight into fall. With that passage of time I have become a bit despondent. Colors have dulled. Highlights and lows have all reached their eventual entropy. Sometimes though, every now and again, you get a little bit of a boost.
Today’s boost arrived in the form of a brand new album from San Francisco’s Get Dead. “Dancing With The Curse” is out on October 9th, on the now venerable Fat Wreck Chords. What can I say, it’s a cathartic delight.
We were given a teaser of the album at the end of summer, via video for the intro track Disruption, a syncopated punk/rap number. The lead track segues into the remaining 11 tracks in a seamless fashion. The tracks move in and out of tempos from the fast-slow-fast-faster-slow-slower-fast-faster-slow keeping the sound swirling around in your gray matter.
Elements of folk, rap, ska, and reggae flavor the tracks and the band’s punk rock DNA. It makes for a lively album, one which repaves well worn ground with fresh new layers. It’s good stuff. It’s dynamic. You know what I’m saying?
Things, of course, are delivered in a patently dark fashion, tonally, but especially lyrically. That’s what keeps us coming back, right? Take some lines from track 4: Stickup
Did you really think You could start again This place is collapsing Hordes of incontrollable bastards They are coming for you It feels like this place is cursed So do your worst We are all going down
It’s not the sort of thing that engenders a lot of hope, not in a traditional way at least. There’s a certain comfort in knowing that you’re doomed, and it’s always nice to have a soundtrack to that feeling.
But, you know, there is hope. From track 7: Hard Times
Trouble breathing? Feel like something’s wrong? Have you felt like It’s been like this for too long? Is your heart beating? Can you hear this song? Then everything is okay
Maybe there will be better days? I know it made my day better.
Here’s the deal, there’s a new album by Get Dead and it’s the shit, as the kids used to say.
Cheers! Jerry Actually
Tracks:
Disruption
Nickel Plated
Fire Sale
Stickup
Glitch
Confrontation
Hard Times
8 Track
Green’s Girl
Pepperspray
Confidence Game
Take It
Bio:
There aren’t a lot of bands like Get Dead around these days. Instead of worrying about gimmicks and trends, this fivesome from San Francisco, California have always focused on the music and that’s evident with every passion-filled note they play. Get Dead started out performing together in 2007 after their respective bands called it quits and eventually attracted the attention of NOFX frontman Fat Mike who produced the band’s first full-length, “Bad News”, as well as their new full-length, “Honesty Lives Elsewhere”, and released both records on his label Fat Wreck Chords.
We are living in a fucked up world, engulfed in chaos. Everything is fucking broken. Occasionally though, a small burst of joy breaks through. One such joy is unsolicited albums arriving at my door.
The new album, In Transit by New York trio, Quaker Wedding landed on my doorstep, predicated on the assumption that “Upstarter” generally digs The Lawrence Arms. That assumption has shown to be true, because “Upstarter” digs the hell out of Quaker Wedding.
Anyone that’s been here for a few know that I am a bit partial to the punk trio format. I like the rawness it often creates. It has more guts; seems more real. In Transit is no exception.
Gruff, exasperated, and emotive vocals are draped over chunky 4:4 punk rock riffs. The tracks, though clearly forged in punk rock, are delivered in an ethereal, dreamlike manner. Flitting and drifting from one angsty bit to the next. In another world, this album would be emo, and I’m totally alright with that.
Quaker Wedding’s In Transit has got it where it counts, right in the guts. A fine recording, for your listening pleasure. My only lament, I suppose, is that this album needs to be longer.
For fans of: The Lawrence Arms, American Steel, Hot Water Music, Soul Asylum, Things that are filled with angst.
Cheers!
Jerry Actually
Tracks:
1. Sinking Ship 01:19 2. Dark Thoughts II 02:56 3. Jilted Lover 03:56 4. Wrecking Ball 03:50 5. Vermont 03:56 6. Sleep 01:48 7. Aching 00:53 8. Knowing Smile 03:12 9. Searching 03:32 10. On An Island 07:29
I was in the mood for something a little more brutal today, and well, I guess I’m in luck. I’m listening to the new split with Deconvolution and Voidcrawler; Four tracks of pure fucking onlsaught!
The EP opens with blistering metal as Deconvolution belts out “Sanctimonious”. A track lodged between some seriously dark metal, and later era Hardcore. Razor vocals, but not screamo, inserted into a crushing metal cacophony of bass, guitar, and drums.
Track two, “Guillotine” introduces itself at a slightly slower pace, only to accelerate into Slayer speeds. It owes as much to 80s Thrash as it does to 90s Death metal.
Photo by Reikon Devore
Track three brings us into Voidcrawler territory. “Certain Fatality” offers further sonic assault. Relentless chugging riffs and an angry growl grip you straight by the throat. The song winds down with what I can only describe as death by weed wacker.
The final track “Torment” bursts at the seams with unbridled anguish, the very torment the title invokes. Extreme metal solos lace the tracks and neatly sew up its bone crushing grind.
A brief, yet brutal split from bands who, if they haven’t been, would be right at home at Wacken Open Air. (During some better year, when music festivals return)
Tracks:
1 Deconvolution- Sanctimonious
2 Deconvolution- Guillotine
3 Voidcrawler- Certain Fatality
4 Voidcrawler- Torment
Press Release:
Blindsided Records’ 4th release is about to be unleashed into the world. A 7” vinyl record featuring Voidcrawler (NL) & Deconvolution (CH), each taking up one side of the wax. Having played together several times the combination was a slamdunk as the music from both outfits complement each other perfectly. The riff filled record will drop both digitally and physically on 7” vinyl on June 12th, 2020.
DECONVOLUTION will kick off the record with raw hardcore combined with juicy thrash metal riffs. The Swiss band, hailing from Solothurn, has been working hard since 2015 and released their first EP ‘Fool’s Path’ in 2017. Sharing the stage with major hardcore bands Terror, Broken Teeth, Hawser and Expire to name a few, they gained momentum in the European hardcore scene. A promo cassette was released in 2019 and Blindsided Records is more than proud to feature them on this record.
On ‘Sanctimonious’ the band talks about the annihilation of our world, two faced politicians and the destruction of the environment. ‘Guillotine’ is about a group of people suffering and rising up against their leader through violent means. It’s easy to draw parallels with certain US leaders as the symbolic monarch, especially in these trying times.
Side two is occupied by the most terrifying band in the Netherlands, VOIDCRAWLER. In just two years the Dutch band have already played shows all over Europe and released their acclaimed EP ‘Maddening Descent’ last year. The band produces an unique blend of extremely angry metal and hardcore. Lyrically frontman Lennart explores similar themes as DECONVOLUTION, for example he imagines the end of the world on ‘Certain Fatality’.
