JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Blondie co-founder Chris Stein’s 75th birthday.
Category: punk rock
Throwback: Happy 82nd Birthday, Andy Summers!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Andy Summers’ 82nd birthday.
New Video: BEASTS Shares Roaring “The Shearing”
Antoine Romeo is an Italian-Belgian artist, who grew up in a large family of Italian immigrants in the post-industrial Belgian city of Charleroi. Initially making a name for himself as one-half of run SOFA, Romeo has stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his solo recording project BEASTS.
Romeo’s BEASTS project is guided by a manifesto, which is on the project’s website — and it is as follows:
BEASTS is non-profit.
BEASTS wants no part in elitist culture.
BEASTS doesn’t believe in the hype.
BEASTS won’t be answering to any algorithms designed by/for multinational corporations.
BEASTS is a politicized outfit.
BEASTS decides what to do and when to quit.
BEASTS is a safe space to face your traumas.
BEASTS is anti-fascist.
BEASTS is respect for others and for yourself.
BEASTS is passion, integrity and courage.
BEASTS is about breaking generational curses.
BEASTS is freedom, acceptance and peace.
The Italian-Belgian artist’s latest BEASTS single “The Shearing” is an urgent and roaring punk rock-meets-hip-hop ripper featuring rumbling and down-tuned bass paired with enormous mosh pit friendly hooks, propulsive drumming and punchily delivered howls. It’s arguably one of the most primal and angriest songs I’ve heard this year, while capturing the desperation of our moment.
Shot in a cinematic black and white, the accompanying video for “The Shearing” captures men losing their minds to a sort of primal madness in which they wind up howling to an unceasing void.
Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, Paul Simonon!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Paul SImonon’s 69th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 75th Birthday, Tom Verlaine!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates the 75th anniversary of the birth of Television’s Tom Verlaine.
New Audio: Iggy Pop Shares Live Version of “The Passenger” Recorded at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023
Last July, the legendary Iggy Pop returned to Montreux Jazz Festival backed by a seven-piece band and thrilled an at-capacity Stravinski Auditorium crowd with a career-spanning set that featured material from his time with The Stooges, solo albums like The Idiot, Lust for Life and New Values, leading up to the release of his most recent album, last year’s Every Loser.
The Montreux Jazz Festival set marked the legend’s third appearance at the festival and it was recorded and filmed by the festival team. The resulting live album Iggy Pop Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 is an essential Iggy Pop live album that celebrates a legendary career and catalog that remains as vital, forceful and inventive as ever while featuring beloved classics like “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” “T.V. Eye,” “Lust for Life,” and “Nightclubbing,” as well as newer songs like “Modern Day Ripoff” and “Frenzy.” “Stravinsky Hall is special, like Carnegie or the Garden or Sydney Opera. I’ve dived in them all,”
says Iggy Pop.
Iggy Pop Live at Montreux Jazz Festival‘s second and latest single, is swaggering and roaring, live rendition of one of Iggy Pop’s most iconic and most streamed songs, “The Passenger.” The addition of a horn arrangement manages to add a muscular, ska-like coloring to the proceedings while retaining the familiar, chugging lurch of the recoded version.
The concert will be available as a Blu-ray + CD Digipak, 2LP gatefold and digital download on January 24, 2025 globally through earMusic.
New Video: Brooklyn’s TVOD Shares Punchy “Car Wreck”
Brooklyn-based post punks TVOD (Television Overdose) can trace their origins back to 2019 when its founder Tyler Wright recorded a high-energy cassette of punk songs on a Tascam 4-track tape recorder in the abasement of the DIY space he was living in at the time. Since then, the band went on to independently release two EPs, 2020’s Daisy and 2021’s Garden along with standalone singles “Alien,” “Mantis,” “Goldfish” and “Poppies,” and two limited run 45s.
Influenced by post-punk, krautrock and egg punk, the Brooklyn-based post punk outfit quickly established a sound and approach that sees them pairing emotional, sometimes juvenile lyrics with driving, hook-driven arrangements that get crowds moving and moshing. Thematically, the material draws from personal and external inspirations like the nightlife/music scene, heartache, World War II, the untimely death of a beloved pet fish and more while telling a gritty, often tongue-in-cheek picture of being a DIY artist grinding it out in New York, complete with tales about the degenerate lifestyle and all the good and bad that comes with it.
Wright then recruited a standout lineup of freaks from the Brooklyn scene that includes Mem Pahl (drums), Micki Piccirillo (bass), Jenna Mark (synths), Serge Zbritzher (guitar) and Denim Casimir (guitar), who now join I’m both live and in the studio. Now, as a sextet, the rising, Brooklyn-based sextet have quickly developed a reputation for raw, unpredictable and explosive live shows, which they’ve taken across the North American and global festival circuit, making stops at SXSW, Hopscotch, Sled Island, Concrete Jungle and FME among others. They’ve also shared stages with the likes of Warmduscher, Snõõper, Gustaf, Civic, Soul Glo, Balkans and Iguana Death Cult.
The rising Brooklyn outfit went up to Montréal-based Gamma Recording Studio with producers Félix Bélisle and Samuel Gemme to record their Mothland debut, “Car Wreck” features a krautrock-like baseline, a steady backbeat, fuzzy and squiggling guitar lines, woozy synth bursts and the band’s penchant for catchy, shout-along worthy hooks serving as a propulsive bed for Wright’s punchy delivery singing lyrics about being reckless and happily embracing it.
Based on an illustration by TVOD’s Tyler Wright, the animated visual by Scott Palazzo features a Batmobile-like car speeding through a New York street.
Throwback: Happy 69th Birthday, Billy Idol!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Billy Idol’s 69th birthday.
Throwback: Happy 46th Birthday, Karen O!
JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O’s 46th birthday.
New Audio: French Punks Seesters Share a Politically-Charged Ripper
Emerging French garage psych/psych punks Seesters — The Parisians‘ and Crush of Souls‘ Stevan Dinet and Sam Kaperski — pair political lyrics with garage and psych inspired sounds. Their second single “Gash” is a noisy and forceful ripper that brings a synthesis of The MC5, The White Stripes and The Stooges.
New Video: Vancouver’s Night Court Shares a Breakneck Ripper
Vancouver-based punks Night Court — Emilior (drums, vocals), Dave-O (guitar, vocals) and Jiffy (bass and vocals) –are lifelong friends, who started emailing song ideas to each other during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Those song ideas quickly morphed into their latest project, Night Court.
Initially released through Snappy Little Numbers and Debt Offensive Records, the Canadian punks’ debut Nervous Birds! cassette duology was later released a Greatest Hits compilation tape in Spain through Discos Peroquébien and will soon be pressed on vinyl for the first time through SNL, DOR and Drunk Dial Records.
The trio’s third album, last year’s HUMANS! was released through SNL, DOR and French label Idiotape, and paved the way for the Halloween-themed Frater Set EP released through Dromedary Records and the 90s Bay Area punk scene homage, Shit Split Part Duh split EP with Portland-based The Dumpies, which was released through Dromedary Records. The band closed out the year by landing on the cover of Fall 2023’s Razorcake Magazine.
The band’s fourth album, the 17-song $HIT MACHINE will be released Friday through Recess Recess Records. The trio have long been fans of the label and its label head Tony Congelliere. So, the Canadian punks didn’t think twice about sending Congelliere the demos of their material. And as it turned out, the material was a perfect fit for the label.
Clocking in at 114 seconds. $HIT MACHINE‘s latest single “D List” is a breakneck and punchy, old school punk ripper, anchored around a relentless rhythmic chug, remarkably melodic vocals and enormous hooks. It’s the sort of mosh pit friendly ripper that reminds me of catching cheap punk shows at The Continental and Coney Island — but at its core, the song evokes the nastiness, unease and weirdness of our moment.
The accompanying video features footage taken from The Internet Archive — and it emphasizes the furious urgency of now.
Vancouver-based punks Night Court — Emilior (drums, vocals), Dave-O (guitar, vocals) and Jiffy (bass and vocals) –are lifelong friends, who started emailing song ideas to each other during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Those song ideas quickly morphed into their latest project, Night Court.
Initially released through Snappy Little Numbers and Debt Offensive Records, the Canadian punks’ debut Nervous Birds! cassette duology was later released a Greatest Hits compilation tape in Spain through Discos Peroquébien and will soon be pressed on vinyl for the first time through SNL, DOR and Drunk Dial Records.
The trio’s third album, last year’s HUMANS! was released through SNL, DOR and French label Idiotape, and paved the way for the Halloween-themed Frater Set EP released through Dromedary Records and the 90s Bay Area punk scene homage, Shit Split Part Duh split EP with Portland-based The Dumpies, which was released through Dromedary Records. The band closed out the year by landing on the cover of Fall 2023’s Razorcake Magazine.
The band’s fourth album, the 17-song $HIT MACHINE will be released Friday through Recess Records. The trio have long been fans of the label and its label head Tony Congelliere. So, the Canadian punks didn’t think twice about sending Congelliere the demos of their material. And as it turned out, the material was a perfect fit for the label.
Clocking in at 114 seconds. $HIT MACHINE‘s latest single “D List” is a breakneck and punchy, old school punk ripper, anchored around a relentless rhythmic chug, remarkably melodic vocals and enormous hooks. It’s the sort of mosh pit friendly ripper that reminds me of catching cheap punk shows at The Continental and Coney Island — but at its core, the song evokes the nastiness, unease and weirdness of our moment.
The accompanying video features footage taken from The Internet Archive — and it emphasizes the furious urgency of now.
New Audio: Melbourne’s Delivery Shares Punchy “Only A Fool”
Formed back in 2020 by romantic partners and collaborators Rebecca Allan (lead and backing vocals, bass) and James Lynch (lead and backing vocals, guitar, synths), rising Melbourne-based garage punk outfit Delivery initially featured members of several local bands including The Vacant Smiles, Gutter Girls and Blonde Revolver.
2021 saw the release of the Aussie outfit’s debut EP Yes We Do. Building upon a growing profile, the band released their full-length debut, 2022’s Forever Giving Handshakes, which featured singles “Baader Meinhof” and “The Complex” to critical applause from the likes of NME, who called the album “a lively record full of guitar interplay and sociopolitical critique” and Tone Deaf, who wrote that the album was “an exercise in controlled chaos, songs threatening to fall apart at any moment, but it all coolly remains together . . . ” The album also landed on Rolling Stone Australia‘s Top 10 albums list of 2022 while receiving airplay on Henry Rollins’ KCRW show.
The band’s current lineup Allan and Lynch, along with Jordan Oakley (guitar, backing vocals), Scarlett Maloney (guitar, backing and lead vocals) and Liam Kenny (drums) will be releasing their highly-anticipated sophomore album Force Majeure on January 17, 2025 through Heavenly Recordings. The 12-song album reportedly builds upon the promise that their full-length debut showed while featuring material that’s concise, direct yet forceful.
Force Majeure‘s third and latest single “Only A Fool” is a punchy, hook-driven post-punk stomp that quickly settles into a steady, chugging “Psycho Killer” groove paired with a languid yet forceful guitar solo, and an insouciant, bratty and too-cool-for-school vocal, before concluding with a loose jammy coda.
“‘Only A Fool’ might just be the most uninhibited moment in capturing this album’s all-in dynamic at full steam,” the band explains. “Lisa brought in the guitar chords, vocal line and lyrics, and then gave everyone free rein to do their thing which means everyone’s individual flare gets a moment across the track. Also might explain why this song features Delivery’s only ever jam-out ending.”