Tag: Berlin Under A

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Frankie and the Witch Fingers Shares Punchy and Grimy “Dead Silence”

Acclaimed Los Angeles-based psych punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Frankie and the Witch Fingers — currently founding duo Dylan Sizemore (vocals, guitar) and Josh Menashe (lead guitar, synth), along with Death Valley Girls‘ Nikki “Pickle” Smith (bass) and Mike Watt’s Nick Aguilar (drums) — have spent the past decade restlessly mutating their sound into bold, electrifying new forms with every new release. 

Slated for a June 6, 2025 release through Greenway Records and The Reverberation Appreciation Society, the Los Angeles-based JOVM mainstay’s eighth album, the Maryam Qudus-produced Trash Classic reportedly sees the band plunging into a sewer-slick fusion of proto punk venom, fractured New Wave and industrial grime. Sonically brimming with wiry synths, angular melodies and squirming and biting grooves, the material is delivered with a sly, playful balance between smirk and sneer. The band layers playful unease while exploring themes of escapism, decay and overindulgence. 

The songs were born in the grime of Vernon, Los Angeles — a wasteland littered with gutted RVs and rusting machinery, where the air tastes like asphalt and dog food. But the alchemy happed during recording sessions at Oakland‘s Tiny Telephone Studio, where producer Maryam Qudus helped transmute the tracks into the final forms with unhinged tones, unconventional recording experiments and wild sonic detours. 

Each day of the recording sessions began with cartoons blaring at full volume — a Looney Tunes ritual that turned the madness of the recording process into something childlike. Late night, sugar-fueled candy binges kept the energy spiking, pushing the sessions into a fever dream of jittery, spastic playfulness. The end result is a raw, twisted monument to rot and excess — and to toxic glamour and nihilistic salvation.

So far I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Economy,” which offered a glimpse of what to expect from the album: grimy synth pulse right at the front, alongside angular guitar fuzz and muscular yet mathematically precise drumming paired with punchily delivered vocals and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, the result is a scuzzier and grimier take on Freedom of Choice-era DEVO — with a similar, tongue-in-cheek sensibility. 

  • “Total Reset,” a sweaty ripper that sees the band pairing angular guitar fuzz with squiggling synth pulse, mathematically precise drumming and Sizemore’s punchy delivery with the band’s penchant for mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses. Sonically, “Total Reset” strikes me as a being a synthesis of King Gizzard and Devo — but with a mischievous sense of menace and unease. 

Trash Classic‘s third and latest single “Dead Silence” continues a run of grimy and mischievous DEVO-meets-garage rock rippers, anchored around the band’s unerring knack for rousing, mosh pit friendly hooks paired with Sizemore’s punchy delivery singing lyrics about existential dread and death. Oh, how fitting for our fucked up, dire time!

“This one’s got a nice little origin story,” the band explains. ““We played a festival in Boise with Spacemoth, Maryam Qudus’ brainchild, and met her for the first time there. Cut to a year later, and she’s deep in the guts of this record – producing, engineering, twisting knobs, and arranging sounds with us.

“On the flight home from that Boise show, Josh threw on the Spacemoth album for the first time and got his brain microwaved. He also recorded the plane taking off, just on a whim. That roar ended up in the bridge of ‘Dead Silence’. It’s a nice crusty texture, but it also weirdly bookmarks the start of it all.

Maryam’s all over this record. She sings, plays, distorts, haunts – leaving smudges on everything in the best way. She rules, and we were happy to accidentally mark the occasion sonically with a little jet-engine weirdness.”

The accompanying video is a mischievous and menacing psilocybin trip featuring cartoonishly bright, analog fuzz and crude, hand-drawn animation, and graffiti that pulses and undulates with the song.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: London’s heavy wild Shares Brooding “Wasteland”

Led by Wolfgang Harte, rising London-based lo-fi outfit heavy wild will be releasing their highly-anticipated debut Paolo Ruiu-produced EP, Death Dreams on May 28, 2025. The band has already made a name for themselves making a run of the UK and European Union touring circuit, playing sold-out shows opening for HighSchool, Swim Deep, Dog Race, Humane The Moon and Chicago‘s Blood Club, among a list of others. And over the past month, the London-based band went on their first, six-date, UK headlining tour.

Sonically, the EP sees the London-based lo-fi outfit blending elements of alternative rock, post-punk, garage rock, shoegaze, indie rock, lo-fi and grunge — and is a culmination of the project’s output date, as Harte explains: “I think having a running theme through any body of work is always important. I tend to write subconsciously and never really with a specific idea in mind so looking back through all these tracks and identifying what they’re really about has been interesting, discovering the themes that underpin my writing. There’s a couple of well-loved tracks on there but I’m excited for people to hear some new stuff too and see the direction it’s moving in.”

The EP’s first single “Wasteland” is a brooding whirlwind of a tune featuring shimmering and reverb-drenched guitars and distorted synths and driving rhythm section paired with remarkably catchy hooks and choruses and fuzzed out yet plaintive vocals. Sonically recalling a woozy mix of Interpol, Crocodiles, Grave Babies and others, the song explores themes of fractured relationships, arrests and suicide.

“Ultimately, it’s an optimistic track. It’s about going through dark times and finding a way to keep on going,” Harte explains. “I had a bassline [sic] that I was just playing on loop and I started writing, and this montage of stuff that had happened over the years was flooding my mind, and the energy of that bassline [sic] just kept dragging more stuff up. I guess it’s me sort of processing some of those situations and reflecting on it all. It’s about standing in the wreckage of life and saying fuck it… just gotta keep going.”

Harte cites Wavves, Beach Fossils, Small Black, Girls and Crocodiles as a big influence on him — and on the track. “On this track, I think I was really going back to that stuff that I loved as a teenager when I was first making music and trying to capture that frenetic sort of energy. I wanted the song to sound like it could fall apart at any moment,” Harte says.