Tag: punk rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Joey La Neve DeFrancesco, Norlan Olivo, Mary Regalado and Victoria Ruiz, the Providence, RI-based punk rock quartet Downtown Boys have developed a growing national reputation for writing protest music centering on their own experiences as young, queer, Chicana and Latino artists, musicians and people within an extremely whitewashed, cis-male, heterosexual world — especially within rock; in fact, throughout the course of the band’s first two albums, they’ve called on their fans whether newfound or diehard to join the struggle to smash racism, homophobia, queerphobia, exploitative capitalism, fascism, ignorance and boredom and more that have closed people’s minds, hearts and souls off to themselves and others.

Produced by Fugazi‘s Guy Picciotto, the band’s forthcoming third, full-length effort Cost of Living, which is slated for an August 11, 2017 through Sub Pop Records will further cement their reputation for crafting serious, incendiary and cathartic yet fun music in which their youthful, urgent and passionate energy is paired with their sociopolitical ideals.   Lyrically inspired by Assata Shakur’s poem “i believe in living,” Cost of Living‘s opening track and first single “The Wall,” finds the band sonically drawing from The Clash, Wire and others while the chorus and hook is repeated mantra-like “A wall is just a wall/A wall is just a wall . . .” boldly calling out Donald Trump’s “Great Wall,” and his supporters for its blatant stupidity; but it also serves as a righteous and powerful reminder that though the wall is symbolically meant to crush the humanity, dreams and desires of an entire groups of people, that as long as people are people, brick and barb wire can never crush their humanity.

As much as we all may want and need to have mindless fun, the members of Downtown Boys are actively creating some of the most forceful and necessary material of the resistance.

The band will be on tour throughout the entire summer and fall and it includes two NYC are stops — June 9, 2017 at the Pitchfork Northside Festival Showcase at Saint Vitus and July 12, 2017 at House of Vans. Check out the rest of the tour dates below.
Tour Dates
6/9: Brooklyn, NY @ Pitchfork Northside Fest Showcase @ St. Vitus
6/16: Ashfield, MA @ The Ashfield Lake House
6/17: Providence, RI @ Aurora
7/12: Brooklyn, NY @ House of Vans
8/19: Omaha, NE @ Maha Festival
9/2 – 9/3: Philadelphia, PA @ Made In America Festival
9/15 – 9/17: Chicago, IL @ Riot Fest
9/23: Los Angeles, CA @ Summer Happenings at The Broad
10/9: Leffinge, Belgium @ Cafe De Zwerver
10/10: Paris, France @ Le Point Ephemere
10/11: Brighton, UK @ The Haunt
10/12: Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
10/13: Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Pete’s
10/14: Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
10/16: Dublin, Ireland @ The Workman’s Club
10/17: Liverpool, UK @ The Shipping Forecast
10/18: London, UK @ Dome Tufnell Park
10/19: Sheffield, UK @ Picture House Social Club
10/20: Manchester, UK @ Deaf Institute
10/21: Bristol, UK @ Simple Things Festival
10/22: Birmingham, UK @ All Years Leaving Festival
10/24: Munster, Germany @ Gleis 22
10/25: Berlin, Germany @ Urban Spree
10/26: Hamburg, Germany @ Hafenklang

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Party with the Undead in the New Video for The Coathangers “Captain’s Dead”

Currently comprised of Julia Kugel (vocals and guitar), Meredith Franco (bass), and Stephanie Luke (drums), the Atlanta, GA-based trio and JOVM mainstay The Coathangers have released five full-length albums in their decade plus time together, with each album finding the band refining their sound and songwriting approach, frequently balancing a brash, raw and seemingly spontaneous simplicity and urgency with razor sharp wit and biting irony. Interestingly, with the band’s last two full-length efforts 2014’s Suck My Shirt and last year’s Nosebleed Weekend, the trio’s material was arguably at its most direct and forceful of their entire catalog, which helped to retain the feral and rowdy urgency that they’ve become so known for; but they managed to pair that energy with rousingly anthemic hooks and a pop-leaning sensibility — or in other words, the material may have been some of the more radio friendly songs they’ve released to date.

Parasite, the band’s latest EP is slated for a June 30, 2017 release through Suicide Squeeze Records and the album’s material has the Atlanta-based trio balancing the unbridled and furious expressionism of their debut and the increasingly nuanced, pop-leaning sensibility of their last two albums. As the band’s Julia Kugel explains in press notes “During the making of our last album, I didn’t want to scream anymore, I just wanted to sing and focus on melody. When we came to this recording, I just wanted to scream and curse.” And in some way, it shouldn’t be surprising that the EP’s material is partially inspired by events within the bandmembers’ personal lives, the current political climate, rife with kleptocracy, hypocrisy, blatant sexism, racism and gratuitous cruelty and the band’s own existence and development as artists and songwriters.

“Captain’s Dead,” the first single off the EP manages to sound as though it could have been a B-side to the singles off Nosebleed Weekend while drawing from 90s grunge rock as the song structurally consists of alternating quiet and loud, anthemic hooks, and a surfer rock-inspired bridge, a propulsive rhythm section and a sneering punk rock air. And much like the band’s previously released material, the new single possesses an underlying mischievous feel underneath the scuzzy, give no fucks swagger.

Directed by Matt Odorn, the recently released video for “Captain’s Dead” features zombies, pirates, a merman, cheerleaders, a shit-ton of beer guzzling, some raucous performing within a milieu that’s mischievous, murderous and campy as hell.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Perhaps best known as members of now-defunct New York-based punk rock act Livids, Daniel Kelley (guitar, vocals) and Gregory Collins (drums) decided to start a new project, Moral Panic, with which they intended to playing much more minimalist and raw punk. Kelley and Collins recruited Mark Brei (bass) to complete the lineup, before developing a reputation across punk rock circles for blistering, face-melting punk. And as you’ll hear on “Ripped Jeans,” the first single off their recently released self-titled, full-length debut through Slovenly Recordings is a band whose sound draws from Canadian facemelters METZ, old-school NYC hardcore, complete with punchily delivered lyrics, anthemic hooks and a scuzzy, sneering gutter punk air. It brings back memories of The Continental, Coney Island High, CBGBs, The Acme Underground and Brownies and catching punk shows with $5, $6 $8 covers.

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

More than enough real and virtual ink has been spilled on Iggy Pop throughout his incredibly influential, lengthy and prolific music career — a music career that he can trace back to 1960. And with the legend’s 70th birthday on Friday, we should all enjoy him for as long as he’s here to kick ass. Interestingly enough, Iggy Pop has collaborated and championed a number of contemporary bands including the Miami, FL-based rock trio Jacuzzi Boys, who in 2015 started their own label Mag Mag Records with the primary purpose of releasing their own music.

April 21, 2017 marks the release of Mag Mag’s new flexi disc series, which begins with the release of a dusty and scuzzy, Mississippi Delta blues-inspired new single from the iconic Iggy Pop titled “Asshole Blues.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

The Detroit, MI-based proto-punk/punk rock band Death can trace their origins back to when The Hackney Brothers — Bobby (bass, vocals), David (guitar) and Dannis (drums) formed the band back in 1971. Initially, they started out as a R&B and funk-based band — that is until The Hackneys caught The Who and Alice Cooper live. After those concerts, David, the youngest of the siblings pushed his two older brothers towards a much more hard rock-leaning sound, which interestingly enough presaged punk and post-punk and a name change — Death. And as Bobby Hackney explained in 2010, David’s concept was spinning death from the negative to the positive. “It was a hard sell.”

In 1975, the Hackney Brothers with engineer Jim Vitti recorded a handful of songs written by David and Bobby at Detroit’s United Sound Studios. And according to the Hackney family, Clive Davis funded the recording sessions but while doing so, had repeatedly implored that the band change their name to something more commercially palatable. When the Hackney’s refused, Davis pulled out, leaving the band with seven recorded songs instead of the planned for 12. By 1976, the band self released in an extremely limited run of just 500 copies, the “Politicians In My Eyes”/”Keep Obn Knocking” single, recorded from those sessions, followed by their full-length debut with very little fanfare.

By 1977, the Hackneys ended the band, and then relocated to Burlington, VT where they released two alums of gospel rock as The 4 Movement in the late 70s and early 80s. However, by 1982 David had returned to Detroit while Bobby and Dannis remained and eventually formed the reggae band Lambsbread. In 2000, David Hackney tragically died of lung cancer but reportedly before he had died David Hackney told his older siblings that although they were misunderstood and forgotten in their day, history would prove them and their work as Death as being truly revolutionary — even if it was after his own death. In a wild spin of serendipitous fortune that seems written by a screenwriter, several years after David’s death, Bobby’s sons had stumbled upon the original Death masters hidden away in their parents’ attic. And Bobby’s sons were so impressed by what they heard, that they began covering Death’s material during their own sets as a loving homage that began to receive attention both to them and their father’s and uncles’ work together.

Drag City Records, re-released Death’s original recordings in 2009, 35 years after its initial recording and release, and from those recordings the material managed to not just up hold up, but to reveal an important historical place both for American music history and for Black music history, as their sound, which effortlessly meshed reggae, proto-punk, metal and punk rock managed to presage the punk movement by 3 years while serving as a convincing bridge between Parliament Funkadelic and Bob Marley and Bad Brains, Fishbone, Living Colour, Lenny Kravitz, TV on the Radio, Prince and a growing list of contemporary acts that include Unlocking the Truth.

Since the re-release of their demos and full-length debut, the current lineup of Death featuring surviving brothers Bobby (bass, vocals) and Dannis Hackney (drums) with Bobbie Duncan (guitar) have had a documentary about their story, released some new material and spent a lot of time touring and playing some of the country’s largest festivals, including Afropunk Festival, introducing their sound and aesthetic to new audiences.

Death’s latest single “Cease Fire” will continue to cement the band’s growing reputations for pioneering sound that meshes punk, metal, funk and soul while being politically charged and urgent as the song features buzzing and crunching guitar chords and some impressive soloing, soaring synths and propulsive drumming and a sinuous bass line while being politically charged — and in particular, their sound and thematic concerns clearly presages the likes of Living Colour and Fishbone, some 10-15 years before they began playing. As the members of the band explain, their newest single “is a continuation of the social conscious voice that Rock ‘N’ Roll music states to all people. If John Lennon were alive in this world today, we are sure he would echo the same sentiments, because we first have to put the guns down and stop the senseless shooting so we can ‘Give Peace A Chance.'”

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

II, the soon-to-be released sophomore effort from  Austin, TX-based punk trio Crooked Bangs is slated for an April 21, 2017 release through Nervous Intent Records, and reportedly the album and its material are the result of a protracted period of songwriting and recording in which, the initial sessions were scrapped in favor of a much more raw and immediate sound. And unsurprisingly, the album’s preceding single “Rabbit Hole” managed to capture the band playing with the taut, brooding fury of adult angst of someone who has begun to live a life, complete with the recognition that almost everything and everyone around you is surrounded in layers of revolting, hypocritical bullshit, along with the sensation that the rug has suddenly been pulled out from under you, and the realization that life can often be brutally ironic, embittering and unfair, suggesting that there are no easy answers and no easy solutions.

II‘s latest single “No Future” features lyrics in French and English within a frenetic and forceful track consisting of blistering guitar work and a driving rhythm section. and while drawing from early Joy Division, this particular song leans heavily towards furious, hardcore punk. As a result, the song possesses a feral and primal urgency.

The Austin, TX-based punk trio will be touring to build up some buzz for II across the Midwest, Southwest and West Coast. Check out the tour dates below.

 

Tour dates:

4/27 @ Album Release show at Beerland, Austin, Texas
5/18 @ Austin, TX @ Hotel Vegas
5/20 @ El Paso, TX @ Monarch
5/21 @ Phoenix, AZ @ The Lunchbox
5/23 @ Los Angeles, CA @ TBA
5/24 @ Los Angeles, CA @ Star Bar
5/25 @ Oakland, CA @ Octopus Literary Salon
5/26 @ San Francisco, CA @ The Hemlock
5/28 @ Seattle, WA @ TBA
5/29 @ Portland, OR @ Black Water
5/31 @ Salt Lake City, UT @ Diabolical Records
6/1 @ Denver, CO @ TBA
6/2 @ Kansas City, MO @ Blind Tiger
6/3 @ St. Louis, MO @ TBA
6/4 @ Oklahoma City, OK @ TBA

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Girls in Synthesis is a rather mysterious London, UK-based punk rock trio, who formed last year with a specific intent and purpose — to aurally represent the noise and violence of the modern world. And within a relatively short period of time, the trio developed a reputation for playing riotous live sets with Cherry Glazerr and Fat White Family side project, Revenue, that include lengthy and intense periods of noise and feedback, band members jumping off the stage and into the audience, garbled Dictaphone-era audio featuring dialogue from the British government’s Protect and Survive nuclear war video, Orson Welles’ speech from The Trial and audio from the Heaven’s Gate’s suicide video.

Building upon their growing profile across London, the British trio released their debut double A side single “The Mound”/”Disappear” today — and from their latest single, “Disappears,” the band captures the frenetic energy of their live sets while pairing almost metronomic-like drumming with sizzling and slashing guitar chords and a propulsive and forceful bass line with punchy, shouted lyrics. Sonically speaking, the song sounds as though it draws from Entertainment and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four and Elastica‘s self- titled debut album, complete with prerequisite cynical sneering and a primal fury.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Bad Breeding is a somewhat mysterious punk outfit from Stevenage, UK, a town that the band have described as a bleak commuter-belt town north of London. Formed in 2013, the members of the band feature a group of friends, who muddled through school and they were drawn together by an enthusiasm for old, anarcho-punk and a complete disdain for the misrepresentation and simplification of Brtiain’s working-class identity, the band as its members see it, is an attempt to furiously call out both the rank injustices and political distortion peddled to people existing on the fringes, as well as a desperate outlet from the monotony of humiliating, soulless temp jobs.

The band’s forthcoming, sophomore effort Divide is slated for an April 7, 2017 release through Iron Lung Records here in the States and La Vida Es Un Mus throughout the UK and EU and the material on the effort will reportedly sum up our dark, dense, claustrophobic and fucked up times, reveal a world that on a daily basis has become a melting pot of stupidity and hate, marching in blind lockstep towards its seemingly inevitable self-destruction. And fittingly Divide‘s first single “The More the Merrier” is a furious, primal stomp with towering squalls of noisy, distorted power chords and bilious vocals in what may be the angriest and most urgent songs I’ve heard all year, as it captures the anger and confusion of those crushed by a cadre of evil, indifferent greedy, thieving, moronic and lying assholes, who are out to steal from the poor and unfortunate, before stomping them into oblivion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

II, the forthcoming sophomore studio album from the Austin, TX-based punk trio Crooked Bangs — comprised of Leda Ginestra (vocals, bass), Samantha Wendel (guitar) and Philip Gonzales (drums) –slated for an April 21, 2017 through Nervous Intent Records is the result of a protracted period of songwriting and recording with the initial sessions being scrapped in favor of much more raw and immediate sound. And unsurprisingly, the trio’s sophomore effort, which was recorded by Ghetto Ghouls‘ Ian Rundell and mastered at Enormous Door Mastering by Severed Head of State‘s Jack Control, captures the trio playing with a taut, brooding, howling fury as you’ll hear II’s latest single “Rabbit Hole,” a frenetic single that features persistent and forceful drumming, blistering, slashing guitar work and a punchy bass line with Ginestra’s vocals alternating between a half singing/half spoken word croon and a ragged howl. The single manages to evoke an adult sense of angst — the angst of someone who has begun to live a life, complete with the recognition that almost everything and everyone around you is surrounded in layers of revolting, hypocritical bullshit, the sensation that the rug has suddenly been pulled out from under you, and the realization that life is brutally ironic, embittering and unfair and that there are no easy answers, no easy solutions.

The Austin, TX-based punk trio will be touring to build up some buzz for II across the Midwest, Southwest and West Coast. Check out the tour dates below.

 

Tour dates:
3/19 @ SXSW Dethscum Presents: Ultimate Bumout at Beerland, Austin,TX
4/1 @ Hotel Vegas, Austin, TX
4/27 @ Album Release show at Beerland, Austin, Texas
5/18 @ Austin, TX @ Hotel Vegas
5/20 @ El Paso, TX @ Monarch
5/21 @ Phoenix, AZ @ The Lunchbox
5/23 @ Los Angeles, CA @ TBA
5/24 @ Los Angeles, CA @ Star Bar
5/25 @ Oakland, CA @ Octopus Literary Salon
5/26 @ San Francisco, CA @ The Hemlock
5/28 @ Seattle, WA @ TBA
5/29 @ Portland, OR @ Black Water
5/31 @ Salt Lake City, UT @ Diabolical Records
6/1 @ Denver, CO @ TBA
6/2 @ Kansas City, MO @ Blind Tiger
6/3 @ St. Louis, MO @ TBA
6/4 @ Oklahoma City, OK @ TBA

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Working Out with Pissed Jeans in “The Bar Is Low”

Comprised of Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums), the Allentown, PA-based hardcore punk/noise rock quartet Pissed Jeans can trace their origins to when the members of the band met while attending Allentown’s Nazareth High School. Bonding over their initial desire to create, as the band’s Matt Korvette has explained, “a different kind of punk focused on dead-ended carnal cravings, sexual depression . . .” and to “bludgeon the listener with dull, monotonous, droning rock music that just sucks the energy of out, the musical equivalent of watching a toilet flush.” And over the course of their 13 years together as a band, they’ve released several 7 inches and four, full-length studio albums, all which have cemented their reputation for crafting a sound that’s a sludgy, furious, and punishing cretinous, troglodyte stomp that subtly nods at The Stooges, The Ramones and 80s hardcore punk and post-hardcore bands — while evoking the deep primal urges of our reptilian sub-brains.

With the band’s recently released fifth, full-length album Why Love Now, the Allentown, PA-based band focuses on the mundane comforts and discomforts of modern life — from fetish websites to office supply deliveries; to the emptiness, confusion, dissatisfaction and convoluted nature of modern relationships and our contemporary world of hypocrisy and bullshit. As Korvette explains in press notes on the new album, “Rock bands can retreat to the safety of what rock bands usually sing about. So 60 years from now, when no one has a telephone, bands will be writing songs like, ‘I’m waiting for her to call me on my telephone.’ Kids are going to be like, ‘Grandpa, tell me, what was that?’ I’d rather not shy away from talking about the Internet or interactions in 2016.”

Why Love Now’s incendiary and furious first single “The Bar Is Low” will further cement the band’s reputation for crating sludgy and bludgeoning cretinous trogolydte stomp-like anthems in which Korvette’s guttural, Lemmy Kilmister-like growling is paired with with pummeling drumming, a throbbing and insistent bass line, and blistering guitar chords to evoke a knuckle dragging, slack-jawed Neanderthal on the hunt. According to Korvette, the song is “about how every guy seems to be revealing themselves as a shithead. It seems like every guy is getting outed,” Korvette continues, “across every board of entertainment and politics and music. There’s no guy that isn’t a total creep. You’re like, ‘No, he’s just a dude that hits on drunk girls and has sex with them when they’re asleep.’ Cool, he’s just an average shithead.” Throughout the song, Korvette and company point out that stereotypical concepts of straight male, masculinity is defeating, empty, and clownish.

Directed by Joe Stakun, the recently released video follows the members of the band at the gym; but they don’t know how to properly use any of the equipment. And while there, the band begins an absurd and ridiculous competition with other gym goers that ends up with a hilarious and horrifying conclusion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Sally Spitz (vocals), Ali Day (guitar, bass), Max Albeck (drums), and Daniel Trautfield (bass, sax), the Los Angeles, CA-based feminist art-punk quartet French Vanilla can trace the band’s origins to the members being partially driven by a desire to forcefully challenge Southern California’s established music scene, dominated by a few influential, male tastemakers and to do cool shit while hanging with friends, the band played their first shows within their hometown’s queer punk underground. Interestingly, the quartet quickly developed a local and regional reputation for socially conscious lyrics paired with a post-punk and No Wave-leaning sound — and as a result, the band has opened for the likes of Girlpool, Screaming Females, Tacocat, Genesis P-Orridge and Cherry Glazerr and others.

Adding to the growing buzz surrounding the Los Angeles-based band, their self-titled full-length effort is slated for a March 24, 2017 release through Danger Collective Records — and as you’ll hear on the album’s latest single “Anti-Aging Global Warming,” the quartet pairs the propulsive and angular bass lines and slashing guitar lines with incredibly neurotic lyrics that express the narrator’s anxious and neurotic worries about the impending end of the world as we know it, and how easy things can suddenly turn to shit before you know it; but sonically speaking the song strikes me as being reminiscent of Talking Heads: 77 and Fear of Music-era Talking Heads, Entertainment and Solid Gold-era Gang of Four and A-Frames.