Tag: punk rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Initially begun as the solo recording project of Salt Lake City, UT-based founding member and frontman Jordon Strang and now currently a quartet, indie rock/shoegazer rock band  No Sun has seen regional and national attention for a harder and more modern take on shoegaze that draws from the genre’s masters,  Swervedriver, RIDE and Failure and contemporaries including Pity Sex, Silversun Pickups and others. The Salt Lake City, UT-based band’s full-length debut It’s Only was released through  The Native Sound Records and hot on its heels, the members of No Sun released a brooding, sludgy grunge rock-leaning cover of Dead Kennedys “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” a song that’s become much more urgent, in light of increasing anti-Semitic and racist-based attacks and bullying across the country.

“America has shown its very disgusting underbelly over the past few months, and I’m sure it will only get worse. Going to shows, and the DIY community in general shoudl be a place where everyone feels safe, except for those that live to make others feel unsafe for something as simple as the color of their skin, their gender identity or their sexual orientation. We covered this song to let everyone know that we think Nazism and bigotry is not welcome, and will not be tolerated within our fanbase or at any of our shows,” the band’s founder and frontman Jordon Stang says of why they decided to cover the song.

Lyrics 

Punk ain’t no religious cult

Punk means thinkin’ for yourself
You ain’t hardcore ’cause you spike your hair
When a jock still lives inside your head

Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks fuck off
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks fuck off

If you’ve come to fight, get outta here
You ain’t no better than the bouncers
We ain’t tryin’ to be police
When you ape the cops it ain’t anarchy
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks fuck off
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks fuck off

Ten guys jump one, what a man
You fight each other, the police state wins
Stab your backs when you trash our halls
Trash a bank if you’ve got real balls

You still think Swastikas look cool
The real Nazis run your schools
They’re coaches, businessmen and cops
In a real fourth Reich you’ll be the first to go

Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks fuck off
Nazi punks
Nazi punks
Nazi punks fuck off

You’ll be the first to go
You’ll be the first to go
You’ll be the first to go
Unless you think
No Sun will be embarking on a lengthy tour to support their debut album throughout March and April — and it’ll include an NYC area stop at Saint Vitus on March 25, 2017. Check out tour dates below.

Tour Dates: 

3/9     Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
3/10    Denver, CO @ Mutiny Information Cafe
3/11    Kansas City, MO @ The Couch
3/12    St. Louis, MO @ Foam
3/13    Milwaukee, MN @ Ground Zero
3/14    Minneapolis, MN @ Safe Haus
3/15    Chicago, IL @ Quenchers
3/16    Fort Wayne, IN @ The Tiger Room
3/17    Elyria, OH @ Blank State Elyria
3/18    Toronto, ON @ The Smiling Buddha
3/19    Montreal, QC @ Brasserie Beaubien
3/20    Syracuse, NY @ The Reformed Church of Syracuse
3/21    Florence, MA – 13th Floor Music Lounge
3/22    Boston, MA @ The Middle East
3/24    Montclair, NJ @ Meatlocker
3/25    Brooklyn, NY @ St. Vitus
3/26    Wilkes Barre, PA @ The Other Side
3/27    Baltimore, MD @ The Windup Space
3/28    Philadelphia, Pa @ Kung Fu Necktie
3/29    Richmond, VA – @ The Castle
3/30    Charlotte, NC @ The Station On Central
04/1    Houston, TX @ Satellite Bar
04/2    Austin, TX @ Beerland
04/4    El Paso, TX @ The Sandbox
04/5    Tempe, AZ @ 51 West

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Frenetic Visuals for Alexander F’s “Call Me Pretty”

Best known as a co-founding member and co-primary songwriter of renowned indie dance pop/indie funk act and JOVM mainstay Rubblebucket, Alex Toth’s side project, Alexander F, which features Steve Marion, Dandy McDowell. Christian Peslak and Noah Rubin as part of the project’s touring band, along with contributions from Kimbra is a decided change in sonic direction for him. Reeling emotionally after the suicides of a couple of musician friends and struggling with living as recovering alcoholic, Toth went to an eleven day, Buddhist, silent meditation retreat in Quebec. And as the story goes, during the retreat, a handful of Buddhist-themed experimental punk songs exploded in Toth’s head — and as a jazz-trained musician, it was a rather unexpected revelation. Now, if you had been frequenting this site towards the end of last year, you may recall that I wrote about “Swimmers,” off Alexander F’s self-titled debut, and from that single Toth and company revealed that his newest project would specialize in infectiously anthemic, frenetic and stompingly boisterous, pop-leaning take on punk rock — while in the case of that particular single, a mischievous take on the concept of prenatal memory in which the song’s narrator imagines how it must have been to be sperm swimming towards an egg to fertilize it.

The self-titled album’s third and latest single “Call Me Pretty” is a decidedly off-kilter yet rousingly anthemic track featuring guest vocals from Kimbra that sonically seems to owe a debt to New Wave and punk rock, with a neurotic and frenetic energy at its core — and in some way, to my ears at least, the song seems like what I’d imagine if Talking Heads randomly decided to cover A Flock of Seagulls. (In the alternative facts universe, indeed, right?) Lyrically, the song evokes the cripplingly neurotic self-doubt, shame and confusion of the song’s narrator, who despite his every effort, has begun to realize that he can’t run from himself — or his own foolish mistakes. And in someway his only hope is that his friends and lovers will ignore him and his perceived ugliness and unworthiness by “shutting their eyes and calling him pretty.”

The recently released music video for the song employs a relatively simple concept as it captures Toth and his backing band playing with a frenetic, unhinged energy — while nodding at the fact that being defiantly, proudly weird and loving music and art, and participating in music and art are the best way to resist.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Best known as a co-founding member and co-primary songwriter of renowned indie dance pop/indie funk act and JOVM mainstay Rubblebucket, Alex Toth’s side project, Alexander F, which features Steve Marion, Dandy McDowell. Christian Peslak and Noah Rubin as part of the project’s touring band, along with contributions from Kimbra is a decided change in sonic direction for him. Reeling emotionally after the suicides of a couple of musician friends and struggling with living as recovering alcoholic, Toth went to an eleven day, Buddhist, silent meditation retreat in Quebec. And as the story goes, during the retreat, a handful of Buddhist-themed experimental punk songs exploded in Toth’s head — and as a jazz-trained musician, it was a rather unexpected revelation. Now, if you had been frequenting this site towards the end of last year, you may recall that I wrote about “Swimmers,” off Alexander F’s self-titled debut, and from that single Toth and company revealed that his newest project would specialize in  infectiously anthemic, frenetic and stompingly boisterous, pop-leaning take on punk rock — while in the case of that particular single, a mischievous take on the concept of prenatal memory in which the song’s narrator imagines how it must have been to be sperm swimming towards an egg to fertilize it.

The self-titled album’s third and latest single “Call Me Pretty” is a decidedly off-kilter yet rousingly anthemic track featuring guest vocals from Kimbra that sonically seems to owe a debt to New Wave and punk rock, with a neurotic and frenetic energy at its core — and in some way, to my ears at least, the song seems like what I’d imagine if Talking Heads randomly decided to cover A Flock of Seagulls. (In the alternative facts universe, indeed, right?) Lyrically, the song evokes the cripplingly neurotic self-doubt, shame and confusion of the song’s narrator, who despite his every effort, has begun to realize that he can’t run from himself — or his own foolish mistakes. And in someway his only hope is that his friends and lovers will ignore him and his perceived ugliness and unworthiness by “shutting their eyes and calling him pretty.”

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Toronto’s Career Suicide Returns with a Blistering and Furious New Single

Featuring founding members Martin Farkas and Jonah Falco, who splits his time as the drummer in renowned punk act Fucked Up, the Toronto, ON-based hardcore punk band Career Suicide formed back in 2001 and over the past 16 years, the band has written and recorded several records and played a ton of shows across the world. Machine Response, the band’s forthcoming full-length effort is the much-anticipated follow-up to their blistering and critically applauded Attempted Suicide and interestingly, the album which is slated for a February 24, 2017 release finds the band’s most recent lineup — founding members Farkas and Falco, along with Dallas Good (guitar), who has played with The Sadies, Andre Williams, John Doe, Half Japanese, Elevator and others, and guest vocals from Souichi Hisatake, a member of Forward, GISM, Insane Youth, Gudon and others furthering the band’s long-held reputation for blistering, furious, acidic and mosh pit worthy punk rock.

Now, if you had ben frequenting this site last month, you may recall that I wrote about Machine Response’s first single “Suffocate,” a blistering, furious and acidic and mos pit-worthy bit of punk rock that lyrically evoked claustrophobia and desperation. The album’s second and latest single “Distractions” clocks in at 80 seconds and sonically bears an uncanny resemblance to Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” — while further cementing their reputation for crafting furious and blistering punk.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Pissed Jeans’ Furious and Pummeling Single “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 . . . that sort of thing. Mainly, we just wanted to bludgeon the listener with dull, monotonous, droning rock music that just sucks the energy out of you, the musical equivalent to watching a toilet flush.” And over the course of their 13 years together, the band has 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 cretin stomp that subtly nods at The Stooges, The Ramones and 80s hardcore punk and post-hardcore bands — while evoking deep primal urges.

With the band’s forthcoming fifth, full-length Why Love Now, which is slated for a February 24, 2017 release through renowned indie label Sub Pop Records, the Allentown, PA-based focuses on the mundane comforts and discomforts of modern life — from fetish welcomes to office supply deliveries; to the emptiness, confusion and dissatisfaction of modern relationships, contemporary 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 cretin stomp-like anthems in which Korvette’s guttural, Lemmy Kilmister-like growling is paired with with pummeling drumming, a throbbing and insistent bass line, angular 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 and clownish.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

With the release of the We’re Set EP, which featured standout singles “Wild” and “Surfer Girl,” the San Francisco, CA-based indie rock/garage rock quartet The Band Ice Cream, comprised of Kevin Fielding (vocals, guitar), Joe Sample (vocals guitar), Bryce Fernandez (bass) and Louie Rappoport (drums), quickly developed a national reputation for a fuzzy, scuzzy alt rock-leaning sound that draws from Nirvana, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Orwells, Pavement and Link Wray — and for opening for the likes of Hinds, Night Beats, Adult Books, SWMRS, The Aquadolls and others. Adding to a growing profile, the band’s last EP caught the attention of legendary producer and sound engineer Bruce Botnick, who’s best known for his work with The Doors and The Beach Boys, and along with San Francisco underground rock legend Mike Carnahan worked with the band on their forthcoming full-length debut Classical Trained, slated for a March 10, 2017.

Classically Trained‘s latest single “Seventeen” manages to evoke the awkwardness and uncertainty of being a stupid teenage kid while looking back at it with a wistful nostalgia over that period’s seeming simplicity and deep friendships– and without as many devastating mistakes, poor choices, unending complications and uneasy compromises. And while the band has developed reputation for scuzzy garage rock, the band’s latest single manages to be clearly indebted to power pop, thanks to anthemic hooks and some guitar pyrotechnics; but in an expansive, and meandering song structure that possesses both a muscular insistence and a mischievous and ironic wit.

 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Many influential artists and characters once played at renowned and long-defunct clubs like CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City and others during the mid-to-late 1970s — including a now cult-favored local-born artist Annie Bandez, who known as Annie Anxiety (and later as Little Annie) was the frontperson of punk act Annie and the Asexuals. After several years of attempting a series of unsuccessful creative pursuits, Bandez relocated to the UK, where she would up joining the famed anarchist commune Dial House, led by activist Penny Rimbaud. And while a member of Dial House, Bandez quickly established herself as an artist with a singular voice with the release of her solo debut single “Barbed Wire Halo,” which was released through Crass Records.

Interestingly, when Bandez relocated to the UK, a number of punk rock artists including Bandez herself had begun shifting towards a much more diverse, multicultural approach, exploring dub, rocksteady, ska and other Caribbean genres. In the summer of 1983, Bandez along with legendary dub producer Adrian Sherwood and members of Crass, Family Fodder, African Head Charge, Flux of Pink Indians, London Underground and Art Interface went into the studio to record her stark, industrial dub-based solo debut Soul Possession, which would be released by Corpus Christi Records in 1984. And it resulted in a number of lengthy collaborations with Nurse With Wound, Coil, Current 93, Swans and Marc Almond.

33 years after its initial release, Dais Records will be re-issuing Soul Possession on January 6, 2017 and the re-issue’s first single “Burnt Offerings” is an ominously apocalyptic and minimalist bit of industrial dub featuring mechanical clang and clatter and twinkling keys paired with Bandez’s half-spoken vocals that manages to bring to mind Annika Henderson‘s solo work and her work with Exploded View — and in some way it wouldn’t be surprising if Bandez’s work influenced Henderson and producer/collaborator Geoff Barrow at some point.

Bandez will be on touring Europe throughout the Spring with Swans. Check out tour dates below:

Tour Dates, Spring 2017:
3/08  Rockefeller – Oslo, Norway
3/09  Kraken Sthlm – Stockholm, Sweden
3/11  Grey Hall – Copenhagen, Denmark
3/12  VoxHall – Aarhus, Denmark
3/14  Fleda Club – Brno, Czech Republic
3/15  Taba Ka Kulturfabrik – Kosice, Slovakia
3/17  Legendos Klubas – Vilnius, Lithuania
3/19  Sentrum – Kiev, Ukraine
3/22  FORM Space Club – Cluj-Napoca, Romania
3/23  Control Club – Bucharest, Romania
3/24  MKC – Skopje, Macedonia
3/25  Dom Omladine – Belgrade, Serbia
3/27  Pogon Kulture – Rijeka, Croatia
3/28  Rote Fabrik Ziegel oh Lac – Zürich, Switzerland
3/29  FZW – Dortmund, Germany
3/30  Kompass Klub – Ghent, Belgium
3/31  Paradiso Music Hall – Amsterdam, Netherland

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Featuring founding members frontman Martin Farkas and Jonah Falco (who splits his time as the drummer in renowned act punk act Fucked Up), Career Suicide is a Toronto, ON-based hardcore punk band that formed back in 2001 that has recorded several records and played shows all over the world. The band’s forthcoming full-length effort Machine Response is slated for a February 24, 2017 release, and the album is the much-anticipated follow-up to their blistering and critically applauded effort Attempted Suicide. The forthcoming album finds the band’s newest lineup — founding members Farkas and Falco along with  Dallas Good (guitar), who has played with The Sadies, Andre Williams, John Doe, Half Japanese, Elevator and others and occasional vocals from Souichi Hisatake, a member of Forward, GISM, Insane Youth, Gudon and others furthering the band’s long-held reputation for blistering, furious, acidic and mosh pit worthy punk rock as you’ll hear on Machine Response’s latest single “Suffocate,” a single that lyrically and sonically evokes the sensation of claustrophobia and desperation.

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Nots Captures Our Current Dread and Unease

Cosmetic’s third and latest single “Inherently Low” is presciently and strangely fitting for our increasingly surreal times while continuing with the album’s overall theme. Sonically, the band pairs angular guitar and bass chords, propulsive drumming and shouted lyrics — and the end result is a song that evokes creeping dread and unease and while boldly and furiously calling out hypocritical bullshit. Simply put it’s a song with a narrator that simply has stopped giving a fuck.

The recently released video was created and edited by the band’s Natalie Hoffman and was influenced by the results of last week’s Presidential Election. And as Hoffman explains in press notes “the tension and fear that came with the results certainly played a part in the visual outcome of the video. America has elected someone who has openly campaigned to keep us low. To keep us completely divided. To keep us at war. I don’t think that I (or anyone) can fully process the weight of what is to come, but this video is an attempt to translate both what the song is about, and how I’ve felt since the election results – a new awareness, anger, and fear about being kept inherently low.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Furious Visuals and Sounds of Dangers’ “Kiss with Spit”

Interestingly, Dangers’ blistering and snarling latest single “Kiss With Spit” has the band pairing layers of scuzzy and acidic guitar chords, thundering drumming, a persistent bass line and howled vocals in a way that sounds reminiscent of Melvins, Metz and Nirvana — in particular, think of “Dive,” “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” and “Breed,” complete with a tense, mosh pit worthy fury. And recently after playing the song after the strangeness of a President-elect Donald Trump, the song conveyed the blind and confused fury that many of us feel.

The recently released music video follows a vicious, disjointed, sweaty mosh pit in a dark, tiny little shithole of a club — and in some way it also looks like a fucked up orgy with a band leading it on.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Best known as a co-founding member and co-primary songwriter of renowned indie dance pop/indie funk act Rubblebucket, Alex Toth’s new side project, Alexander F, which features Steve Marion, Dandy McDowell. Christian Peslak and Noah Rubin as part of the project’s touring band, along with contributions from Kimbra is a decided change in sonic direction for him. Reeling emotionally after the suicides of a couple of musician friends and struggling with living as recovering alcoholic, Toth went to a Buddhist, eleven-day silent meditation retreat in Quebec. And during the silent retreat, a handful of Buddhist-themed experimental punk songs exploded in Toth’s head, which at the time was unexpected and surprising for him, as he’s a jazz trained musician.

While the songs manage to be aggressive, they also manage to be profoundly joyous, boisterous and frenetic  as thematically they focus on the Buddhist concepts of freedom from the self, freedom from ego and freedom from the illusion that we’re separate entities. And as you’ll hear on “Swimmers,” the first single off the band’s forthcoming self-titled, full-length album, the band specializes in an infectiously anthemic, frenetic and stompingly boisterous, pop-leaning take on punk rock — that also manages to be a playful and mischievous take on the concept of prenatal memory that imagines how it must have been to be sperm swimming towards an egg, just before fertilization.

And unsurprisingly, the project has quietly started to build up a local and national profile as they’ve shared bills with Speedy Ortiz, Perfect Pussy, Downtown Boys, Colin Stetson, Margaret Glaspy, Mac McCaughan, Delicate Steve and Reptar. So be on the lookout for them; in fact, they’ll be opening for Toth’s primary project Rubblebucket for the final show at Brooklyn’s Manhattan Inn, as well as a date at Gowanus’ Threes Brewing. Check out show dates below.

TOUR DATES:
Nov 11 – Brooklyn, NY @ Manhattan Inn (w/ Rubblebucket)
Nov 13 – Brooklyn, NY @ Threes Brewing

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: New Project featuring Oasis’ and The Who’s Drummer Releases a Blistering Cover of The Sex Pistols’ “Problems”

Comprised of vocalist Sshh Liguz and Zak Starkey, Ringo Starr’s son and a touring drummer for Oasis and The Who, SSHH is a musical project in which the duo of Liguz and Starkey recruited some of the most renowned rhythm sections in rock history — including members of The Sex Pistols, Mott the Hoople, the backing bands of Marilyn Manson and Peter Tosh — to record a bunch of covers to benefit charity, an album entitled ISSUES. And the first single is a blistering and forceful cover of The Sex Pistols’ “Problems” featuring The Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock (bass) and Paul Cook (drums). And while fairly straightforward, the song should remind the listener of how influential the material off Never Mind The Bollocks, Here’s The Sex Pistols remains, as well as how timeless the material is — so timeless that most of the songs manage to feel and sound contemporary.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

DANGERS is a Los Angeles, CA-based hardcore punk trio, comprised of Alfred Brown IV (vocals), Justin Smith (guitar), Anthony Rivera (drums), Chris Conde (bass) and since their formation in 2005, the trio have developed a reputation for doing things in true DIY fashion — including playing basements, garages, living rooms, squats, banquet halls, high school auditoriums and countless other unusual set ups across the US, UK, Australia, Japan and Southeast Asia. Adding to that reputation, the trio released their first two, critically applauded full-length efforts through their own label, Vitriol Records; however, the band’s forthcoming third full-length effort, The Bend in the Break finds the band releasing the album through Topshelf Records, and with the album’s first single “Kiss With Spit,” finds the band expanding upon their sound while retaining the elements that first caught the blogosphere’s attention. Interestingly, “Kiss With Spit,” had the trio pairing layers of scuzzy and acidic guitar chords, thundering drumming, a persistent bass line and howled vocals in a way that sounds reminiscent of Melvins, Metz and Nirvana — in particular, think of “Dive,” “Radio Friendly Unit Shifter” and “Breed,” complete with a tense, mosh pit worthy fury.

The album’s second and latest single, album title track “The Bend In The Break” continues along the vein of its predecessor — tense, angular power chord-based dirged in which  thundering drumming, furiously howled vocals are paired with a shouted and anthemic hook in a song that structurally consists of loud and even louder sections. Interestingly, the song reminds me a bit of Sugar Army‘s 2009 release, The Parallels Amongst Ourselves but with an equally mosh pit worthy fury.

If you’re out on the West Coast throughout late October, check out the tour dates below. In the meantime, we’ll be awaiting some East Coast dates for the band.

 

TOUR DATES
* = w/ with Super Unison

OCT 20 – San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside
OCT 21 – Oakland, CA @ 1234 Go! Records *
OCT 22 – Los Angeles, CA @ TBD
OCT 23 – Los Angeles, CA @ All-Star Lanes *
NOV 10 – Portland, OR @ Blackwater
NOV 11 – Tacoma, WA @ Real Art
NOV 12 – Seattle, WA @ The Black Lodge (w/ The Exquisites)
NOV 13 – Bremerton, WA @ The Tiki House (matinee show)