A little bit older, a whole hell of a lot wiser, and a little bit more slowed down and Rock & Roll sounding but yeah, it's the Sub/Hum/Ans, back with a dazzling new album full of Dick Lucas' strangely comforting vocal work and the bands overtly masterful musical artisanship. They've been at it for over 40 years now. The Sub/Hum/Ans know how to get it done. 😉 This is a really good album, first one from the band in 10 years, and while it's no Worlds Apart (best Sub/Hum/Ans album ever IMO - fight me!!), it certainly has its moments. Songs like Thought Is Free, Strange Lands, Punk Machine, Follow The Leader, Terrorist In Waiting, and Poison snap and snarl with well placed resentment and anger over anything and everything, barking and baring their teeth in an aggressive manner to show that when they want to flex, the Sub/Hum/Ans can do it with the best of them, and when they're trying to educate you about things going on you're gonna listen and learn something if you do. The production on this album is fantastic, and Trotsky's drums propel every song on here. So creative, so hard hitting, he's one of my favorite drummers despite being a hippy! 😅 Phil's bass is punchy and full sounding, and as usual Bruce's guitar work is exemplary! He goes from super aggro to arpeggio beautiful in no time flat, I've always loved that about his playing. Yeah this is just a good album, cool to listen to. The newest release from the Sub/Hum/Ans only reaffirms my belief in the power of Punk music by showing that with age comes even more incredible music that captivates and dazzles and hooks you in, if that's what you want to do. This album stands proudly alongside any of a bands earlier work. No cash in resting on your laurels BS here. Highly recommended. Seriously. Released by Pirate Press Records if you can believe that. Vinyl and digital versions of the album available on the Sub/Hum/Ans Bandcamp website (click here) as well as Amazon (click here). Also available on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, yada yada yada
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Holy fucking shit!! Are you kidding me??? A new release from The Proletariat, one of the most awe inspiring and influential bands to evaaaaaah come out of the Boston Hardcore scene. Did I die and go to Heaven or something? 😊 Thank you sweet baby Jesus for this one, because it is a scorcher. 🔥🔥🔥 If you're not familiar with the bands legendary musical output then shame on you because you're missing out on some of the most beautiful, angry, twisted genius of music that was ever released. Ever. Playing a form of kinetic jazz structured Punk Rock ala Wire or Gang Of Four or even The Pop Group, The Proletariat quickly established themselves as something special and quite unique and different from the slew of all the other similar sounding bands, putting out a few great releases and playing to packed venues all over the place before they just disappeared off the face of the Earth for whatever reasons. Now here it is 30 years later and The Proletariat have resurfaced to deliver these 12 blistering songs full of urgency and passionate ire over societal wrongdoings, and I for one couldn't be happier. This is some crucial shit right here. Absolutely essential and much needed at a time like this in AmeriKKKa. So this, is officially the 3rd album from The Proletariat. Wow. Talk about awe inspiring. I could only wish that these bands getting back together to cash in on that whole "greatest hits Punk Rock Boring nostalgia" bullshit thing could put out an album half as good as this one is. Yup! This album is called Move and I'm like 6 songs into it right now and there hasn't been a dud so far in this thing. This release is fucking 1000% heavenly genius. Richard Browns snotty faux British sounding voice still drips with anger passion and resentment, and whoever is playing guitar on here has the bands jagged early Gang Of Four sounding guitar noodling down cold. Is it Don Sanders? No clue. This is why I miss out on having stuff on vinyl. Information like that is usually found on there somewhere. Can't find shit like that in an email from a publicist with a download code in it. Oh well. And the original rhythm section of Pete Bevilacqua and Tom McKnight still create some of the tightest, hard pounding, easy flowing danceable rhythms and sounds since the Minutemen did it. I can't believe how good this album is. The formula is simple. Interesting complex punchy melodies designed to get your toes tapping and your brain thinking while the singer just wails and rants passionately like a man demented above it all. Brilliant. Every song on here is a rant about something. The title track is about the MOVE bombing in Philadelphia in 1985, where the police dropped a bomb on a residential neighborhood and killed 11 people. The Indian Removal Act is about the government stealing Native lands which lead up to the Trail of Tears travesty (We live on stolen land... we wrote the History books). Wealth Of Nations rails about how the rich control us all. Scab is about the union battles. And so on and so on. Produced by Lou Giordano, who's audio ear can't be denied, and it sounds incredible because of his involvement. The music kicks, throbs, captivates and motivates, which is something I have always loved about The Proletariat. Their music is danceable as well as educational! ha ha I can't express well enough in words just how fucking great this album is. So many older Punk bands just phone in their new album obligations, putting little to no effort forth because they know that their fans only wanna hear "the hits" for the millionth time, so it does my heart good to hear a band like The Proletariat put forth something as genius as this release is. In times like these we need an album like this to remind us of what's still wrong in our world of apathetic selfishness and lazy incompetence, and to show these newer bands what a real Punk album is supposed to sound like... heh Released by Boss Tuneage Records, this album is available on vinyl from them by clicking here, and Move is available digitally on Bandcamp, Amazon Music, the Proletariat website (click here) and on Spotify and Apple Music, where they're listed as a Metal band... heh "Like" The Proletariat on Facebook by clicking here.
A bunch of old Punk guys from bands like Pears, Street Dogs, Scorpios, and The Gamits, get together to embrace and celebrate their inner 70's geek and put out an album full of sickly sweet afternoon delight vocals and catchy vapid Emo sounding songs all played at 120 bpm ala Thelma Houston or Donna Summer guaranteed to keep the dance floor moving. Ugh. This album from Bandaid Brigade is well produced, well mixed and all that, but all the songs on here sound like a 70's TV show theme song and since I actually had to live through this 70's shit before, the band's emulating of this craptacular music of that time period on this release does absolutely fuck all for me. This album called I'm Separate could easily be mistaken for one of those late night 'Best of the 70's' compilations or for one of those 70's golden hits mix CD's you find at a truck stop in South Dakota at 3 in the morning, and that my friend is not a good thing. I'm not hip enough or young enough or naive enough to see the irony or the creative expressionism going on with this release from Bandaid Brigade. It sucks. Hard pass. Available digitally as well as on colored vinyl and cassette tape from the bands website bandaid-brigade.com. "Like" the band on Facebook by clicking here. Follow Bandaid Brigade on Instagram by clicking here. Check them out on Spotify (click here) and Apple Music (click here).
by GE 138. This is the first Tsunami Bomb release in a really long time, since 2004's The Definitive Act release, and a lot has been going on in the bands wicked little world, which I don't even wanna get into. I don't care who is singing, and I don't care who is in the band. Bite me. Tsunami Bomb are a long running female fronted Punk Rock band, and by Punk Rock I mean Avril Lavigne, Evanescence, Good Charlotte, WARPed Tour type of Punk Rock bands, who put out a bunch of stuff, toured incessantly, went through a revolving door of band members coming and going and coming back again and after an really ugly public breakup I guess some version of their many past lineups got back together with a new singer and other new band members to reunite / cash in and to make this album called The Spine That Binds because they either had something to say or a mortgage payment to make, I'm not sure of which. AND they got Alternative Tentacles to pay for it all, which is... a bit weird, to say the least. The interwebz is all aflutter about Tsunami Bomb and this release, saying that it's either the greatest thing they've ever done or the shittiest thing they've ever done, but I'm listening with neutral ears and taking this release standing all on it's own because again, I don't care about anything they did before, I'm only concerned with what they're doing now. I tried giving this CD a chance, listening to it a few times from beginning to end, and it's just chock full of everything I thought it would be full of - safe, sedate, non threatening, overtly sweet pop Punk tunes that would sound perfect being played over the house speakers in any Hot Topic boutique in any mall in any town any where. Now I know where Ministry Of Love got their sound from. 😉This stuff does nothing for me, couldn't find a song I liked on here, and that song Last Call is a clean rip off of another song that escapes me at the moment. It'll come to me later. I mean, this is some well produced stuff, the singer's are great, it sounds good when played loud, and if I was some 30 year old scenester fawning over the 90's when music was real and good and meant something, then I guess I'd be into this release from Tsunami Bomb, but as it is, I'll pass. It's not that its not good, it's just that it's not for me, and that's about as nicely as I can put it. Released by Alternative Tentacles, and it's available on their website by clicking here. Better grab that turquoise colored vinyl quickly before it's gone. The Spine That Binds is available digitally on the Tsunami Bomb Bandcamp page - click here to get it that way. You can also check it out on Spotify - click here, and it's available wherever Punk Rock is processed and packaged and presented as the valuable product that it has sadly become. Follow Tsunami Bomb on Instagram (click here) and like them on Facebook by clicking here.
by GE 138 N.J. Pete has been keeping busy with his free time now that Unfair Fight has (officially?) called it quits. In between practicing his judo chops on willing victims or drinking pints down at the pub with a few of his mates, he set up a recording studio in his house he named Red Rüm and started a one man band / musical project that he called Fools Errand and put out a self titled release last year that I refused to listen to because of the drummer solo album law, which states that if a drummer puts out a solo album, it's pretty much guaranteed that it's going to suck. All my favorite drummers fell victim to the curse, Keith Moon, Peter Criss, Topper Headon, Bill Ward, their solo stuff stunk to high Heaven, so as a rule I avoid listening to any solo musical endeavors from drummers like the plague, and I only listened to this release by mistake! ha ha ha I forgot it was Pete's thing, and somebody sent me a link to it, and I listened to it, liked it, went to the Fools Errand Bandcamp page and went oh snapz! It's mah boy Pete's band! and so I gave it a listen and it's pretty good. Reminds me of Bishops Green, Bouncing Souls, Arresting Officers, Slapshot, you get it. It's rough, tough, well structured hard hitting Oi! flavored tuneage that I believe Pete plays every instrument for, as well as all vocal work too!! Nice! The songs on here are catchy, lots of singalong vocal stuff and fast rocking thick power riffs and chords, and if I didn't know better I'd swear that the first song on here is a song Tony Batz and I wrote a million years ago that's now reworked, but I digress. Pete did a great job mixing this. It sounds good in my car, on my stereo, blasting from my computer monitors, and even on the boombox in my bathroom that I listen to stuff on when I'm in the shower. I really dig that A New Fight song, as well as the bonus track that I assume only comes on the Bandcamp page called Dead Inside, both outstanding examples of how good this stuff is from Fools Errand. This release is supposedly gonna be released on clear vinyl sometime soon but I have yet to see it *cough cough*. Anyways, check out this release from Fools Errand, the latest musical endeavor from the multi talented, fresh smelling, kind to his mother human entity known as N.J. Pete. Who knew drummers could actually be talented? 😁 Digitally available from the Fools Errand Bandcamp page, which you can get to by clicking here. Only 50 clear vinyl copies are available, so order them up quickly before they're all gone.
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