Bad Cop/Bad Cop recently finished a pretty successful run opening a full US tour for Frank Turner. On their way through Chicago, the badass foursome stopped by Mike Felumlee’s house and performed a few songs for Live From The Rock Room. The first of those songs, “Amputations,” is now available for your listening and viewing pleasure. Check it out below!

“Amputations” appears on Bad Cop/Bad Cop’s latest and greatest album, last year’s Warriors (Fat Wreck Chords).

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It’s a good day for ska fans! Time to shine up your dancing shoes, pick your head up, and give tomorrow another whirl… (Today!) with this fresh new Jamaican beat about mulligans coming at you from Athens, Greece.

The Contenders are a soulful rocksteady band, originally conceived four years ago by two friends in Vathis Square, as a side-project. Since that time, their evolution has evinced itself in each new addition of colorful instrumentalists to the roster, providing eclectic melodies down to the jazzy roots. They’ve been picking up a bit of steam since 2017, when the current band line-up cemented itself into form, playing shows, and working with Vincent Fiorello (Less Than Jake) to release the new EP, “Jes Grew” on Paper + Plastick Records, out October 26 on flexi-disc. Order that phonosheet here.

The band came up blending legacies, the likes of Sam Cooke and Otis Redding with the sounds of the rudies. Decidedly coming into their own around 2017, with the current swinging seven-man line-up complementing each song with sexy trombone solos and saxophone arrangements. The Contenders have received a bit of industry love, of late- not to mention the love of the crowds for their intimate and lively performance- and we’ve got the exclusive first-take of their newest single “Double or Nothing” below… right in time for all the ghoulies and Frankenstein-folk to start skanking and mashing down your neighborhood street. I mean… I do it every Tuesday. Enjoy!

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Riot Fest’s second day found that bastard, the sun, at it again when California punks Total Chaos began their afternoon set. Before they began, they did treat the crowd with a quick verse from Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades”during soundcheck. The band played a blistering set of breakneck punk like “In Unity,” “Riot City” and their recent track “Street Punx”off their eponymous EP. Both the band and the crowd were wearing studded jackets, patched-up vests, Mohawks and liberty spikes.

Lower Class Brats keep the momentum going. Wearing all black and singer Bones channeling his inner Adicts with his derby hat, the Austin, Texas band covered “All The Young Dudes” as a dedication to David Bowie. The rest of the set was blessed with an insane circle pit and folks just crowd surfing.

British anarcho-punks Conflict were a bit disappointing. Keeping up Lower Class Brat’s all-black-everything look, the band tried their best to get the crowd going with a smattering of success. Even singer Colin Jerwood (the only original member), stepping off stage to sing and greet the crowd didn’t help. Add to the equation some problems with the vocal mic and the overall set was a bit of a let down.

Street Dogs, on the other hand, put on a pumped set. Even with their covers of “Guns of Brixton”, “Borstal Breakout,” and “Blitzkrieg Bop” the Boston band infused it with a kinetic energy that slammed the crowd into hysterics. Even singer Mike McColgan stage dived and kept singing while he was crowdsurfing.

Please check out our images below from some of the other Day 2 acts. If you missed yesterday’s Day One coverage, you can check that out here. All photos by Meredith Goldberg, and words by Frederic Hall.

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The beer was $9. The crowd was greeted on inaugural day with a horrendous flute cover of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On”, complete with straining and crackling high notes. This year’s Riot Fest was a gorgeous, grotesque display of gathering bodies of drunk and fucked-up folks bathed in sweat thanks to an unforgiving sun radiating degrees in the upper 80’s throughout the three-day event.

Our coverage of Day One kicked off with Direct Hit, who played an energetic set, the type where the bassist Steve Murray hops sound so you hope he doesn’t land wrong and break his ankle. The band admitted most of their songs are about drugs. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. Oh, and between songs, the singer Nick Woods something about “The Big Bitch.” Towards the end of the set, drummer Danny Walkowiak actually ran from his drum set to the edge of the stage banging his drumsticks along with the clapping crowd before running back to his kit the second the band started back. It’s cliche as hell, but people loved the shit out of it.

Pussy Riot’s set was…interesting. I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan. While I do appreciate their political message and my heart goes out to member Pyotr Verzilov, who is recovering after being poisoned(!), the music didn’t quite move me that much. However, I would say their stage performance, consisting of everybody wearing florescent green ski-masks and button-up shirts was a sight to behold. But whatever momentum they was stopped when the group exited the stage and a played an audio recording of someone – who sounded like a robotic female voice – reciting twenty-five points about the one-percent and wealth redistribution. I don’t know how long the recording was, but it felt like forever, trust me. Probably sensing the crowd is restless, the group burst from the backstage, flaying their arms and torsos while the loudspeakers blasted the most Earth-shattering bass ever. That was enough to snap the crowd out of it before ending their set.

Next up for us were The Bombpops. Holy shit, The Bombpops. The name is fitting since this female-fronted LA band were popping bombs of raw, sonic goodness for the hefty sized crowd that afternoon. To give you an idea of their lyrical prowess, they played a song about shitting their pants called “Dear Beer,” a song about traffic called “Brake Lights” and, at one point, they talked about the heat giving them the “pussy sweats”and “sweaty assholes”.

Shifting gears, we got old-school hip-hop trio Digable Planets. Backed up by a live band, the group played the classic debut album “Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space).” Of course they played their hits “Rebirth of Slick (Cool like Dat)” and “Nickle Bag of Funk.” After twenty some-odd years, the trio still had the chemistry that made them popular in the first place. The band were no slouches either , with the bassist just going off on the slap bass solo that make Flea nod his head approvingly.

Atmosphere’s set seemed to complement Digable’s perfectly, with Slug’s dropping bars from a more introspective place. The seminal “God Loves Ugly”and “Fuck You Lucy”were definitely bangers for the large crowd as the sun ended its shift for the day. Slug’s charisma held the crowd’s attention throughout the set, with his words being more sermon and less hype, with gems such as “I wanna have as much fun as you’re having.” He did deviate from the serious by telling the crowd to raise their hands if they ever masturbated and touch take said hand and touch their neighbor with it.

Head below to check out more of our photos from Day One, including shots from Blood People, Lagwagon, Face To Face, Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly!

(All photography by Meredith Goldberg. Words by Frederic Hall.)

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Australian punk quintet Monuments have release their latest album, “Phronesis”, on October 5th via Century Media. This long-awaited album release is the band’s first release since 2014’s “The Amanuensis.”

Monuments is currently embarking on a European tour in support of their latest release, with special guests Vola and Atlas. You can see the full list of tour dates and locations below, along with the lyric video for their single “Mirror Image.”

“Phronesis” can be streamed in full here.
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John Nolan of Taking Back Sunday and Straylight Run has announced his upcoming album, Abendigo, to be released November 2nd via Collective Confusion Records. The album is available for pre-order here.

The music video for the album’s lead single, “Do You Remember”, is streaming now. Nolan says that he set out to create “a unique story with a dark edge to it”, and that’s exactly what this video is. you can check it out right below, along with the dates and locations for Nolan’s full-band November tour.

November tour tickets are available here.

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Manchester Punk Festival is quickly becoming the UK’s flagship punk event and by the looks of the first band announcement, the team behind the now full weekender have no intention of bucking that trend in 2019.and

Performing at the festival in April next year will be a host of acts spanning just about every sub genre of punk rock. Ska core, skate punk, hardcore, folk punk, power violence and even post metal are just some of the disparate styles already comprising this early iteration of the final bill.

With previous headliners including Propagandhi, Strike Anywhere, and The Flatliners, those hoping to attend next year will no doubt be eyeing the festival’s social media channels to see who the biggest acts performing at the 2019 edition are.

Whoever they turn out to be, they’ll be joined by the likes of Dead to Me, Doom, King Prawn, Faintest Idea, Consumed, Not on Tour, The Human Project, Svalbard, and Grand Collapse, along with all the other stellar artists featured on the tour poster below.

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Mesa, AZ Authority Zero have released two new tracks, “Atom Bomb” and “Ah Hell”, from their upcoming album “Persona Non Grata.”

Both songs are available right here on iTunes. The entire album is expected for release on December 7th, but you can pre-order the album now.

This album will be the band’s second independent release, and their first studio release since their acoustic album, “R&B III (Rhythm & Booze III)”, released in May.

Richmond VA hardcore rockers Iron Reagan are streaming their new track “The Devastation”, which will be featured on their EP “Dark Days Ahead”, to be released October 12 via Pop Wig Records.

This is the second leaked single from the EP, released on the heels of “Patronizer”, which began streaming earlier this month.

You can hear “The Devastation”, streamed courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan, below.

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The Vancouver skate punks of You Big Idiot are now streaming the music video for their new single, “One In A Million (The Ballad of Lloyd Christmas.) The video is based on the movie “Dumb & Dumber.”

The song is from the band’s “Mega Donair” album, which was independently released in April 2018.

You can stream the video below.

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