Florida-based Sleeping With Sirens debuted a brand-spankin’ new track, “Fire,” over at the Rise Records YouTube page. The song appears on the band’s forthcoming Rise release “Let’s Cheers To This,” which is due out May 10th.

If you’re into that sorta thing, you can check out the new song right here. “Let’s Cheers To This” is a follow-up to last year’s “With Ears To See And Eyes To Hear.”

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Thousand Needles (which I believe is a World of Warcraft reference) hail from Jakarta, Indonesia. LePork Records recently put out the band’s seven song, self-titled debut EP, though it really is more of a glorified demo. The sound is straight up early/mid-90s pop-punk. The songs are fairly well-crafted and have decent enough bones that allow you to pretty accurately figure out exactly what the band was going for.  Most of the songs are performed in Indonesian while two of them are sung in English. For my money, they should have stuck with their native language. On some tracks, like “Lari Teruss” and “Ikuti Aku,” Thousand Needles actually achieve what (I think) they were going for. “Lupakan Kendali” and the two English tracks don’t quite make it.

“Intro” sets a pretty good tone: modern (well, modern as of the mid-90s) pop-punk. Think “Cheshire Cat”/”Dude Ranch” era Blink-182, which is a very recurring theme for the duration of the EP. Melodic, chunky power chord scales and uptempo drums (double kick especially – drummer Gevi seems to have a hint of a metal background). “My First Song” follows, and contains some fairly sloppy guitar work, at least at the beginning. I can’t help but compare the voice on the English-speaking lead singer (not sure if it is Hafiedz or Ipoel) to Gerardo (you remember Gerardo, right?!?) when he sings in English. Structurally they had the right idea, just didn’t quite pull it off. “Inspirasiku,” which translates to ‘Inspiration’ is an alright song, though the mix is off, so it is very snare and vocal heavy while the guitars are relegated way into the background.

“Lupakan Kendali” comes next, and features a sound that is a little more along the lines of a Pulley/Screw 32 sound during the body of the song than other tracks. “Ikuti Aku” (which translates to “Follow Me” – don’t say Dying Scene never taught you anything!!!) is a catchy, up-tempo pop punk track, and is one of my favorites on the album. It is followed by “Lari Teruss” which is pretty standard four-chord pop punk following the standard loud-quiet-loud pattern. It sounds not unlike Blink-182’s “Growing Up” without the catchy little lead guitar riff. Otherwise, my other favorite on the album. “Thousand Needles” comes to a close with “Falls Apart,” the second English-language track on the EP. The song structure is very reminiscent of Blink’s “All The Small Things” played by a high school garage band. The harmonies don’t quite work, and something in the lyrics seems to have gotten lost in translation: the chorus contains the line “I will not die / ask your lover / And I will not break / when my heart falls apart.” Again, you can sorta see what they were going for, but as with the rest of the EP they don’t quite pull it off. Still, for a fairly young band who don’t exactly hail from a punk rock hotbed, “Thousand Needles” is a decent enough first effort.

Cover songs are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.  We here at Dying Scene love hearing punk bands do their own take on other band’s songs.  Sometimes they pull off amazing interpretations of old classics, sometimes they’re not much more than humble tributes to a fellow artist, and other times they’re just downright laughable renditions of otherwise great songs.  Good or bad.  Intriguing or mundane.  We’ll let you be the judge. This week it’s Denver pop-punk band The Gamits covering “Your Love” by the 80’s British pop-rock group The Outfield.

Check out the cover and the original here.

The cover was originally recorded for a bonus track on the Japanese “Antidote” release and then showed up again in the box set, “Golden Sometimes” which came out on Suburban Home Records. The Outfield version  appears on The Outfield’s 1985 album “Play Deep” which was released on Columbia.

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I’m stoked! So-Cal melodic skate punk act Strike Twelve are currently working on a new album. Here’s what they had to say,

“After months of work organizing the release of Punk Rock Heart Transplant, we are hard at work on our next record. We recently hit two different studios and recorded one song in each, as a test run for an upcoming album. The beer pong song was released on punk rock heart transplant and is available for free download. The other, daddy’s little girl, is currently unreleased but you can watch the video of the recording process here. We are in the final writing stages of the album, which is currently untitled. We will be doing a short California tour in end of may where we will be testing out and fine tuning the new songs and then will be recording them beginning in June.”

The band released their Felony Records debut full-length, Killing California, in 2009.  You can stream the album in its entirety here. (Recommended!)

San Francisco punk rockers Nothington have given a little update about their upcoming acoustic 7” “More Than Obvious.” Here’s what they had to say,

“Finishing artwork for our 7″ Red Scare e release… It will officially feature 2 brand new acoustic songs, an acoustic version of RBR’s Not Looking Down, and one full band song that was originally written for RBR, but was cut from the record due to imperfections…. This song, “Tired Hearts” was re-written and recorded for this release, due out in July!”

Nothington’s last released Roads Bridges and Ruins in 2009 on BYO Records.

Deathwish Inc. has posted the 29th installment of their podcasts. This time around, the podcast features part one of an interview conducted by Patrick Kindlon as he interviews LA hardcore outfit Touché Amoré frontman Jeremy Bolm. You can check out the podcast right here.

Touché Amoré’s upcoming full-length, “Parting the Sea Between Brightness and Me” is due out on June 7th via Deathwish Inc.

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Brendan Kelly of The Lawrence Arms has decided to offer his thoughts on the ever-going debate about compromise and selling out in music on his personal blog. Kelly talks about a friend who has played in a few minor bands, and has seen other bands get big, despite his personal opinion that the band sucks.

Kelly then turns to the discussion about bands selling out, stating that it isn’t a matter of compromise as much as running out of good ideas. As he states, There are tons of bands who change up their sound and don’t get worse, and a lot of times they even become more accessible and better all at once. There are a zillion ways a band can grow, change direction and stay good. But when they get shitty, that’s always just because they ran out of ideas, or their ideas that used to be good are now bad. That’s the only thing that happens. Again, integrity doesn’t enter the picture.

Kelly also makes a very good point by stating, People don’t write and play music that they hate. If the guys in, let’s say, the Ataris (one of the bands he mentioned) are playing some kind of music that my buddy finds to be gross, well, that’s because they have different tastes. I promise you that the guys in the Ataris are writing the best songs they can, and they’re doing it in a style they think is cool.

You can check out the blog post in its entirety here.

Gothenburg, Sweden metal act In Flames have launched the second webisode for their upcoming album, “Sounds of a Playground Fading.” The webisdoe series will chronicle the making of the band’s new album, which is the band’s milestone tenth studio full-length. You can head here to check out the webisode.

In case you missed the first webisode, you can catch up here.

“Sounds of a Playground Fading” is due out on June 21st on Century Media.

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Flogging Molly recently participated in The Mahogany Session, and performed a new track entitled “Saints and Sinners” on a rooftop. You can check out the video here.

It’s looking like a busy year for Flogging Molly, as the band gears up for lots of tour dates in Europe and the United States. Their new album will be hitting record store shelves on May 31st on the band’s label, Borstal Beat Records.

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New Jersey pop-punkers Man Overboard have welcomed former guitarist Wayne Wildrick back to the band’s roster. Wildrick, who left the band nine months ago to deal with personal problems, is rejoining the band, starting with Man Overboard’s performance at Bamboozle, which is taking place this weekend. Wildrick was also in the process of helping Man Overboard write their upcoming album, which marks the band’s first full-length album on Rise Records.

Man Overboard last released an EP, “The Absolute Worst,” in February via Rise Records.