A month ago, we announced East Coast hardcore band Mountain Man had gone into the studio to record their debut album Grief. Yesterday, they tweeted an announcement that they had finished tracking their album. They even made a studio video available to the public.

Grief will be out next year on Think Fast! Records. [Read more…]

Minneapolis’ pop punk group Don’t Miss Out is streaming three songs off their soon-to-be-released album Looking For More Sense In This. Be sure to check out “Lack Of Intelligence”, “Lifecoach Lessons”, “They’re All Crazy”, and “Your 2.0” on their MySpace.

Looking For More Sense In This is to be made available “Late 2010”.

Cobra Skulls will release “Bringing the War Home” on January 18th via Fat Wreck Chords. The 5 song EP is the band’s first offering on Fat and boasts cover art by world-renowned artist Martha Rosler. Cobra Skulls are currently on tour with Dead To Me and will join NOFX on their January run.

Devin (singer/bassist) drops some heavy shit about the album below. Check it out:

I’m very proud of our new 5-song EP, “Bringing the War Home”. I think the new songs are some of our best yet. They aren’t necessarily an indicator of what our next full-length will sound like as I wrote these songs year ago, but never got the chance to bring them to the band until a couple weeks before we recorded them in August. I think the most notable difference this recording is Luke’s drumming. We love our old drummer Chad who was amazing, but Luke’s got a different style all his own. He’s a ripper and we’re lucky to have him.

The title of the EP comes from an old protest slogan of the Vietnam War era and I think the phrase is just as meaningful today during our ongoing, illegal war in Iraq. It’s an obvious play off of “Bring the Troops Home”, but it has a few more meanings as well as the implication to bring our troops home. To some it may sound offensive, but in the instances of the Vietnam and Iraq wars it implies that if there were no troops there would be no war. It also refers to the fact that the war is taking our tax dollars that we could spend on building and maintaining health care, schools and a crumbling infrastructure. (It seems like barely any people, and few economists point to the fact that we are in an economical crisis mainly because of war spending.) We need to bring our troops and that war money home. “Bringing the War Home” also refers to how we are culturally isolated in the U.S. and increasingly distracted with technological gadgets and we have a war within our borders that we have exported over seas. We don’t witness the misfortunate repercussions of our war except for when our injured troops come home, battered, dismembered and many with PTSD.

I am extremely excited that world-renowned artist, Martha Rosler, allowed us to use her art for the EP. She has been highly influential in the art world for decades and received many awards for her art that has often focused on and been critical of war, media, housing, homelessness, transportation, and the female experience. Rosler’s pieces which we used for the EP are also critical of the way modern Americans go about our consumer-driven, materialistic and pampered lives. We are distracted and desensitized by vapid technological wonders that separate us from nature and each other while great suffering and real horror exist on this planet by which we are all connected. That’s a problem, a conflict and a war that we can’t keep ignoring and the only way we can change it is by first acknowledging it by brining it home where we are forced to deal with it.

New Jersey’s pop-punk act Man Overboard is entering the studio in about 2 weeks to record 3 brand new songs for an upcoming split.  They’re not sure who the split will be with but they promise it “should be exciting.”

Man Overboard released their debut album Real Talk this past July on Run For Cover Records.

Fake Problems has announced their touring plans for December, including headline shows with Ninja Gun in the US, supporting the Flatliners in Canada, and a direct support slot on a Bouncing Souls “Home For The Holidays” show.  You can check out the dates and locations here.

Fake Problems released “Real Ghosts Caught On Tape” September 21st on SideOneDummy Records.

[Read more…]

In the true spirit of punk rock, Boston punk act Transit are releasing a rare demo rong song to help raise money for an injured fan. The fan Jayson broke his arm at one of their shows and is need of surgery. His family isn’t in the best financial situation right now so the band has decided to release a rare demo song “Bikes Through Sand” to help raise money for him. You can read the full story and listen to the song here.

The band released their latest album “Keep This To Yourself” last August on Run For Cover Records.

According to a recent announcement from Propagandhi, the band’s Canadian label, Smallman Records, is closing it’s doors and the band in search of a new label that will appreciate them for the rock gods that they are.  Here’s the band’s plea for help from a competent label:

Don’t make us do it ourselves. We’ve all seen what happens when we’re left in charge of things. I know, the industry is in a tailspin and the relevance of the label-band relationship is more in question than it ever has been, but there are still some things a band like us needs to make it work smoothly.

We’ve had enthusiastic, but vague inquiries from a few labels and we really appreciate that. But we’re not looking for vague. We’re not looking for nebulous “what do you guys want?” inquiries. We’re looking for a strong, specific, enthusiastic offer that lays out in detail what your organization will do for us in exchange for releasing what will certainly be our wildest record yet.

Let’s do this: pretend we’re Brian Burke. Then pretend our next record is Tomas Kaberle. Now pretend you are a middling western conference squad whose top puck-moving defenceman has just suffered a torn MCL while you are 3 points out of a playoff spot with 6 games remaining in the regular season and your fanbase is clamoring for change if you don’t make it to at least the conference finals. Pretend Kaberle (our next record) is willing to sign a 4 year contract extension at only 2 million per, meaning that if someone doesn’t blow Burke’s (our) doors off with a blockbuster offer, he (us), is not going anywhere, and you’ll be hitting the links this spring instead of hoisting The Cup, surrounded by naked ladies/men. The choice is yours.

Or something like that.

Operators are standing by.

In an update from last Spring the band claimed they would have a new album ready to record by the end of 2010.  Fingers crossed…

This past Halloween folk-punk singer Frank Turner and Fat Mike of NOFX sung the classic NOFX track “Linoleum” together while performing at Fest 9.

Check out the video here.

Frank Turner is currently working on a new album. Rumor has it NOFX are working on a new release as well.

[Read more…]

Michigan punk act Natural Disasters are teaming up with New Jersey hardcore act One Win Choice to release a split 7 inch via Bermuda Mohawk Productions.

The album will be released January 18th (artwork by Craig Horky) and according to Natural Disasters, the band is heading into the studio this month to record two new songs for the release.

Last month Detroit Michigan hardcore act Hellmouth announced plans for a new album and streamed the song “Desperate & Violent”. Well today the band has posted yet another new song titled “Exodus” and you can listen to it here. The song will appear on the band’s upcoming album “Gravestone Skylines,” which will be released on November 16 through Paper + Plastick Records.

The band will be releasing a limited vinyl version of the album with the ashes of a burnt bible pressed into the records. Here’s what guitarist Alex Awn had to say,

“The concept of burning a holy book and sending its ashes off to the pressing plant to include in a limited run of the new album presented itself to us when we were in NYC earlier this year. Vinnie [Fiorello, Paper + Plastick Records founder] did some research and found out it could be done, so we were pretty excited about it. As far as we know this is the first of its kind. I’ve heard about a company that presses your own ash into a record after you’ve been cremated but since we’re not dabbling in corpse desecration or body-snatching, a bible would have to suffice.”

We procured an old German bible from the late 1800′s to sacrifice for the new album. It had scribblings and notes in it that dated it to the turn of the 19th century which was interesting. It was heavy, leather-bound and was sealed w/ a metal clasp. The type was set in a gothic script and it had some 3 color images on the recto pages. There was a lot of craftsmanship and man-hours that went into producing the book. Having said that, I wouldn’t get too misty-eyed on the fine craftsmanship of the book b/c it was the content we were focusing on and the rivers of blood left in its wake. The bible was set up w/ 4 candles representing the members of Hellmouth, we lit the candles, doused the book in gasoline and set it ablaze. The fire looked beautiful as it licked the pages, causing them to curl, wither and give off copious clouds of jesus-smoke. It took a couple hours to get through the huge tome, but eventually it smoldered and we collected the ash to send to Vinnie the following day. The best part of the evening was watching Jeff [Uberti] accidently throw flaming trails of infernal gasoline around my back yard onto dry leaves and grass. Or Jay [Navarro] picking up the burning bible for a photo op. That’s the shit we’ll remember. Fuck the bible, the torah, the qur’an, and the bhagavad gita. No Gods, No Bastards.”