Simi Valley, CA, punkers Majority Lost have added a new track to their MySpace.  Entitled A Word Of Advice (DUI Song), the lyrics provide us with reasons to ditch our keys while boozing (unless, of course, you drive better drunk… joke).

The band’s most current release, …Falls Off The Bandwagon, an EP, came out last June on Horns Up Records.

Pennywise guitarist and big dude, Fletcher Dragger, has announced the launch of his new record label.  Under the name Viking Funeral, the label is an imprint of Suburban Noize Records created by Fletcher and Ken Seaton of Hardline Entertainment.  The first band to be signed will the Mesa, AZ’s, Authority Zero, who already have plans to release their fourth studio album on 25 May 2010, a follow-up to 2007’s 12:34.

Authority Zero will soon be on the road throughout April playing shows in the the southern and western US.  Dying Scene’s Shows page has all of the dates/locations for you to map our your road trip to stalk the band.

The Offspring and 311 are going to be kicking off an 18 date run of US amphitheaters this summer in this year’s 2010 Unity Tour.  Check out dates and locations here.

The Offspring are taking a break from the studio to hit the road and plan on debuting some of the new material at the shows.

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UK’s progressive/melodic punk act A WarAgainstSound released a new 6 song digital EP today on Open Hand Records.  The release is titled Eat The Elite and you can download it for free right here.  The cover art is <= and the tracklist can be found here.

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Cincinnati’s power pop punk trio The Dopamines recently crashed in Gainesville, FL after their performance at THE FEST 8 to record an album with Roger Lima from Less Than Jake and Matt Yonker from Teen Idols/The Queers at Roger’s Moat House Studios. The recording was passed along to Paper + Plastick owner/ Less Than Jake drummer Vinnie Fiorello. The album was then passed on to Stephen Egerton (Decendents/ALL) for mixing.

The final product, entitled Expect The Worst, will be released by Paper + Plastick in late June on LP/Digital download.

To celebrate the union and the band currently being on tour, Paper + Plastick have leaked a stream of Public Domain from the album, which you can check out right here.

For years now I’ve been wondering how much of NOFX front-man Fat Mike’s overindulgent, party guy attitude was an act act to maintain his punk rock credibility.  How true could his lyrics and stories about sex, alcohol and drug abuse really be?  I mean, the guy is married and has a daughter.  He runs a successful record label and has managed to keep his band relevant for almost 3 decades.  At worst, I figured the dude was a semi-alcoholic, but one who had his shit together, and behind the scenes was maybe even a decent father and husband.

If you’ve been a fan of NOFX for a while you’ve probably noticed that Fat Mike doesn’t sing about anything personal to him (something I always felt held the band back from progressing to a new level of greatness).  He broke the cycle with the recent release of Cokie The Clown where Mike sings a touchingly sincere song about the death of his parents.  The cracks in his happy-go-lucky, party boy exterior began to show and his fans really appreciated him for it.  Well, on the last night of SXSW Fat Mike “performed” a small, intimate show in which he seemingly bared his most disturbing secrets to a group of stunned onlookers and this time, I’m not sure how much they respected him for it in the end….

In an incredible Pinpoint Music article on an incredibly disturbing event, the author opens with:

Fat Mike’s ‘Cokie the Clown’ set at South By Southwest 2010 was graphic in nature. The stories Mike told and the things he did at Emo’s Annex during SXSW left me shaking afterward. Damian Abraham, lead singer of the band Fucked Up, later described this Cokie set as the most depressing and fucked up thing he had ever seen. This article is going to be very rough in nature and isn’t advisable for the young or the weak of stomach.

Click here to read the full article (it is an absolute must read for followers of NOFX and/or Fat Mike).  If you don’t believe what you read about the performance, here is a link to a video of it (you have to download it, which is scary, but it’s a legit video and hasn’t blown up my computer… yet, anyway).

Ska/punk act We Are The Union are streaming a brand new song on their MySpace page.  The song is titled What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate and it appears on the band’s upcoming full-length album titled Great Leaps Forward due out March 30th, 2010 on Paper + Plastick Records.

The band released their last album, Who We Are, in 2007.

The UK’s progressive ska-punk / punk-hop (?) band Sonic Boom Six are releasing a best of… album titled Rude Awakening on April 19th.  The album is going to be a collection of the band’s favorite songs to play live which will serve as a great introduction to those unfamiliar with the band.  To be honest, I was unfamiliar with these guys until yesterday and I gotta say, they are intriguing!  Give them a listen on their MySpace page where at least one of the album tracks (The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Inventions) is streaming.

Sonic Boom Six released their last album City Of Thieves last year on Rebel Alliance Records.

Ever wonder where some bands come up with their band names?  Well, we do, and we’re sick of sitting around scratching our heads about it.  We’re hitting the streets (aka. “Internet”) to find the origins behind some of the more bizarre, intriguing or just plain random band names in the scene.  Every Wednesday we’ll be pulling the curtain back on a different band and this week it’s Chicago’s premiere Celtic punk act Flatfoot 56.

A few weeks ago we caught up with the band and asked them directly where their name came from.  Here’s their response:

Well when we started in 2000 we were high school kids, the youngest was in 8th grade and the three of us are brothers. Well the youngest was playing baseball and he was flatfooted, and had the number 56 on his jersey so we would start chanting Flatfoot 56 at baseball games and it just kinda stuck. We ended up deciding to name the band that.

If you’ve got a good band name origin story, or want us to research one for you, message us on the Dying Scene facebook page.

Another music video today.  This time from Atreyu for their song Lonely off their latest release Congregation Of The Damned.  Check it out here.  Here’s what the band has to say about the video:

Veteran Atreyu video director Sean Stiegemeier successfully captured our antics while we were on the Taste of Chaos tour in Tokyo and Osaka Japan this winter. It’s easily the most fun we’ve ever had shooting a video and it most definitely comes across in the footage and it mixes well with Seans brilliant time lapses and cinematography.

Congregation Of The Damned was released last October on Hollywood Records.