Today U.K. punks The Run Up are premiering the first single, “Portraits”, off of their new album In Motion over at New Noise Magazine. In Motion is out October 3, 2019 on Real Ghost Records (UK), Gunner Records (EU), Get Party! Records (CA), and La Escalera Records/Swamp Cabbage Records/&Vinyl Records (US). The boys from Bristol will be […]
Today U.K. punks The Run Up are premiering the first single, “Portraits”, off of their new album In Motion over at New Noise Magazine. In Motion is out October 3, 2019 on Real Ghost Records (UK), Gunner Records (EU), Get Party! Records (CA), and La Escalera Records/Swamp Cabbage Records/&Vinyl Records (US). The boys from Bristol will be supporting the release with a North American tour that ends at The Fest.
Check out the tour dates and give “Portraits” a listen below.
Fabled Mind is a new Danish punk rock band featuring members of Forever Unclean, Stream City and Kill The Rooster. The band recently debuted their new video for ‘Before The Slaughter via SkatePunkers. Drawing inspiration from the 90s and early 00s, Fabled Mind set out to write songs that are a blend of hardcore and […]
Fabled Mind is a new Danish punk rock band featuring members of Forever Unclean, Stream City and Kill The Rooster. The band recently debuted their new video for ‘Before The Slaughter via SkatePunkers. Drawing inspiration from the 90s and early 00s, Fabled Mind set out to write songs that are a blend of hardcore and pop punk. There is no word on an official release from Fabled Mind in the near future, but it’s worth keeping an eye out.
Punk rock legends Social Distortion will celebrate their 40 year career this October 26th in Orange County California at the FivePoint Amphitheatre. The event, which is billed as ‘Sounds From Behind The Orange Curtain’, will feature performances from an eclectic line up, picked by Mike Ness and his bandmates. Appearing will be Joan Jett, The […]
Punk rock legends Social Distortion will celebrate their 40 year career this October 26th in Orange County California at the FivePoint Amphitheatre. The event, which is billed as ‘Sounds From Behind The Orange Curtain’, will feature performances from an eclectic line up, picked by Mike Ness and his bandmates. Appearing will be Joan Jett, The Distillers, The Kills, Frank Turner, Eagles Of Death Metal, The Black Lips, Plague Vender, Bully and Mannequin Pussy.
Stray From The Path, one of the most enduring bands in Long Island hardcore, have announced their ninth full-length album, Internal Atomics, out November 1 via UNFD. Internal Atomics is ten tracks fueled by the same politically-charged passion and furious energy that have kept Stray From The Path going strong for almost two decades. Through this album they […]
Stray From The Path, one of the most enduring bands in Long Island hardcore, have announced their ninth full-length album, Internal Atomics, out November 1 via UNFD. Internal Atomics is ten tracks fueled by the same politically-charged passion and furious energy that have kept Stray From The Path going strong for almost two decades. Through this album they hope to provide both a release and a call to action for listeners, aiming to mobilize them against apathy, corruption, and the misplaced priorities of past generations. To that end they’re debuting “Kickback”, a single off the forthcoming album that features Counterparts‘ Brendan Murphy on vocals.
“Counterparts have been brothers to us for nearly a decade. We came up together, and we support each other in our careers,” said Stray From The Path of the collaboration. “We’re lucky to be able to have Brendan feature on our new song ‘Kickback’ and do our first tour on our new albums together. We also got to do some stupid/fun stuff with Counterparts making a mystery cover 7” and offer it with both of our albums and tickets to our tour together.”
To celebrate both bands’ new releases, Stray From The Path and Counterparts will be embarking on a North American tour together in October, immediately followed by a solo tour across the U.K. and Europe for Stray From The Path. Listen to “Kickback” and check out the tour dates below.
One of my favorite — and also I think one of the most important — lines in Miguel Chen’s new book, The Death Of You: A Book For Anyone Who Might Not Live Forever, comes right within the first small handful of pages. Chen, is obviously best known for his role as bass player for […]
One of my favorite — and also I think one of the most important — lines in Miguel Chen’s new book, The Death Of You: A Book For Anyone Who Might Not Live Forever, comes right within the first small handful of pages. Chen, is obviously best known for his role as bass player for long-running punk band Teenage Bottlerocket but is also increasingly well-known for his yoga and meditation teachings and practices, and wrote a pretty successful book, I Wanna Be Well: How A Punk Found Peace And You Can Too that came out last year. Anyway, early on in The Death Of You, page eight to be exact, Chen asks and answers the question that you might be asking out loud when you hear that the bass player of a hard-working punk rock band has written a book on essentially how to come to terms with the concept of death in a way that allows you to lead a fulfilling life. That question, as you’ve probably deciphered by now, is “why is Miguel Chen qualified to write this book?” Chen’s answer? “I’m not. Well, at least not more than anyone else.”
It’s that tone of self-deprecation, of not taking himself all that seriously, that weaves its way through all of Chen’s written work – and all of Bottlerocket’s music for that matter – that makes it so compelling and relatable. However, it’s also, frankly, not exactly true. Chen, you see, has experienced what some might believe is more than his fair share of painful and untimely deaths in his life. As you probably know, Chen lost his mother to cancer when he was sixteen years old and lost his sister in a tragic car accident less than a year later. Then, as you definitely know, he lost his best friend and Teenage Bottlerocket brother-in-arms Brandon Carlisle four years ago. The bakers’ dozen years in between found checking most of the boxes on Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance; sex, drugs, rebellion and rock and roll, followed by intense periods of yoga and meditation that have found him in a much, much different place by the time Carlisle’s death came around than he was in as a teenage.
And now with The Death Of You, Chen is trying to impart some of his immense and profound wisdom on the rest of us. The book finds Chen teaming up with the same writing partner (Rod Meade Sperry) and publisher (Wisdom Publications) as the first go around, which resulted in a much quicker turnaround this time than the few years that went in to I Wanna Be Well, even if he had this idea kicking around far in advance. “(Writing a book about death) was actually in the back of my mind for years and years,” explains Chen. “Before I came to these practices and this connection with myself, I really kind of felt like a victim of death, of these losses that I had faced. My mom died, my sister died, life was fucked, why was this happening to me?” Eventually, as chronicled in I Wanna Be Well and previously discussed in our last conversation here, Chen began practicing and ultimately instructing in both yoga and meditation, offering him a deeper perspective not only on death as a concept. “As I got to the other end of it through these practices and saw how different my life was because of those events, I had to be honest with myself that it wasn’t all bad,” he says, adding “I mean yeah, it was heart-breaking and tragic and I wish I had those people back in my life, but because of what happened and when it happened, I was able to live a more free existence. It freed me up to be like, “well, this happened, and this is real, so what am I going to do with the time that I do have?” It really drove me to pursue the band and music, and to make a life for myself that I was happy with, you know?“
Like with I Wanna Be Well before it, The Death Of You contains a mixture of first-person storytelling, education of the reader about certain concepts, and a handful of practices aimed at getting you and I to learn by doing. For it’s not just the idea of death that Chen wants us to be comfortable accepting; it’s how to deal with all varieties of deaths we might be presented with, up to and including our own eventual shuffling from off this mortal coil. This includes a meditation practice toward the end of the book that implores the reader to envision just what’ll happen to them when their time is up. “The status quo is to just never think about death at all, and just kind of move forward,” says Chen. “You counteract that with the extreme on the opposite end, right? So, we’re going to do the exact opposite. We’re going to fucking not only think about death, we’re going to think about our death and we’re going to think about it in explicit detail. And I think by then having explored both ends of the extreme, we come to find where our spot in the middle is.” It’s not for the faint of heart, but it can prove a fruitful experience nonetheless.
The Death Of You has an official release date of September 17th. You can pre-order it on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Indiebound, or if you’re luck enough to live in one of these fine cities, you can pick it up at the Teenage Bottlerocket’s merch table on the Fat Wreck tour that’s going on now. Head below to check out our full Q&A!
Heeeeeeey! We were just starting to wonder about the guys over at Dying Scene Radio and here they come, sauntering along…and with a friend, no less! On Episode 17 of the official podcast of Dying Scene, the lads somehow managed to get the endlessly talented Jenna Enemy (The Von Tramps / #femaletomdelong) to join them […]
Heeeeeeey! We were just starting to wonder about the guys over at Dying Scene Radio and here they come, sauntering along…and with a friend, no less! On Episode 17 of the official podcast of Dying Scene, the lads somehow managed to get the endlessly talented Jenna Enemy (The Von Tramps / #femaletomdelong) to join them for some rootin’, tootin’ shit shootin’! But just because the boys have a guest doesn’t mean they’re gonna forget about the totally tubular tunes from new and emerging artists that you were probably too lazy to discover and the noteworthy scene news that you were probably too lazy too read! They’re just going to have a third person giving their shitty opinions on stuff!! You can never have too many shitty opinions, right!??!? Check it all out below!
It’s been quite a long time – years, in fact – since we’ve had a new release from Canadian rockers Sights & Sounds, but that’s all about to change. On October 11th, the quartet, which features Joel and Andrew Neufeld (the latter perhaps better known from his role as Comeback Kid‘s frontman), Matt Howes and […]
It’s been quite a long time – years, in fact – since we’ve had a new release from Canadian rockers Sights & Sounds, but that’s all about to change. On October 11th, the quartet, which features Joel and Andrew Neufeld (the latter perhaps better known from his role as Comeback Kid‘s frontman), Matt Howes and Dave Grabowski, are slated to release their sophomore album. It’s called No Virtue, and as a tease, you can stream the album’s title track below!
No Virtue marks Sights & Sounds’ first new music since their 2013 EP Silver Door, and their first full length since 2009’s Monolith. Pre-order No Virtuehere.
Western Settings are all set to put out their second full-length album, Another Year, this Friday, September 6 on A-F Records. Another Year will be a follow-up to their most recent EP, Old Pain, which was released all the way back in 2016, and produced by Tyson Annicharico (Chicken) of Dead To Me, as is Western Settings’ soon-to-be released […]
Western Settings are all set to put out their second full-length album, Another Year, this Friday, September 6 on A-F Records. Another Year will be a follow-up to their most recent EP, Old Pain, which was released all the way back in 2016, and produced by Tyson Annicharico (Chicken) of Dead To Me, as is Western Settings’ soon-to-be released LP. Pre-orders for that are available here.
Western Settings is already in the middle of a 16-date North American run, and to mark this particular occasion in the band’s existence they are releasing a new music video for the as-yet unreleased, and arguably strongest single on the album, “Big” – and they are premiering it right here for all you famous, healthy undying scenesters. Get a load of the new video, “Big” below, and be sure to check out the tour flyer (also featured) to see if you can catch these guys in your town on their current and ongoing tour.
Bristol, UK punks The Run Up have announced a US tour in support of their new album in motion which releases on October 3rd (preorder here). Along the way, the lads will be teaming up with Michiganders, Foxgrave for mostly the West Cost stops and Tennessee emo punks, Rough Dreams for the Eastern half of the […]
Bristol, UK punks The Run Up have announced a US tour in support of their new album in motion which releases on October 3rd (preorder here). Along the way, the lads will be teaming up with Michiganders, Foxgrave for mostly the West Cost stops and Tennessee emo punks, Rough Dreams for the Eastern half of the country. All dates and stops are listed on the kick ass tour poster above, dummies! So, get out to one of them and show our guests a good time!
Manchester, UK hardcore band Guilt Trip have a released a video for the title track of their new album River Of Lies. It’s out now on BDHW Records. Have a watch below.
Manchester, UK hardcore band Guilt Trip have a released a video for the title track of their new album River Of Lies. It’s out now on BDHW Records.