Winnipeg power chord punk duo Mobina Galore will be releasing a new album titled Don’t Worry on September 6th and to prove it they’ve released a music video for the album’s first single “Escape Plan.” Personally this might be my favorite Mobina song to date. Check it out along with the band’s upcoming tour dates below!

Mobina Galore last released Fade Away back in May of last year. 

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Brighton ska-punk outfit The Bar Stool Preachers have announced more US summer tour dates in support of their upcoming full-length release Grazie Governo. Check out the dates in the poster above and then dive below for a peek at a music video for their new tune “High Horse.”

Grazie Governo is due out on August 3rd via Pirates Press Records.

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Swedish hardcore/noise punk icons Refused will be releasing a new album titled “War Music” October 18th via Spinefarm and Search and Destroy. Get yourself a little taste by streaming the album’s first single, “Blood Red” below.

“War Music” will mark Refused’s first full-length since 2015’s Freedom released via Epitaph Records.

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On August 30th Fat Wreck Chords will be releasing “Giant Sike,” the new album from Portland, Oregon pop-punkers Mean Jeans. To make sure you’re properly psyched the band has premiered “Stuck In A Head,” a new single from the pending release. Check it out below along with the band’s forthcoming tour dates with Teenage Bottlerocket and Clowns.

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Sammy Kay recently wrapped up a successful Kickstarter campaign in advance of his new full-length album, civil/WAR. Now, he’s released the first single into the wild for your listening pleasure. It’s called “Sweet Cecilia” and you can check it out below.

The Pete Steinkopf-produced civil/WAR is due out in October on Say-10 Records. You can pre-order it here. Also, tickets for his record release show at Crossroads in Garwood, NJ, are available here; Kay will be opening for the inimitable John Moreland that night!

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Tom May of The Menzingers is the latest guest on UK podcast ‘The Wasting Time Podcast’. With the recent announcement of their new album ‘Hello Exile’ and the release of the single ‘Anna’, Tom goes into detail about what fans can expect from the forthcoming release.

The episode can be heard on all the usual platforms as well as the podcast website. If you haven’t seen the video for new single ‘Anna’ yet, it can be found below.

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Western Settings, from San Diego, CA, have announced their new album ‘Another Year’ on A-F Records and Gunner Records. This week, they have also premiered the first single ‘Break’. The song treads the same winning formula as their previous releases. The band have also announced a tour with Canada’s The Penske File. The last release from Western Settings was the 2016 EP ‘Old Pain’ (produced by Chicken of Dead To Me).

Check out the new song and the tour dates below.

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Here’s a new group to get excited about. Recently signed to Paper + Plastick Records, West Grand is a Detroit post-hardcore, mellowed out punk rock and roll band that started out the way so many pornos do – with a couple best buds and a few recordings on a cell phone. Their self-titled EP will be available for download on the Paper + Plastick website in a week or so on August 9.

West Grand’s music goes well with late-7Seconds, Rites of Spring and The Get Up Kids. Almost Strokes-ish even, with Kyle Green playing host over (perhaps) a more stripped-down (nasally) Casablancas… and I definitely don’t mean that in a bad way. “Like his mom always said, ‘Honey, you write your best songs when you’re feeling down’, and we couldn’t agree more. Thanks Depression!! These songs are so relatable, we’ve all been there. We all grieve in different ways. For West Grand, this is our way.”

West Grand is streaming a new single off that 4-track EP ahead of it’s release. You can find “Here to Stay” exclusively here on the site, below. [Read more…]

Tokyo, Japan based pop-punks See You Smile have premiered a music video for a brand new track titled “Superman.” You can check it out below.

The track is set to be released as part of a single on August 14th. SUPERMAN will be released through Octave Records in Japan. The track also has English lyric consultation from former After Tonight frontman Kensuke Yamamoto.

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My eternal affection for the Taxpayers is well documented. While they were active, they had a certain magic to their music—a gonzo, anything goes approach with a rascally dash of political storytelling. They always knew who’s thumb they were under, and they made it their mission to meet it with a revolutionary shank. The Taxpayers have since dissipated, at least for now, but their members live on and continue to take on interesting projects. The latest of these interesting projects is the Trusty Snakes, which shares all of its members with the late, great Taxpayers, but take their music in a decidedly less punk direction. New American Frontier is an ode to country music, of all things, but it twangs and bangs with the best of them.

There’s more crossover between punk and country than we typically consider, even if both genres go after entirely different demographics. They’re both, at their best, music of the people—the downtrodden, the blue-collar, the average proletariat. They document these experiences through song. Through the years, punk rock has even adopted country’s popularly attributed melancholy—reveling in “woman done me wrong” songs with just as much heartache and half as much twang. The Trusty Snakes pull from an era of country that has been passed by for pop-production and star-studded duets—the end result is a joyful, sometimes winking, throwback with songs good enough to lasso even the most rigid punk purist. 

To the artists’ credit, there’s a fine line to walk with a project like this. A certain level of awareness is required to acknowledge: that yes, these are punks playing country, and that yes, it’s at least a little funny. But also, with that comes the difficulty of not turning in an album of parody, which makes for an insubstantial, and transparent release. Luckily, I think the Trusty Snakes handle this well, and deliver a sincere effort at the genre, while leaning enough into their country-fied subject matter to keep it lively and self-aware. This isn’t a silly album, but it does have fun; and in spite of that, there are some moments of downright transcendence. Their somber cover of “Can I Sleep In Your Arms?” with its hair-raising harmonies are testament enough. 

The Trusty Snakes, by taking on country, also get the rare opportunity to rewrite it in their own image, which is an interesting perspective shift for the genre. “Ain’t Gonna Change” documents the cycle of violence that surrounds an alcoholic’s weekly debauchery. The plainspoken manner of songwriting makes for a rather stark point of view, and by giving a voice to his victims (“Why said the children? Why said his woman? Why said his momma and pop?”), it paints a picture of inevitable small-scale tyranny, condemned even further in the song’s bridge. “Troubled Times” ends the album with a big, let’s come together singalong, which acts as the album’s formal thesis. It’s political, but also personal, it has the homespun comfort of a get-together with neighbors and friends. And here is where we see the true endgame of the Trusty Snakes—in the stirring gospel harmonies of country music—as reclamation of a voice. 

And that’s ultimately what makes New American Frontier such a wonderful experiment. It has a vision to it that stretches beyond its songs. We’re in an era where we’re still sorting out what value music has to us. Back in the day, it was easy because it was worth the plastic it was burned to. But now—physical releases are falling out of fashion, streaming services place all the music in the world in your hands for the price of a CD a month, and albums as a whole are no longer how a lot of us consume music in the first place. For me, and maybe many others—but I’m honestly shooting from my own hip—music has become more ephemeral, perhaps even weightless in the modern world. But bands like the Trusty Snakes, whether they know it or not, are proving that music need not be cheap and weightless, that now that music is available to everyone, it can still be a people’s medium. It can be as earthy, honest, and yeah, even country, as we want it to be—because there’s no longer a giant machine threshing our wheat, and in its absence, we’re now picking our own grain—and maybe that’s how it needs to be for awhile. A genre once marked by documenting the lives and woes of the blue-collar and working-class became a vehicle, through the power of that Great Thresher, to reinforce right-wing politics and form an identity around them. Not as conspiracy, but as salesmanship—a means to define an audience and have an audience define themselves. And in its sputtering death throes, where the bonds of music, money, and identity have become decidedly shakier, the Trusty Snakes are here to bring us back to the land. New American Frontier is as apt a title as any, and for once in a long while, we have music for music’s sake.