Best New Music

Suburban Delinquents

Exiles

Suburban Delinquents’ story started out like so many other bands. They were four kids who got together to make some punk noise in the mid ‘90s. They played a bunch of shows, made a couple albums, and developed a pretty good local following. Then they started to grow up and went their separate ways. Years later they all found themselves back in metro Detroit, and started playing again. If that’s where things had ended, it would have already been a pretty good story.

It turns out that wa

Adrenalin O.D.

Humungousfungusamongus [Millennium Edition]

Despite my love of the first Adrenalin O.D. full length, The Wacky Hi-Jinks of Adrenalin O.D. (1984), I somehow never got around to digging into its follow up Humungousfungusamongus (1986). In this case, it was definitely better late than never. As they did with Wacky Hi-Jinks, Beer City Skateboards and Records have reissued Humungous in a definitive, Millennium Edition. It shares its two main traits with Wacky Hi-Jinks: it’s fast as hell and funny as hell.

Geza X

Practicing Mice [7-inch]

Although he’s known for being the producer that gave the early recordings of Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, the Germs, and the Screamers some real whomp, what’s lesser known about Geza X is that he also released perhaps the most under rated and sadly forgotten classic punk record. You Goddam Kids walked an intersection between Devo, Dead Kennedys, and Zappa and was a fantastic record, but even to this day, it has never really received recognition.

No Matrix records

Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine

Tea Party Revenge Porn

The paradox of the third album by Jello Biafra and The Guantanamo School of Medicine is that while it’s their most timely album, the specifics mentioned here, which are very much anchored in the facts of the recent election, might make it the band’s most timeless album. Hell, even the title, Tea Party Revenge Porn references a movement that is all but dissolved- with the tea-baggers moving into the more dangerous “alt-right” territory.

All of this has Jello extremely

Various Artists
For Family and Flag, Volume 1
Back in 2018, Pirate’s Press Records celebrated their 200th release with an excellent triple album called One Family One Flag. Those records featured a good cross section of the vast array of bands that had been associated with the label to that point. For Family and Flag, Volume 1, the label's 300th release, picks up on the popularity of that compilation. As an added bonus, the Volume 1 designation would lead you to believe that this is going to be an ongoing seri

Ceremony
In the Spirit World Now (Synthetic Remixes)
To Ceremony’s credit, after releasing the landmark Rohnert Park, the band didn’t rest on their laurels. (There are those that would suggest that RP is actually where the band jumped the shark, but you won’t find any of that nonsense here). Instead of releasing Rohnert Park II, the band radically shifted gears and went post-punk and then after that, arguably indie rock.

Frankly, had the band stayed on their path, they could have carved out a decent living

Nick Blinko
Nick Blinko [Book]
To gaze upon Nick Blinko’s artwork is to gaze into insanity. The Rudimentary Peni frontman has made this topic the core of his work for about forty years, both sonically and visually. Fearlessly, he has let us, the listener/viewer, see the world through his eyes which is often tortured, scared, and very, very, very dark.

Rudimentary Peni covers are as distinctive and as powerful as the music itself. So, over the past decade or so, Blinko has gotten the same recognition he deserves

Seahaven
Halo of Hurt
Seahaven are back after six years with their follow-up to the much-loved Reverie Lagoon: Music for Escapism Only. Since then, they’ve only played a couple of shows and posted a few cryptic tweets, but all went quiet. So it was a big surprise when they recently announced their new album, Halo of Hurt.
The band’s first two albums, Ghost and Winter Forever, showed them at their more immediate and aggressive. Somewhere within the emo realm, with hints of loud pop-punk at times, they had a

The Spits
The Spits VI
At this point, the Spits are like locusts- hibernating a number of years only to re-emerge and to walk among the surface dwellers. Surely, there’s a certain comfort in the fact that no matter the atmosphere- be it orange demagogue wreaking havoc from the White House or be it the age of myspace autoplay- the Spits will return to kick out super grimey, super fun three chord punk that cribs from the Ramones and Misfits while maintaining a certain nihilistic edge.

On their new self-ti