In the most brutally honest and thus edifying installment yet of our 100-plus-installment On Tyranny series, brand-new Irish electro-Celtic trio Chasing Abbey hold nothing back in speaking out against authoritarianism, oppression and the Palestinian genocide.
We’re publishing this video today to celebrate the release of the trio’s debut record, Cyber Celt, which comes out today (Friday) courtesy of Remote Control Records.
Get a breath of fresh air as you listen to all three members of Chasing Abbey – multi-instrumentalists/producers/vocalists Ronan Bell, Jonathan Byrne and Ted Conway – bravely speak their mind and exercise free speech fearlessly and proudly … just like the Irish tradition calls for.
“I’m a control freak,” seemingly (but more likely surreptitiously) demure music wunderkind Alicia Lindberg freely admitted to The Bad Penny in a video conversation last week. “A part of me likes doing everything myself, because I like to get it the way I want it.”
Indeed, Lindberg – who leads the experimental jazz/pop group Linda 917 – is as clear-eyed and determined an artist as you’ll encounter. Lindberg doesn’t leave her new album, ONLINE, which comes out Friday, open to interpretation. To the contrary, she openly states that the record is intended to combat male domination in the jazz world, and that she draws on feminist music icons like Kate Bush and Björk for inspiration. She fearlessly addresses topics that, blasphemously, are still not more openly discussed in contemporary society: mental health, eating disorders and body image issues among them.
Slothrust leader Leah Wellbaum talks predatory consumerism, loss of agency in an increasingly digital world, and her brief music journalism career ahead of the duo’s sixth album, What They Grow in the Garden.
As musically gifted as they are hyper-intelligent, as hyper-intelligent as they are kind, and as kind as they are wise, there was no better band to approach than atmospheric black-metal masters Der Weg einer Freiheit for The Bad Penny Passport‘s stop in Germany. That’s the name we’re calling our latest series, in which we check in with musicians in countries across the globe to get the real deal on the best bands their homelands have to offers. We’re blown away by your positive reception of the series, dear readers; we surmise it’s because you’re refreshed to be getting listening recommendations from musicians instead of Spotify, the algorithm or AI.
On Friday, Der Weg einer Freiheit released an instrumental version of Innern, the studio album they released last year, and we’ll bring you an interview with vocalist/guitarist Nikita Kamprad and bassist Alan Noruspur post-haste. But before we do, we’re gifting to you a list of Germany’s top 10 metal bands that Kamprad – one of our best comrades, and who we’ve interviewed before – in turn gifted to us. (Der Weg deserve a lofty place on the list, but Kamprad is too humble to have put his own band on it.)
Without further ado, here’s his list, with generously ample descriptions of the featured bands and explanations as to why they deserve to be on it.
It’s not every day you come across a band touted as “bridg[ing] the gap between cerebral jazz-rock, raucous post-punk shredding, and tightly composed minimalism in the school of Steve Reich/ Terry Riley/ Philip Glass.”
But listen to Talking, the debut album by Baltimore-based experimentalists Crying Laughing, and you’ll be hard-pressed to conjure a more apt description of the quintet’s adventurous sound. The band released the record Friday on Hausu Mountain, which is rapidly becoming one of our favorite record labels.
Familiarize yourself with Spanish experimental art-pop endeavor Sehore, and you will undoubtedly have encountered the most artistically and intellectually challenging musical act in quite some time. Sehore won the Silver Medal for the song “Pesadilla” (“nightmare” in English) and the Bronze Medal for “Bla bla bla (cha cha cha)” (we’ll leave that translation to you) at the Global Music Awards 2025.
With compositions written and performed in extremely complex time signatures, Sehore started last year with the release of its first two albums: Ladencia in January and Husfikbur in September. The group’s project’s album, Ptkbdglmnr (due November 20), is led by the first single “IA.” Sehore describes it as follows: “The rhythmic figures shift between different internal groupings of five (3+2, 2+3, 4+1, etc.), creating a fragmented and unstable pulse that mirrors the theme and is built on the diminished scale. The track alternates consonance and dissonance, using kitsch elements and miniature structures.”
If you’re a fan of electronic indie-pop – or heartfelt, folk-spirited music in general – and you aren’t familiar with Josaleigh Pollett, you’re missing out. The Salt Lake City musician stands out in the sprawling singer/songwriter community due to her musical talent, thoughtfulness, and penchant for learning. Don’t believe us? St. Vincent, Torres, Deep Sea Diver and DeVotchKa – with whom she has shared bills – would back up our backing of Pollett.
Pollett’s new album, the exquisitely named (and performed) If I Let It Quiet, features four singles – “Radio Player,” “The Witness,” “Like a River” and “Bed of Quiet” – and came out in late July. We caught up with the artist shortly before its release and, due quite frankly to our own flakiness, are finally delivering the lovely conversation we had with the artist today.
(Note: Pollett had performances planned for October 15 at Seeker Coffee in Old Ford, North Carolina; and the following day at The Hideaway in Johnson City, Tennessee.)
“Punk” music didn’t start in 1976 or 1977, with Ramones’ self-titled album or Leave Home, which came out in those years, respectively. Sex Pistols didn’t launch the genre with the four singles and album (Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols) the British band released in those same years.
The same goes for The Clash’s self-titled debut, released in 1977; The Damned’s Damned Damned Damned and Music for Pleasure, both issued in 1977; or albums by the Buzzcocks, Black Flag or MC5. Rather, the seeds of punk – a term coined by the godfather of rock-music journalism, Lester Bangs – were planted many years earlier, not by bands but by an attitude and a sound that cropped up in scattered pockets of the Western world.
It’s always cool to get positive feedback from readers, especially those of you who keep tabs on what some lame-ass AI tool referred to as “the iconoclastic website The Bad Penny.” Hell, we’ll take it – and much more importantly, we’ll take your liking of this consummately non-mainstream and non-corporate hub for news, interviews, games, reviews and more about rad bands that mostly lurk underground.
Aaaaaanyway, it’s even more flattering to get kind words from musicians; after all, none of us would be on this website, writing and reading any of the posts, engaging in discussions and finding fulfillment in music in general were it not for those who actually make it. All of which is to say that the new series with the loose title The Bad Penny Passport is attracting so much excitement from artists that it feels like getting blindsided by a tsunami. And that enthusiasm is showing in the bands’ submissions, none better exemplified by this golden treasure of a contribution from Bay Area death thrashers Absolute Darkness.
The band began 10 years ago fueled in part by their love of death metal but also thrash metal, the genre du jour in their San Francisco hometown. Now, the band consisting of guitarist/lead vocalist Ron Dorn, lead guitarist/backup vocalist Douglas Vetter Guitars, bassist Orson Sojo and drummer Scott Russell are readying their second album, Witness to a Dying World, for an October 23 release. There’s more on that below; but first, let’s get schooled by Absolute Darkness and what they believe to be the 10 best Bay Area bands of all time.
“The moral of the story is: Say yes to every dog.”
-Jon Moore of Tiger Bear Wolf
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It would be sacrilege, blasphemous, a crime worthy of punishment by death were The Bad Penny not to rabidly pursue a band named Tiger Bear Wolf to participate in our ongoing – and, thanks to our rad readership, very popular – Pet Sounds series. In keeping with that thought, we chased down the post-hardcore math-rock band from Greensboro, North Carolina – and wouldn’t you know it, they were immediately into the idea.
Tiger Bear Wolf consists of four human beings – Jonathan Moore (guitar, vocals), Noah Howard (guitar, vocals), Matt Bostick (bass) and Lawrence Holdsworth (drums) – who recently released a self-titled album 17 years in the making. (Yes, you read that right.) In a story that will pull at your heartstrings, the pink-cheeked punks found themselves on a roll after putting out their first two records in 2002 and 2005. But Tiger Bear Wolf’s third effort was not the charm. Hard drives containing the songs intended to be on that next record went awry, and the band wasn’t able to recover the material until much later.
A source of solace and comfort for Moore during those trying years when the Tiger Bear Wolf recordings were lost was, no doubt, his dog Robo. You might want to keep a box of issues handy for this very special installment of Pet Sounds, as Robo is no longer with us and the rare photos that Moore so generously shared with us are rather breathtaking. Either way, here is the story of Robo the dog, unwavering companion to the frontman of the band Tiger Bear Wolf.
The Bad Penny (beta) 