It seemed inevitable from the moment that Brandi Carlile walked onstage to perform a massive benefit concert in the wake of the ICE-provoked melees that occurred in Minneapolis six months ago that her performance would be historic. Now the soaring singer-songwriter is helping solidify the importance and magnitude of the show by making it available for free on YouTube for all to see.
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Prolific garage rocker Ty Segall unpacks his collaborative new LP Chrome, a record distinct in that it features him performing with a fresh new band featuring another one of today’s most revered garage-rock revivalists, Mikal Cronin.
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With Made Flesh, it’s as if Untitled With Drums managed to turn their much weaker last album inside-out. This is not a raging album from start to finish. But the band has managed to make their songs’ quieter moments beatific instead of morose, and the loud passages replete with exaltation instead of cumbersome. (For the record, while some critics have pointed to other ‘90s bands as comparable to Untitled With Drums, it’s really the loud/quiet dichotomy that most closely aligns them with that era.)
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Twenty hardcore-punk bands. One puzzle. All you need is your sword (pencil) and shield (eraser). Happy hunting. Click “Continue reading” for the link that will direct you to the answer key.
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Welcome to the 19th installment of The Bad Penny‘s Bandcamp Freebie series, in which we handpick our favorite free songs on the platform and dish them up for your consumption. Are we gonna get out of this thing alive, dear readers? Let’s not think of that, shall we, even though I just asked you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we entreat you with our latest batch of free music of the highest quality. (And the lowest price.) Not as many full-lengths time around as in recent editions past. But we think you’ll survive. All 10 titles featured here are free. And yes, you ARE welcome.
(Note: If you’re financially capable of supporting any of these artists and/or labels, please consider doing so.)
1. Coilguns’ “Carbon Magic” and “Peace Trader“
Coilguns’ Lost Love EP (which I reviewed for Treble) served as the soundtrack to 2025: a hellishly bad acid trip. If love is the most precious thing life has to offer, what could be more terrifying than the prospect that we have abandoned it for good — or even worse, that it has abandoned us? The Swiss post-metal punks put that EP up for free, and now they’ve done the same with these two new songs, released in June and April, respectively.
Continue readingThe goal of this interview was to ask as many factually incorrect questions, and yours truly succeeded. But Norway post-punk shoegazers Heave Blood & Die took it all in stride, probably due to the adrenaline rush they were still feeling after the recent deluxe release of their first album “Burnout Codes.” Enjoy this charming, low-key conversation with Heave Blood & Die guitarist/vocalist Karl Løftingsmo Pedersen and kayboadist Marie Sofie Langeland Mikkelsen.
Veteran San Francisco Bay Area indie-rockers The Morning Line recently signed to Big Stir Records earlier this week, the label announced Thursday – and wouldn’t you know it, they already have a new studio record spick-and-span for release on September 18. Big Stir are good people, so The Bad Penny quickly jumped on the opportunity to interview frontman Stephen Smith hours after the signing was announced.
We’ll bring you our feature on The Morning Line’s new album, Stars, closer to its release date, but in the meantime, we’ll tide you over with the latest edition of our long-running series Pet Sounds, for which the band surely qualifies. Smith has Dot, a small, 4-year-old black mutt he refers to as a “Teacup Wolfhound” (more on that later). Drummer Peter Craft owns a 6-year-old half-boxer/half-pit called Levon. And guitarist Brian Mello has a 13-year-old cat whose breed is a Korat (a breed from Thailand) and whose name is Dr. Zira.
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When we recently caught up with alt/metal frontwoman Kristyn Hope of Deadric to inquire about her favorite films, she responded immediately: “To give you a bit of background, I grew up on VHSs. We had about 200 movies and I’d watch the same ones over and over and over. It was very unhealthy.”
Sounds like a true movie aficionado to us.
She continued: “So anyway, my list of favorite movies is largely based on the ones we had. Because I grew up pretty poor, we didn’t rent movies often. I would go to the) library and get the free movies – you know, like C-level movies.
The proof of Hope’s testimony can be found in the ensuing rundown of her favorite flicks of all time;
Godzilla (1998)
The 1998 version of Godzilla was one of my favorites. I know it shouldn’t even count as a Godzilla movie, but it was the only monster movie I had [available to watch at home]. And I was so into monsters. The idea of a giant kaiju was so cool to me. It was just such an interesting creature. Also, the CGI – for the time – was good.
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The Bad Penny (beta) 