The Bad Penny (beta)

Welcome to the 15th 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. We deserve lotsa high-fives this time around, because all 10 picks are full-lengths – of high quality, of course – which makes us the most benevolent music outlet on the website. And which, in turns, explains we’re so financially destitute there needs to be a new phrase for it.

(Note: If you’re financially capable of supporting any of these artists and/or labels, please consider doing so.)

1. Verdun – Abyssal Womb

You likely won’t remember – because it’d be weird if you did – that a Verdun song was feature on a compilation issued by our favorite most-generous record label, Transcending Obscurity, in January of this year. If you remember liking that song – we’ll say it again, you must have some kind of brain disorder or you’re wicked smaht, because we have zero recollection of it ourselves – then download Abyssal Womb immediately. They’re French. They traffic in the scummiest strains of metal: doom, blackened sludge, all the components of a healthy diet of despicable debris for the ears. Why aren’t you listening yet.

2. The Austerity Program – Backsliders and Apostates Will Burn

Yours truly interviewed The Austerity Program for Treble 13 months ago, and it was a good time. The better man participating in the conversations was fast-talking Justin Foley, one-half of the noise-rock duo, who works full-time as a union organizer as well. The band just posted their 2010 record, Backsliders and Apostates Will Burn, for free on Bandcamp. It’s the latest sign that Foley and his bandmate, bassist Thad Calabrese, are far more badass than the rest of us heathens ever will be.

3. Variant Cause – Hit Songs Vol. 1

Variant Cause are one of those bands that were so cool it’s like their speed was set to hyperdrive and we could only marvel at them zooming over our heads like that Empire Strikes Back scene in which Han, Leia, Chewy and C-3P-lame-0 witness something like that happening. Spokane’s Variant Cause were a revered anti-grunge band before the movement even started in Seattle; somewhat ironically, the most important grunge studio wizard, Jack Endino, has worked his magic on these Variant Cause tracks, and the results are righteous.