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From the Vault: Trivium’s Lyrics Don’t Make Any Sense

Posted in Essays, Sound Off with tags , on 11/15/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Trivium is quite possibly The Bad Penny‘s guiltiest of pleasures, and we’re gunning to see them in concert for the 10th-or-so time Nov. 29 at Revolution Concert House in Garden City, Idaho. But to balance out this website’s legitimacy, we’re counterbalancing our affection for vocalist/guitarist Matt Heafy’s band by unearthing this harsh but fair analysis of his lyrics that IndiePit originally ran in 2009.

Hey, what can we say? Trivium is pretty good at breakdowns; The Bad Penny ain’t too shabby at takedowns. Also, any guilt we might feel over this lambasting of Heafy’s lyrics is rendered moot by the band charging $55.70 to attend the aforementioned show. Not cool in the economically devastating times in which the non-billionaires among us are currently trying to survive.

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Memento: Jawbox Letter Proves They Were the Truest ‘Sweethearts’ of ’90s Indie Rock

Posted in Essays, Exclusives, Features, Mementos with tags , , , on 10/27/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

For a band that titled arguably its best album For Your Own Special Sweetheart (1994), Jawbox may themselves be the sweetest post-hardcore band of the ’90s.

On the fateful Friday night of Nov. 22 in 1996, excitement for the weekend got into the heads of three students – including yours truly – and ousted any semblance of logic as punishment. When we learned that the J. Robbins-led Jawbox had plans to play a gig at Mabel’s in Champaign, a city located two hours south of Chicago.

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Damn You, Ozzy Osbourne, for Preventing Us From Fully Mourning At the Gates Frontman Tomas Lindberg When He Too Died

Posted in Essays, News, Sound Off with tags , , , , on 10/26/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

It’s a crisp, autumn afternoon in a quasi-rural area in America’s Pacific Northwest, and something feels off. No, it’s not that we were apparently, miraculously spared from the apocalyptic fires and resulting ash that typically choke us out for weeks practically every year as a result of climate change. Nor is it that Trump and his MAGA minions are tying up the remaining ends that will cement America’s transition from a democracy into a country ruled by a king (and, if we’re being generous, equally megalomaniacal and sadistic billionaire oligarchs).

Rather, what’s stuck in this writer’s craw today is the gaping maw – expected in the mainstream, because Ozzy was more tabloid fodder than musician in his twilight years – but shameful in the metal world, where former social studies teacher Lindberg’s impact on underground metal was if not as seismic than still immeasurable than Osbourne’s role in bringing metal to the masses. Needless to say, the deaths of each metal vocalist powerhouse was saddening and unsettling, but it bears noting that they epitomized different factions of the music genre that – attendance size aside – are standing, more or less, on equal ground.

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On Tyranny: Donald Trump Is More Insane Than the Craziest Musicians Ever, From Elvis to Kanye

Posted in Essays, Features, Lists, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , , , on 10/01/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Consider the following:

1. Michael “Pras” Michel, one-third of the Fugees, was convicted in April 2023 on 10 counts related to falsifying business records. Donald Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

2. Syd Barrett, guitarist and co-founder of Pink Floyd, allegedly took LSD every morning and locked his girlfriend in a room for three days. Donald is allegedly sending individuals who may or may not be documented U.S. citizens to gulags in El Salvador and is publicly urging Americans to not take Tylenol.

3. Keith Moon, drummer of The Who, admitted to accidentally running over his friend and bodyguard with his car. Moon, who was allegedly drunk at the time of the incident, publicly apologized for the tragedy. Donald Trump proudly and remorselessly declared that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

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From the Vault: Top 20 Reasons Why Monterey Pop Was Better Than Today’s Music Festivals

Posted in Concert Reviews, Essays, Reviews with tags , , , on 10/01/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

[This article was originally published in 2009 on IndiePit.]

So IndiePit will be at the Mayhem festival this weekend. Yeah, yeah, keep snickering, buster. Look, we all have guilty pleasures, and one of ours happens to be Mushroomhead, OK? Kidding, kidding … but Job for a Cowboy, Behemoth and Slayer? Not a terrible way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Sure beats mowing lawns.

Obviously, Mayhem is only one of about a gazillion festivals, hootenannies, throwdowns, hoedowns, showdowns and mow-downs (?) happening this “summer,” that wacky, wet and wild season that began oh, some 18 days ago and will last until September 22. At that point, autumn will swoop in, wrest the reins from its rival season and pulverize it into oblivion … for nine months or so, anyway.

Getting a little off-topic, are we? Oh, yes. Music. Sweet music. Since it is the summer and all, attention naturally gravitates toward festivals, those bastions of sweat-soaked sods, misplaced mods, knuckle-dragging clods, Christopher Dodds and other odds and ends.

They can be fun — if you’ve got buckets of patience, nary a phobia and an active-enough imagination to keep you distracted from all the dirt, heat, smoke and slick flesh sliding up against yours. But they can also be torturous and confining, like being helplessly strapped to a chair, at the mercy of a dentist from hell.

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From the Vault: Are the Pixies Milking It With Their Multitudinous Video Releases?

Posted in Album Reviews, Essays, Reviews with tags , , , , on 09/27/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

(Note: This essay was written before the Pixies released a fifth video, Live at the Town and Country Club 1988, in 2011.)

So, shocker: Some people have been suggesting in the five-plus years since Pixies re-formed that maybe the foursome – who are revving up for another trek – have only been doing it for the money. What a strange, bizarre accusation. Like the plot of a Behind the Music episode, it’s the most predictable question of all for any band getting back together: It’s been alleged of everyone from CSNY to Simon & Garfunkel to Eagles to the Stooges to My Bloody Valentine to Rage Against the Machine to Dinosaur Jr. to the Jesus Lizard and on. And on. And on.

On the other hand, there is some potentially sound evidence that raking in the clams has been the main, if not only, reason Pixies reunited. As evident in the somewhat-illuminating doc loudQUIETloud, one of the DVDs we’ll be focusing on below, David Lovering was on the verge of going broke, falling back on his career as a magician – turning tricks in order to make ends meet, if you will.

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From the Vault: Fine Print – Sunny Day Real Estate Frontman Jeremy Enigk’s OK Bear

Posted in Essays, Interviews with tags , on 09/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Isn’t Jeremy Enigk adorable? Cute as a bear, the softhearted might even say.

In the off-chance you’ve never heard of him before – or the even offer-chance (?) that you’ve never heard of Sunny Day Real Estate, the recently reunited post-rock pioneers – Enigk doesn’t look like this anymore. He’s all grown up now. In fact, the sweet-sounding singer/songwriter is actually celebrating his 35th birthday on Thursday, as the stalkers among us are probably well aware.

Since the above photograph was snapped, Enigk has put out a backpack’s worth of albums. But his recently released solo effort, OK Bear, actually marks the first time he’s slapped an image of himself onto a cover.

Why? Well, it’s funny you ask, because we just asked Enigk during his recent IndiePit interview, the first part of which we posted last week (you might wanna read that article before going forward with this one, since in it he provided all the 411 on OK Bear). In addition to what you read prior, we also chatted with him in detail about the album imagery and beyond.

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From the Vault: Deafheaven’s 2017 Tour Setlists and First-Ever Show in Boise – An Analysis

Posted in Concert Reviews, Essays, Reviews with tags , , , , , , on 09/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Deafheaven’s setlist from their show at Mardi Gras in Boise on 3.25.17

When Deafheaven played their first show in Boise on March 25 – at Mardi Gras, a venue typically reserved for wedding functions – they provided the five-day Treefort Music Fest with its only dose of shoe-gazing black metal. Continue reading →

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From the Vault: Frivolous Live Blogging of Old ‘Headbangers Ball’ Episodes

Posted in Essays, Reviews, Videos with tags , , , , , on 09/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Mastodon are kings of the mountain right now. If their clip for “Divinations” were a trailer for some “Thing”-like gritty Arctic-meets-outer-space sci-fi flick, I’d have already bought my ticket. That the bandmembers stepped into their acting shoes for the video is fitting, as everybody in the group has a “voice” – all the guys are contributing vocals. …

While that video might be reason alone to pray for “Headbangers Ball” to survive, the reality is late March’s two-hour episode had at best a half-dozen worthy videos (including Mastodon’s “Divinations,” Lamb of God‘s “Set to Fail,” Cannibal Corpse‘s “Evisceration Plague,” Exodus‘ “Riot Act” and Cattle Decapitation‘s “Regret & the Grave”).

So let’s do the math: That adds up to about 20 minutes of good viewing time over the course of two hours. The rest of the time is devoted to giving life support to bad informercials and bands like Hed P.E. (vanity spellings deliberately omitted ’cause they suck) and Dope and Lizzy Borden and …

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On Tyranny: Jesus Lizard Vocalist David Yow Ditches US for Portugal

Posted in Essays, Features, News, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

As our nation rapidly transforms into Authoritarian America, artists – who are typically among the first to be targeted when a dictatorship takes control of a country – are relocating to countries where their right to free speech is still protected.

One of the more prominent indie-rock artists to make the move is Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, who relocated to Portugal earlier this year, according to multiple sources who recently confirmed the news to The Bad Penny. None of the sources said outright that Trump’s reclaiming of the presidency was their motivating factor for Yow fleeing the U.S., however.

When yours truly interviewed Yow and Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison last year for a feature on FLOOD, the vocalist whose lyrics were historically apolitical admitted that he felt boxed in by the inexorable partisan strife in America and said he was compelled to address current events on the band’s comeback record, Rack.

“A larger percentage of the lyrics than I wished were based on the political climate in the U.S. for the last seven or eight years,” he confided in a video conference call.

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