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On Tyranny: Grasshopper Lies Heavy Guitarist/Vocalist Preps for ‘Dealing With the Fallout of New American Fascism’ Till He Dies

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , on 10/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

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“Just existing here in a red state is an act of resistance.”
-The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’s James Woodard

Of all the artists we’ve invited to participate (and who have accepted to be) in The Bad Penny‘s ongoing series On Tyranny, probably no other musician has been more clear, direct and uncompromising than James Woodard, guitarist/vocalist for post-metal/doom/sludge chaos agents The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. The band from San Antonio, Texas, is now in its 20th year but is showing no signs of crying uncle, as a listen of their upcoming record, HEAVY, both purports to be and actually is.

Just as with the album, which will arrive Nov. 14 on Learning Curve Records, our conversation with Woodard about Authoritarian America isn’t for the faint of heart. But you know what else isn’t, sadly? What is happening in the country so many of us claim to be proud of. So, as the right likes to say, put your big-boy pants on and read the unvarnished truth, straight from the mouth of a metal madman who makes total sense.

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Pet Sounds #70: Saxophonist for the Band Pets Adores His … You Guessed It …

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , , , on 10/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

“Pinky no thinky. Pinky is a spacey tuxedo cat who bonks really hard. She has a giant forehead.”
-Pets’ Chase Ceglie

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The spirit forces (or algorithms, or whatever) threw down the gauntlet at the proverbial feet of The Bad Penny by making us aware of a band called pets. Immediately, the challenge was on to embrace them as part of our ongoing series Pet Sounds, in which we talk with musicians about their often furry (but sometimes scaly or even feathery) frie nds. Lucky for us, pets agreed to let us befriend them – and they’re the focus of the 70th installment of Pet Sounds, which we launched just over one year ago. (If you think that’s a fast-moving series, be sure to check out On Tyranny, which is keeping pace.)

Adding to the kismet, pets – an ambient-electronic quartet based in New York – issued their latest album, the wryly titled 🌀❓(Spiral Question Mark), today. It’s catchy, freewheeling fun from start to finish, enough to make a cat hop up and down. Speaking of which, Chase Ceglie – who writes music and lyrics for the band; and plays tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, ewi, flute, synths, bass, vocals, string arrangement and effects to boot – was the pets member who volunteered to talk with us about his, you guessed it: cats.

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On Tyranny: Gunshy’s Matt Arbogast Shares No Kings 2 Dispatch From Protest’s Chicago Hotbed

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , , , , on 10/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

“This is what Joe Strummer prepared us for.”
-The Gunshy’s Matt Arbogast

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Yesterday, The Bad Penny had the privilege of catching up with alt-folk artist Matt Arbogast of the Gunshy a day after he participated in No Kings 2 in his hometown of Chicago, the epicenter of the latest round of anti-Trump, anti-fascist protests. We were initially scheduled to only speak about his project’s new record, Hurricane Umbrellas, which will hit stores on Dec. 5.

Indeed, we dug into the record, and we’ll bring you those parts of the interview in the coming weeks. But with No Kings 2 on the brain, we’re first delivering Arbogast’s first-hand account of the protest in which he and his family participated on Saturday – a protest that amassed 7 million participants nationwide, making it the largest social mobilization in American history.

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On Tyranny: Kenny Loggins Says Trump in ‘Danger’ Over ‘No Kings 2’ Poop-Bomb AI Video

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , on 10/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Bravo, Kenny Loggins. Three words yours truly never thought he’d put into print. Find out why here.

On Tyranny archive here.

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On Tyranny: Truculent Frontman Warns MAGA Might Ban Concerts Altogether

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , on 10/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

“You have to be really cognizant when a band says, ‘We’re not political.’ We don’t have that privilege anymore.”
-Truculent’s Dan Timlin

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As The Bad Penny nears the 50th installment of our On Tyranny series, we began to worry that our conversations with musicians, enriching as each and every one of them has been, might begin to become redundant. But then we connected with Dan Timlin, a musical and intellectual genius who opened entire new doors of thinking about the destruction of democracy in America in a hyper-informative interview he so graciously granted us last month.

We’ll even go so far as to say that, if you read only one installment in the On Tyranny franchise, this is it. Timlin spoke with us shortly before the release of Born for the Gallows or the Wheel, the latest album by his avant-garde project issued via Strange Mono Records. Interspersed in the below conversation are clips from the record to provide you with a soundtrack of sorts and to assuage you through something of a master’s-course-level class in music, psychology and politics that Timlin presented to us.

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Pet Sounds #69: Push Puppets Frontman Loves His Puppies

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , , on 10/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

In the first video edition of The Bad Penny‘s ongoing Pet Sounds series, in which musicians gush about their love for their pets, Erich Specht – frontman for Chicago indie-rock band Push Puppets – introduces us to his 7-month-old basset hound buddy, Grizz. The big-hearted lead vocalist and guitarist of the quintet also shares fond memories of his late companion Louie, to whom he pays tribute in Push Puppets’ song “Probably,” and also chats about his participation in yesterday’s No Kings 2 action to boot.

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On Tyranny: As No Kings Rallies Near, Here Are Music’s Top 20 ‘Kings,’ From B.B. to Gizzard

Posted in Features, Lists, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , , , on 10/16/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

The second and potentially attendance record-shattering No Kings protests are rapidly arriving in less than 48 hours at an estimated 2,500 cities across the U.S., intended to demonstrate that Americans are more opposed to the Trump regime than ever before. For no real reason other than giddiness, we decided to express our excitement in utterly esoteric fashion by ranking the 20 best musicians and bands with “King” in their name.

Here goes:

(Note: Musicians nicknamed the “King” of a certain music genre are disqualified. And no, we didn’t forget Kings of Leon. They suck.)

1. Nat King Cole

2. B.B. King

3. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

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On Tyranny: Deaf Club Guitarist Denounces Trumpists for Taking ‘Pride’ in Racism, Sexism

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , on 10/16/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

In the latest installment of On Tyranny, Brian Amalfitano (Deaf Club, ACxDC) criticizes the right wing in America for abusing free speech to further their racist, sexist, anti-immigrant and fascist aims—including, shockingly, in quarters of the punk-rock underground. Amalfitano also provides insight into Deaf Club‘s newly released album, We Demand a Permanent State of Happiness (Southern Lord), what nihilism means in the guitarist’s point of view and how it might take longer than a generation to undo the catastrophic damage that the Trump regime continues to inflict upon America.

Following our Wednesday night conversation, Amalfitano touched base again with The Bad Penny to share sentiments expressed by a hero of his and of this website, Kurt Cobain: “If any of you, in any way, hate homosexuals, people of a different color or women, please do this one favor for us — leave us the fuck alone.”

Additionally, Newsweek reported Thursday that the Trump administration indeed may double it’s “bailout” of Argentina to $40 billion, while the cost of extending the Obamacare subsidies that is apparently at the heart of the U.S. government shutdown would amount to about $35 billion for the next fiscal year. (Meanwhile, the same Congressional budget resolution has already granted $29 billion in new funding for ICE, swelling its budget to a size greater than the national military of all but 15 to 20 countries.)

Check out The Bad Penny‘s 43-part On Tyranny series, which The Bad Penny launched in the spring, here. Recent installments include interviews with Cosmic Reaper, MyVeronica, Planet on a Chain, Necrofier, Cheap Perfume, Bobby Conn and many more.

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On Tyranny: Cosmic Reaper’s Frontman Says ‘This Is a Class War … We Can Take the Power Back’

Posted in Features, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , on 10/15/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

The honorable Thad Collis, guitarist and vocalist for surging doom-metal squad Cosmic Reaper from Charlotte, North Carolina, blasts the oligarchy and warns that the metal underground will not be spared in Authoritarian America if we all don’t act immediately to stop the Trump regime. The band’s new album, Bleed the Wicked, Drown the Damned (Heavy Psych Sounds), is already a contender for best metal album of the year. Buy it here. Check out The Bad Penny‘s 42-part On Tyranny series, launched roughly around March, here.

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On Tyranny: MyVeronica’s Mia Lin Says ‘True Meaning of Punk’ Is ‘To Speak Out’

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , on 10/03/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Mia Lin of L.A. DIY guitar band MyVeronica engages in a stimulating conversation about the impetus of real punk-rock artists meeting the moment and calling out authoritarianism and discrimination when they see it. We caught up earlier this week, following the early August release of Farewell Skylines, their split EP with Friend’s House.

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