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From the Vault Exclusive: Pelican Details Each Track on Guest-Filled ‘What We All Come to Need’

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews with tags , , , , , on 10/24/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

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

Pelican’s friends are cooler than yours.

The instru-metalists have been in good company throughout their career. Out of the gate, they signed to Aaron Turner‘s Hydra Head label, which the Chicagoans called home till they recently hopped over to Greg Anderson’s similar-minded doom factory, Southern Lord.

Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Godflesh) has remixed some of their slabs, and also mixed the sound for their live CD/DVD set, After the Ceiling Cracked, a few years back.

Pelican have also been remixed by Prefuse 73; collaborated with Earth’s Dylan Carlson on their Ephemeral EP, which dropped on Southern Lord in June; joined forces with Mono, Scissorfight, These Arms Are Snakes, Young Widows, Playing Enemy and the Austerity Program for split EPs; and toured with too many bands to count: High on Fire, Russian Circles, Torche and beyond.

In other words, they get lonely all by themselves. So would you, if you spent most of your time speechlessly venturing into the far-reaches of epic riffage.

Maybe taking a tip from their Windy City neighbor Kanye – or, more likely, from classic-rock bands of yore – Pelican are now ready to let some of their amigos (beyond Carlson) play along with them, featured-guest style.

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From the Vault: Dr. Know (Bad Brains) and Brandon Cruz’s Guide To DIY Touring

Posted in Interviews, Lists, Sound Off with tags , , , on 10/24/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

[This article was originally published on IndiePit in 2010.]

Punks don’t make the likeliest businessmen, for obvious reasons. Capitalism and punk aren’t exactly synonymous – in fact, by definition, they’re more or less contradictory.

But funny things happen in a time of crisis.

These days, more bands are taking more matters into their own hands, whether it be issuing their own material (like Clutch), producing their own records and/or shooting their own videos. But while this trend has mostly arisen out of necessity – the mother of invention, as the saying goes – self-empowerment has historically been a brass ring of sorts for bands adamant about maintaining control over their artistic output. Now they’re managing to find an opportunity in crisis: complete creative control.

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On Tyranny: Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Finalist Ted Hearne Says ‘We Need to Identify With the Farm Worker’ for America to Survive

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , , , , , on 10/24/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

[Subscribe to The Bad Penny by clicking the “New Subscription” box in the upper-righthand corner of this page.]

In the latest installment of The Bad Penny‘s On Tyranny series, we catch up with esteemed composer, singer and conductor Ted Hearne about Authoritarian America and his new album, Farming (Deathbomb Arc). The engrossing, story-based album – which dropped a week ago – ingeniously compares the philosophies of Pennsylvania founder William Penn and Amazon mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos as a way of getting to better understand what lies at the heart of America and its values. Hearne examines labor rights, capitalism and the U.S.’s rapidly changing economy – and how they contributed to the strife currently raging across the nation.

“Culture-war rhetoric very often serves to paper over another reality, and what I think is the underlying tension we should be focusing on, which is the ever-widening wealth gap,” Hearne says. “Most wealthy people in this country … the work to sustain their wealth are investing choices. And then wealth begets itself and grows. This is not the wealth of manufacturing ingenuity most of the time. People know that, and people who labor to make things know that. And there’s a deep anger about that. I’m angry about it too.”

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Exclusive: Moonspell Vocalist Salutes Departed Tomas Lindberg of At the Gates, Says They Shared ‘Wild Nights’ Together

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews with tags , , , , , , on 10/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Many of us are still trying to cope with the sudden loss of Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, arguably the best vocalist and lyricist in Scandinavian melodic death metal, last month. At the Gates, the band he led, helped pioneer one of metal’s best subgenres, also known as melodeth. Lindberg family, friends, bandmates, fans and anyone who reveres At the Gates are still processing and trying to make sense of his passing at age 52 due to a rare type of cancer called Adenoid cystic carcinoma.

Last week, Fredrik Andersson — who played drums for another legendary melodic death metal band, Amon Amarth, from 1997 to 2015 — expressed his admiration for Lindberg and shared an Irish wake laugh during an interview with The Bad Penny earlier this month.

On Thursday, we had the honor of finally interviewing Moonspell vocalist Fernando Ribeiro, one of the few melodeth vocalists that The Bad Penny had never interviewed before.

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Too Much Joy’s Bassist Cracks the Code to Chat Pile’s Success

Posted in Interviews, News with tags , , , , , on 10/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

[Subscribe to The Bad Penny by clicking the “New Subscription” box in the upper-righthand corner of this page.]

When we had the pleasure of interviewing indie legend Too Much Joy this week, we talked a hell of a lot about their upcoming plans, a special reissue they have on the way, their take on Authoritarian America and much more.

We’ll be bringing you a couple of articles stemming from the 60-minutes-plus conversation with two of the Too Much Joy dudes, but as a way of whetting your palette, we present you today with an informative chunk of conversation with bassist/vocalist Sandy Smallens and vocalist Tim Quirk that wouldn’t have fit into the other stories.

Our exchange revolves around not just Too Much Joy but also Chat Pile. Specifically, Smallens addresses why he thinks other young bands should follow Chat Pile’s lead – not duplicating their sound, but learning how the best noise-rock band of the past five years interacts with their fanbase.

In the words of Ariel from The Little Mermaid, “It’s a whole new world,” and Smallens all but implores bands that want to build a strong fanbase to take note of how Oklahoma City giants Chat Pile have done so.

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On Tyranny: Scotland Grindcore Artist Chairmaker Channels Anger Over Fascism Toward Helping Immigrants

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , on 10/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Scottish multi-instrumentalist Neil Erskine pours his blood, sweat and tears into his band Chairmaker for two reasons: to create the best grindcore his impressive abilities will allow; and to use that music as the soundtrack to his assault on late-stage capitalism. So, naturally, The Bad Penny was morally obligated to invite Erskine to participate in our ongoing On Tyranny series. He accepted wholeheartedly and jumped on a provocative video chat with us a few days ago.

We caught up with Mr. Chairmaker about three weeks before the release of Leviathan Carcass, a record he’s self-releasing on his Bandcamp page on Nov. 14. Watch The Bad Penny‘s conversation with the hyper-enlightened Erskine, and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two – if nothing else, that the new wave of authoritarianism destroying America is causing similar destruction across the pond and elsewhere in the world.

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Exclusive: Trashy Annie Comments on 2 Killer Songs Ahead of New LP Release

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews with tags on 10/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Tried-and-true rock musician Trashy Annie appears like a rock vet who has been through the grind for decades – she’s a true believer of the authentic rawk music she writes and performs. And yet she’s still fairly new to most devoted classic-rock fans, having only released her first full-length album, Sticks & Stones, through Cleopatra Records in May 2023.

While based in Austin, Trashy Annie’s happy place is in a bar where she can blast her punk-infused hard-rock laced with country soul – in essence, the core ingredients needed to cook up a surefire concoction of American rock ‘n’ roll. She’s got the image down pat too, as if she began studying how to be a character actor from the day she was born till now. Trashy Annie lives and breathes her sweaty, snide and yet also endearing style, 24-7. Imagine a female version of Lemmy, and you’ll get the drift.

Oh, and did we mention that she’s a contestant on the current season of Survivor? 

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On Tyranny: Black-Metal/Hardcore Band Terzij de Horde Say ‘Gaza Is Waking People Up’ to Authoritarian Creep in Netherlands

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , , , on 10/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

With the Netherlands’ general election taking place in exactly one week, The Bad Penny touches base with one of the country’s best underground bands, black-metal/hardcore sorcerers Terzij de Horde to discuss how they too are facing a potential authoritarian takeover similar to the one happening in the U.S. Specifically, bassist Johan van Hattum and vocalist Joost Vervoort.

“The situation is a little different here than in the U.S., but not by much,” Vervoort says early in the conversation. And as our talk ensues, his point is validated by the topics we touch upon: vitriol from rural communities directed at the government and immigrants, a bracing fear of technology and rampant individualism that – while once glorified as the embodiment of freedom, is turning against the good of collective societies. Specifically, bassist Johan van Hattum and vocalist Joost Vervoort.

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Dying Remains Debut With a Vengeance, Are ‘Meaner’ Than Bolt Thrower

Posted in Interviews with tags , on 10/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Talking with a band on the day their album comes out is exactly the same as talking with a 10-year-old ripping wrapping paper off boxes of gifts on Christmas Day. It’s unadulterated joy. Unless maybe the band found a defect in the packaging, or that the tracks were listed out of order, or that the artwork is wrong.  Anyway, you get the drift.

The Bad Penny had the good fortune of catching up with the gleeful gang that comprise the similarly jovial-filled band named Dying Remains, death-metal darlings who hail from Calgary, Alberta, on the day their new album came out. In fact, Merciless Suffering isn’t just their latest record: It’s their first-ever full-length, following warm-up releases Entombed in Putrefaction (an EP from 2023) and the split Dead & Buried: A Death Metal Compilation that appeared in mid-June.

California death-metal label Maggot Stomp – which has also released records by 200 Stab Wounds, Frozen Soul, Coffin Rot, Vomit Forth, Ossuary, Tribal Gaze and Internal Bleeding – have been the Mickey to Dying Remains’ Rocky Balboa throughout the entirety of their still-nascent career.

Maggot Stomp is championing them as TNBT on their label if not across the death-metal scene on the whole, and it doesn’t take more than a listen to Merciless Suffering to understand why. Guttural, deliberate and catchy through and through, the record is the soundtrack to the lives of those of us who can’t wait for ours to end.

On that note, enjoy our whimsical, innocent and uplifting conversation with Dying Remains’ vocalist/guitarist/bassist Damon MacDonald, conducted a month ago while they cradled their new baby in their arms.

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Lush’s Miki Berenyi: ‘I Don’t Think AI Will Ever Really Work for Me’

Posted in Interviews with tags , on 10/22/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Read my interview with Miki Berenyi, the vocalist/guitarist for Lush whose lyrics candidly taught me at a young age about the ups and downs of romantic relationships, on FLOOD. Conducting this interview with one of the dreamiest musicians in dream-pop was a lifelong dream realized, and it was perhaps one of the last chances to do so, given that she’s now through touring the States.

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