Archive for the Interviews Category

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Pet Sounds #63: Kinsella & Pulse, LLC’s Most Prized Employee Is Bomba the Cat

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , , , , , on 09/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

When The Bad Penny caught up with Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse earlier this year, they were living the high life. Fresh off the release of their third collaborative album, the deliberately misspelled Open ing Night, the musicians previously of Joan of Arc and Spa Moans, respectively, were taking a break between tours with Karate by staying at Kinsella’s cousin’s 400-year-old apartment in Italy. The indie-rockers, whose new project is called Kinsella and Pulse, LLC, had just eaten a five-course lunch by the ocean and seemed to be wanting for nothing.

Well, except one thing – of the furry variety.

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From the Vault: Everclear’s Art Alexakis Recounts Every Detail of ‘Santa Monica’ While Revisiting the Place That Inspired the Hit Song

Posted in Interviews with tags , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Fifteen years ago, yours truly – while serving as Editor of Santa Monica Patch, a hyper-local news website owned by AOL – was fortunate enough to rope in Art Alexakis, frontman for hit-single machine Everclear, for a special interview. The premise? Our conversation would revolve entirely around the alt-rock band’s biggest song, “Santa Monica,” and be conducted as we walked along Palisades Park, which overlooks the setting where the song took place and what inspired him to write it.

For such a seemingly simple, radio-friendly song, Alexakis revealed that there was a genuine, heartbreaking story behind it. He spared nary a detail about “Santa Monica” during our 90-minute journey together; while the song’s lyrics consist of about 300 words, our conversation – presented in its entirety here, for posterity’s sake – totaled more than 5,100 words.

Everclear completists and pop fans curious about the stories behind some of the best-known hits in the past three decades, prepare for a quasi-extension course revolving around a single song and taught by one of the best alt-rock lyricists of the ’90s. We’re rolling it out in celebration of the 30th anniversary of Sparkle and Fade, on which “Santa Monica” appears; the 15th anniversary of our interview with Alexakis; and as Everclear tour into early November in commemoration of the former anniversary.

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On Tyranny: Malist Maestro Fights Russian Monarchs With New Project Crimson Crown

Posted in Interviews, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Inside Moscow, a once-US adversary that appears to be becoming more of an ally thanks to Donald Trump’s hero-worship of its dictatorial leader Vladimir Putin, is a man waging his own war against the same type of authorial rule that is taking hold in the U.S. If you’re acquainted with The Bad Penny’s On Tyranny series, in which we interview musicians who previously or are currently living under authoritarian regimes, you should be familiar with him: Ovfrost, an inspired young artist whose primary project Malist is recognized far beyond the borders of Russia thanks to its excellence in rebelling against tyranny, war and isolation with seething, searing and superiorly executed black metal.

As brave as the uncompromising music that Ovfrost unleashes with enviable proficiency practically every year with Malist, the longhaired prodigy graciously spoke with us candidly and without fear in 2023 and 2024 in opposition to his country’s invasion of Ukraine. During those conversations, he inspired the continuation of our On Tyranny series while many other rock critics and outlets began shirking away from the topics of tyranny, fascism and authoritarianism as Trump strengthened his grip on the U.S. and continued finding new ways to establish a unitary executive, i.e. making himself a king in these United States. As Putin keeps setting an example for Trump’s takeover, Ovfrost is setting an example for us on how to combat those anti-democratic efforts.

With Ovfrost’s courage in mind — keep in mind he lives a solitary existence, sans security detail, and is creating and even starting to perform live some of the most anti-establishment music on the planet — we sought his counsel for the third year in a row on how to deal with forces of evil that few of us would have imagined could effectively take over America. This time around, however, the music project of Ovfrost that we also focused on was his newer affair Crimson Crown — which, as you will soon learn, is even more brazen in its message to crush monarchic rule.

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From the Vault: Lou Barlow Opens Up About Opening For Dinosaur Jr.

Posted in Interviews with tags , , , on 09/20/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

It is no longer possible to be antisocial. Because, if you could, Lou Barlow wouldn’t be on Twitter.

That’s right, the guy who couldn’t get out of his own head for most of his life is now having trouble getting back into it.

In an age when everyone’s modus operandi seems to be spilling their thoughts onto social-networking sites as frequently and quickly as possible, it seems that introspection has gone out the window. And Barlow, indie rock’s prince of pondering, agrees.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that,” he recently told IndiePit, replying with an amusing choice of words. “The time that I would spend in the past – just writing in a journal, let’s say – I now spend going on Facebook and doing 10 blurbs to people. Everything becomes, ‘Oh yeah, I gotta keep in touch with this person.’

“I like that I’m able to connect with people now and it doesn’t have to be on the phone – which I have a real hard time with,” he told us via telephone, “but at the same time, I was realizing, ‘Wow, you know, I haven’t really sat down to do a lot of journals,’ where I was just writing stuff off the top of my head that I can use later or that just helps me sort through. But after a year of touring, I think there will be plenty of isolation. I have to reclaim that part of my life.”

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Favorite Films: Point Break 2 Frontman Cops to His Guilty-Pleasure Movies: ‘Mortal Kombat,’ ‘Terror,’ ‘Elvis,’ More

Posted in Favorite Films, Features, Guilty Pleasures, Interviews, Lists with tags , , , , , , , on 09/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Earlier this month saw a new release by Point Break 2 – no, not a sequel to the immortal 1991 surfing-undercover-cop-thriller-pseudohomoerotic-unintentional-comedy-action masterpiece starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, but rather a fresh record by a band using that amusing name as its moniker. Featuring members of Brooklyn indie bands These Are Powers and The Flag including Ted McGrath, Point Break 2’s self-titled EP dropped on Naturally Records.

McGrath originally assembled Point Break 2 to bide his time while The Flag’s second LP was in the works. But he hit it off so well with Flag bandmate Ryan Crozier, Jason Robira of Sunwatchers, Fixtures’ Kris Liakos and Billy Bouchard (Ice Balloons, Dancehall Crashers) that they decided to formalize Point Break 2 as a full-fledged project.

And how could they not, with a fuzzy, skronky song as infectious as lead single “Hall of Justice”?

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Pet Sounds #62: Wolves Bassist Is Obsessed With His … You Guessed It: His Cat

Posted in Features, Interviews, Pet Sounds with tags , on 09/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Earlier this month, post-rock and post-metal heathens Wolves dropped their latest record, which is self-titled but features snarky artwork referring to the effort as This Is a Record Called Self-Titled by a Band Called Wolves. Issued through Ripcord Records (whose mascot features a cat’s face), it finds the five-piece gnawing at the confines of genre with a ferocity that commands a feral-like instinct to pay attention on both carnal and cerebral levels.

Wolves, founded in 2016, consist of Mark Howes (vocals, guitar); Andrew “Beard” Rodger (guitar, vocals); Ryan Tyrrell (guitar, vocals); Andy Price (bass, vocals); and Robbie Tewelde (drums). They’re based throughout the Coventry in the Midlands County of England. If you just overlooked the fact that four of the five dudes contribute vocals, you won’t when you hear their seismic onslaught of a sound, which will reel in fans of Dillinger Escape Plan hook, link and sinker:

Incidentally, it’s not just Ripcord that’s obsessed with cats; so are the musicians who comprise Wolves. And many of their names are equally colorful and hilarious. Among Tewelde’s cats is Pharrell Williams, Howes’ cat is named Chairman Meow, (nicknamed “The Chairman” or “Mr. Bitey”). Price has one too, and in celebration of Wolves’ new, certifiably and quantifiably insane beast of a record, we invited him to participate in the latest edition of our long-running series, Pet Sounds.

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Timo Ellis Lauds Gojira’s Joe Duplantier as ‘Genius,’ Discloses Autism Diagnosis

Posted in Interviews with tags , , , , , , , on 09/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

What do Gojira, Yoko Ono and Money Mark have in common? A man named Timo Ellis, with whom they and a litany of other music legends have collaborated over the years. As prolific as Stephen King, Ellis is a pro at dozens of instruments and boasts tenure with a vast array of bands, including his own projects Netherlands and OOMASOOMA. On October 10, he will roll out El Bronco Blanco, the third collection of material by the latter affair. It succeeds Endless Future and Delireal, an EP that was released in August.

The self-described “genre-fluid” Ellis recently granted The Bad Penny an exhaustive examination of his artistic mind and endeavors, some of the tricks to his trade, and an honest account of his experiences working with a slew of musicians. (He also disclosed that a new Netherlands record is on the way.)

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Video Interview: Der Weg Einer Freiheit Frontman Nikita Kamprad Delivers Straight Talk

Posted in Interviews, Videos with tags , on 09/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Thorsten Schaeben and I recently interviewed from Veil of Sound interview Der Weg Einer Freiheit frontman Nikita Kamprad about the German melodic death band’s new record for Season of Mist, Innern. The very well-spoken music vet was about as candid as you can get. Check out the conversation:

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Kontusion Vocalist: ‘I Started Puking Out This Black-Red Shit’

Posted in Interviews with tags on 09/17/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Read my insightful Post-Trash interview with Kontusion vocalist/guitarist/bassist Mark Bronzino on the creation of his punk-peppered, death-metal band’s debut album, Insatiable Lust for Death.

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On Tyranny: Eugene S. Robinson (Buñuel, Ex-Oxbow) Leaving US for Spain, Says ‘I’ve Had It’

Posted in Features, Interviews, News, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , on 09/07/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

“My attitude used to be like, I built this country, I’m going to fight for the soul of this country.
And then, finally, in the last decade, I was like, ‘Why?’”
-Eugene S. Robinson

During a lengthy conversation I recently had with Eugene S. Robinson, one of the most uncompromising, forthright and no-bullshit rock musicians around, he revealed that he has joined a slew of other American artists exiting the United States to live in other countries.

“I don’t live in America anymore,” he told me in an interview last month. “I’m in Poland at this very moment, on my way to Spain, where I bought a house, and that’s where I’ll be moving and living.”

He added: “My attitude used to be like, ‘I built this country, I’m going to fight for the soul of this country. And then, finally, in the last decade, I was like, ‘Why? Why? Why? [There are] lots of places to live in the world. Why [should I continue to live] here?'”

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