Archive for the Interviews Category

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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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Hail the Sun Guitarist ‘Craving Potatoes’ Ahead Of Tonight’s Boise Gig With Between the Buried and Me

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

“Fun fact: there’s a direct correlation between CEOs and narcissism. It’s no surprise that those who achieve the highest positions of power are also those most comfortable forcing their beliefs on others, through manipulation and worse, in ways they’d never allow to affect their own families.”
-Hail the Sun’s Shane Gann

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There’s only one place to get a heaping helping of contemporary prog-rock and prog-metal tonight in Boise, and that’s at the Knitting Factory, where Chico, California’s Hail the Sun will open for Raleigh, North Carolina’s Between the Buried and me. The former band are gonna be surging with adrenaline ahead of Friday’s release of their new album, cut. turn. fade. back., on Equal Vision and Rude Records.

The Bad Penny had the distinct honor of catching up with Hail the Sun founding guitarist and backing vocalist Shane Gann last week ahead of the show. During the conversation, Gann revealed his special connections to Boise; talked about his charitable efforts; gave us a preview of tonight’s widely anticipated gig; and also shed light on his side project Murals, a progressive post-hardcore band whose debut, self-titled EP drops Nov. 14 on Equal Vision.

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Exclusive: Graham Parker, Other Big Stir Halloween Comp Contributors Tell Terrifying Tales

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews with tags , , , on 10/19/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Move over, “Monster Mash”: There’s a new, soon-to-be-classic Halloween soundtrack that’s about to dig your grave and toss you into it.

Astute readers of The Bad Penny may recall our special premiere of a new song by the cultiest of cult bands, Strawberry Alarm Clock, earlier this month. “Monsters” also appears on the just-released, 41-track Chilling, Thrilling Hooks and Haunted Harmonies, a Big Stir Records collection of spooky, silly and scintillating Halloween-theme songs.

A slew of the legendary contributing artists involved with the compilation recently shared — exclusively with The Bad Penny — a litany of ghastly anecdotes and jovialities in celebration of the record, which should be an essential spin at Halloween gatherings later this month and for many years to come. Kick back and get a kick out of what members of the participating bands told us in response to some of the questions we tossed their way.

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Volcandra Amped to Annihilate Boise With First-Ever Gig in City of Trees Tonight

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

If you’re a fan of Prosthetic Records bands and live in Boise or the surrounding area, you’re in for a treat tonight: grind-tech giants Blindfolded and Led to the Woods and black-metallers Volcandra are descending on The Shredder sure to peel the skin off the faces of all who attend. We caught up with not only Blindfolded and Led to the Woods but also Volcandra ahead of the show. The openers gave us a preview of what to expect from their gig, shed some light on their in-the-works new album and revealed the one request they have while on tour.

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Blindfolded and Led to the Woods Ecstatic for ‘Extreme’ Boise Gig Tonight

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

Blindfolded and Led to the Woods have a lot to say on their brain-scrambling new record, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me. But more than that, they have a lot of appeal in concert, which the New Zealand prog/death-metal quintet will prove tonight at the Shredder in Boise. The Bad Penny caught up with the band’s guitar/synth player, Stu Henley-Minchington, to discuss the album, which came out two Fridays ago via Prosthetic Records; their first tour of the States; and what makes a BFALTTW show great.

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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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Exclusive: Ex-Amon Amarth Drummer Pays Tribute to At the Gates’ Tomas Lindberg With a Riotous Recollection

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews with tags , , , , on 10/17/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

“[At the Gates] are awesome human beings, and Tompa was the fucking unicorn.”

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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.

But while people continue to shed tears over the loss of Lindberg, another iconic member of Scandinavian melodeth tried to help those still grieving by exclusively providing The Bad Penny with a downright hilarious story that could only happen in the world of heavy metal. Fredrik Andersson — who played drums for another legendary melodic death metal band, Amon Amarth, from 1997 to 2015 —simultaneously expressed his admiration for Lindberg and shared an Irish wake laugh during an interview this writer conducted earlier this month. 

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What’s the Deal With Organ Dealer? Probing Interview Shows Their Pride in Delivering Deathgrind

Posted in Interviews with tags , , , on 10/17/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

It’s something of a mass delusion among hard-core music fans that they’re the only ones who pine for special vinyl versions of albums by their favorite bands. What’s overlooked all too often is that such fancy pressings bring equal delight to the musicians who spent so much time creating their records and dream of them getting reissued in classy form.

To that end, Organ Dealer presumably ascended to cloud nine upon hearing that Horror Pain Gore Death decided to reissue the band’s first album, Visceral Infection, on vinyl for the first time. Released last month through the aforementioned label from Philadelphia, Organ Dealer’s first full-length is re-presented in glorious form for the 10th anniversary of the album’s initial release.

Below is our spanking-new (people still use that expression, right?) interview with Organ Dealer, conducted less than 24 hours ago.

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