It seemed inevitable from the moment that Brandi Carlile walked onstage to perform a massive benefit concert in the wake of the ICE-provoked melees that occurred in Minneapolis six months ago that her performance would be historic. Now the soaring singer-songwriter is helping solidify the importance and magnitude of the show by making it available for free on YouTube for all to see.
Continue reading2BYG – WYW remix feat. Tahjaee single (Def Jam)
Accursed Womb – Hymns of Blasphemous Fornication (Nespithe)
Siavash Amini & Eugene Thacker – Songs for Sad Poets Vol. III (American Dreams)
Argul – Soledad & Orgullo (Personal)
Azatoth – Carnal Lust of Blasphemy (Extremely Rotten)
Black Marble – Life in Small Spaces (Sacred Bones)
Mark Ciani – Utopia (self-release)
Destin Conrad – Roadrunner (Above Ground/ Empire)
The Cramps – Greatest Gravy (unreleased 1977 album produced by Alex Chilton) (Vengeance)
Cutthroat – Purge EP (M-Theory)
Dark Funeral – Beast to Praise (Century Media/ InsideOut)
Deathgrave – Hell Is Evil (Tankcrimes)
Dream Phases – Little Blue Magnolia single (self-release)
Enhypen – Sin: Bliss EP
Famous Strangers – s/t (self-release)
Feeders – Dark Days
Fen – Elemental Part One: Mourning Earth (Prophecy)
Brandon Flowers – Thrasher (Island)
Foglights – Nous Deux EP (Skep Wax/ Slumberland)
French Film – Yours + Five (Solid Brass)
From Ashes to New – Die for You (feat. Neoni) single (Better Noise)
Riviera Gaz (feat. Steve Shelley) – Catacroma (Vampire Blues)
GB – Herzsprung (Posh Isolation)
Ghost Hounds – Justified
Giraffe – Towering Inferno With Bongo Drums (Org Music/ Aquarium Drunkard)
Hey, Nothing – Hound (Music Soup/ Interscope)
Sawyer Hill – Everybody’s Home, Nobody’s Happy (AWAL)
Paris Jackson – Happiest Day of My Life (Republic)
Jamie James – Steppin’ Back 2009 (Oglio)
Lexi Jayde – Lover Girl (Columbia)
Coco Jones – Love Me Through single (High Standardz/ Def Jam)
Korpse – Forbid EP (Unique Leader)
Lambchop – Punching the Clown (Merge)
David Bowie made “Heroes” in 1977 with co-writer and electronic-music pioneer Brian Eno and co-producer Tony Visconti, both of whom regularly collaborated with him throughout his 54-year career. Bowie had moved to West Berlin to escape cocaine addiction and the madness of the L.A. years. He was living austerely: a Spartan life, as he described it, for a person of his means. He worked at Hansa because it felt dangerous and alive in equal measure. His closest collaborator, producer Tony Visconti, described it as a stark, scary place with exciting nightlife. It is widely believed that such an environment was what Bowie required in order to write new music, given his mental and emotional state at the time.
Fresh off playing a co-headlining set in Tokyo with another legendary idiosyncratic group, Sparks, Cornelius (real name Keigo Oyamada) is finally turning his sights again to his illustrious music career even though he’s engaged in loads of admirable endeavors over the years. Cornelius’ new album – which marks his eighth studio effort – is called Refractions, a title that appears curious at face value but speaks to the changing sounds that permeate the album.
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Thank you to the devoted readers of this unconventional, iconoclastic and oftentimes just plain nutty music website – and also to those who just happened to stumble across it – for making Aug. 18, 2026, the most highly traffic day since The Bad Penny launched November 25, 2009. Traffic is not the be-all, end-all of this website, but it’s also worth noting that we surpassed our total numbers for the entire year of 2025 early last month.
Every single prop (that’s what the cool kids say nowadays instead of “all the props,” so get onboard, yo) goes to the readers who have consumed (we prefer “ingested”) one or more of our tens of thousands of posts, whether they be the multitudinous stories on The Jesus Lizard – who we are proud to say is the most popular band on The Bad Penny – to our invaluable (which is to say, value-less) post on the Best Albums of 1909.
Every day till all this goes away, we’ll continue to try to both educate and entertain you, turn Bad Penny readers on to good music, steer them away from crapola, buck trends, go against the grain, reject social media (except YouTube, which is our guilty-pleasure equivalent of Obama sneaking out for a cig), protecting all of us in this space from AI infiltration and, most importantly, adhere to what we consider to be our values as best we can.
If you ever have any valuable feedback, ideas worth sharing, rad bands you’d like to see get more coverage and that are a good fit for this website, don’t not never hesitate to contact me directly at korzeck at gee male dot calm. (Apologies for the tortured language; such are the rules on the battlefield in the war against the bots.)
Long live great music, great people with great character (we gotta get around to working on that someday) and great animals. And, lest it need be said, down with tyranny.
16 Underground – Without a Trace EP (Sunday Drive)
Afghan Whigs – Soft Control (Royal Cream/ BMG)
Afrofuturistics (feat. Sons of Ra members) – Enigmatic EP (Big Bonkey)
Jacob Alon – Live From the Roundhouse (Island)
Brendan Angelides – Can You Feel the End Begin? (feat. Serj Tankian; Ancestor)
Arca – XXXXX
Arcadian Wild – Make It Out Alive
Jon Batiste – Black Mozart (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 2), Monk Meditations (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 3) and Monk Movements (Batiste Piano Series, Vol. 4)
Becky G – Baraja Bandita
Natasha Bedingfield – Dot Dot Dot single
Benny Blanco – Hermoso (feat. Selena Gomez, Becky G)
Boston Manor – Be Nothing. 10 Year anniversary edition (Pure Noise)
Cavetown – Big Strong Man single
Chico – s/t (New Morality Zine)
Jimmy Cicero – I Will Always Love You 7-inch (self-release)
Elizabeth Cook – Great Television (produced by Shooter Jennings; feat. Wynonna Judd; Thirty Tigers)Credit Card – Devil’s Night/ Dead Internet mixtape (Goth Horse)
Credit Card – Devil’s Night/ Dead Internet mixtape (Goth Horse)
Grace Cummings – Bloodhorse! (ATO)
Cutthroat – Purge EP (M-Theory Audio)
Dana and Alden – Papa’s Boat (Concord Jazz)
Dead Tired – Hornets of Fall (New Damage)
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s undeniable that Metallica – the undisputed kings of heavy metal for many decades running – have massive global appeal. In December, Spotify stunningly announced that fans of James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Robert Trujillo and Kirk Hammett listened to 21,000 years’ worth of Metallica music last year alone. These ChartMasters.org graphs show the band’s reach into virtually every pocket of the world.
Read my full news report on AllMusic.com and check out an exclusive, comprehensive compilation of comments from almost all the participating artists here.
Glen Hansard one of the most prolific and beloved contemporary Irish musicians, has died at age 56.
“With broken hearts, we announce the passing of Glen Hansard in the early hours of this morning,” read a statement on the website of his manager, ATC Management. “We are still dealing with the shock of it all, so we kindly ask that the privacy of Glen’s family, colleagues and friends is respected at this difficult time.”
The cause of Hansard’s death is not yet known.
Read my full news report on AllMusic.
The hypnotic state of sustained, meditative pummelage featured on Destroy Erase Improve and Catch Thirtythree was so distinct that it helped coin a term used specifically to describe the Meshuggah sound: djent. Imitators have come and gone over the years, perhaps flattering the originators of a whole new heavy metal sound, but it’s unlikely, because iconoclasm – or maybe it’s ichor – flows through the veins of current members Haake, Jens Kidman (lead vocals), Fredrik Thordendal (lead guitar, backing vocals) and Mårten Hagström (rhythm guitar, backing vocals and Dick Lövgren (bass).
The band will soon release anniversary editions of both records. Read my full news report on the Meshuggah reissues via AllMusic.
Melissa Auf der Maur returns with her first new music in 15 years, releasing a soundtrack tied to her upcoming art exhibition featuring rare demos and photography. Read my full news report at AllMusic.com.
