Archive for the On Tyranny Category

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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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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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On Tyranny: David Cross Scolds ‘Heroes’ Louis CK, Bill Burr for Playing Saudi Arabia Comedy Fest

Posted in Comedy, Features, News, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , on 10/02/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Well, at least someone in the now-ludicrously successful world of comedy is standing up for human rights. David Cross, in a Monday newsletter to his fans, expressed disappointment that many of his peers are performing for the “depraved, awful people” attending the Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, whose authoritarian leadership mandates observance of Sharia law and carries out mass executions despite condemnation by international human-rights groups.

Notably, Cross pointed out the hypocrisy of comedians who regularly bemoan so-called “cancel culture” for participating in a comedy festival staged by a royal family that bans free speech in the country they rule. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman infamously directed the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in October 2018.

The Riyadh Comedy Festival began Friday and concludes a week from today. Other participants include Dave Chappelle, Aziz Ansari, Jimmy Carr, Russell Peters, Whitney Cummings, Pete Davidson, Tom Segura, Andrew Schulz, Bobby Lee, Sam Morril, Jo Koy, Gabriel Iglesias and Kevin Hart, among others.

Burr said on his Monday Morning Podcast that at least the festival’s attendees were “happy,” and called performing at the festival “one of the top three best experiences I’ve had,” according to Rolling Stone.

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On Tyranny: Planet on a Chain Vocalist Says ‘A Lot of People Are Willing to Fight Hate in This Nation’

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , , , on 10/01/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

In the latest installment of The Bad Penny‘s series On Tyranny, we enjoy a comfortable conversation with Planet on a Chain vocalist Dave Ackerman about terrifying topics like Authoritarian America, censorship, and why it’s imperative for the punk-rock community to fight fascism immediately.

We also discuss Planet on a Chain’s bracing new album, Ritual Routine, which drops Friday on Revelation Records. Order a copy here and check out the Oakland punks’ Bandcamp page here.

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On Tyranny: Donald Trump Is More Insane Than the Craziest Musicians Ever, From Elvis to Kanye

Posted in Essays, Features, Lists, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags , , , , , , , , , on 10/01/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Consider the following:

1. Michael “Pras” Michel, one-third of the Fugees, was convicted in April 2023 on 10 counts related to falsifying business records. Donald Trump was convicted in May 2024 on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

2. Syd Barrett, guitarist and co-founder of Pink Floyd, allegedly took LSD every morning and locked his girlfriend in a room for three days. Donald is allegedly sending individuals who may or may not be documented U.S. citizens to gulags in El Salvador and is publicly urging Americans to not take Tylenol.

3. Keith Moon, drummer of The Who, admitted to accidentally running over his friend and bodyguard with his car. Moon, who was allegedly drunk at the time of the incident, publicly apologized for the tragedy. Donald Trump proudly and remorselessly declared that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

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On Tyranny: Feminist Punk Band Cheap Perfume Declares ‘White Supremacy Is Not Punk Rock’

Posted in Features, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , , , , , , , on 09/30/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Cheap Perfume don’t know how to talk cheap. Ahead of their new album dropping Friday, feminist punk quartet Cheap Perfume discuss Authoritarian America with rock journalist Kurt Orzeck as part of his ongoing series On Tyranny. Vocalist Stephanie Byrne and guitarist/co-vocalist Jane No open up about threats they’ve received, how the LGBTQ+ community is under attack and needs to band together now more than ever, and how they “implore artists to just say ‘fuck that’ to self-censorship.”

Preorder Cheap Perfume’s Don’t Care. Didn’t Ask, which comes out Friday on Snappy Little Numbers, here.

Check out the archive of The Bad Penny‘s ever-growing and increasingly popular On Tyranny series here.

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On Tyranny: Metal Band Malevich ‘Had a String of Shows Canceled for Some of Our [Pro-Palestinian] Activism’

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny, Videos with tags , , , , , , on 09/29/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

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Last night, The Bad Penny had the distinct pleasure of catching up with one-half of Atlanta’s blackened post-death metal band Malevich: drummer/vocalist Sasha Schilbrack-Cole and guitarist Josh McIntyre. We talked a bit about Under a Gilded Sun, their new album, which hit the streets and the Interwebs late last month. But the bulk of our conversation revolved around how Authoritarian America is impacting musicians, as we had planned for the interview to be part of The Bad Penny‘s ongoing series On Tyranny.

Little did we know that we’d be speaking to two individuals whose intellectual capacity is as profound as their crushingly righteous music. Enjoy perhaps the best installment yet in The Bad Penny‘s On Tyranny series by watching the entire video above or on YouTube, or reading an abridged version of the conversation after the jump.

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