One imagines that Italy’s Void of Sleep turns in a rider for every tour that simply requests “Smoke machines. And more smoke machines. Did we mention we need a lot of smoke machines? We refuse to perform without smoke machines.” Read my review of their new album, The Abyss Into Which We All Have to Stare, on Treble.
Strapped for cash but hungry for great music? You won’t have much luck camping out at the grocery store these days; Bandcamp is a way better destination. Here’s a rundown of 10 rad releases, about half of them newly released, that The Bad Penny recently came across on Bandcamp.
(Note: If you do have some green to spare, please show your thanks to these deserving artists and labels.)
1. Dead and Dripping’s Nefarious Scintillations (Transcending Obscurity)
The physical editions of this release by New Jersey’s brutal death metal band Dead and Dripping aren’t out till tomorrow, but the always-generous Transcending Obscurity Records granted us the digital version early – and for free. Fans of Suffocation and Wormed will eat up this latest journey into the grotesque courtesy of Evan Daniele, who is responsible for every lick of music and even the artwork that comes with Nefarious Scintillations.
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Are we hearing what La Luz did on News of the Universe, or is the band — which has parted ways with five members over the course of the same number of records — pulling a forced perspective trick here? We’re pretty sure it’s the latter. Read my review of La Luz’s Extra! Extra! EP on Treble.
It’s hard to pin down exactly when the hippie term “far out” went the way of the Dodo bird, but chances are if you say the phrase to someone under age 30, they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If they bother to ask what it means, you can try explaining that it was an LSD-inspired term suggesting that one’s mind was being blown. Or you read this excerpt from a new Saintseneca album that came out on Halloween — because it encapsulates not only the gist of the phrase but the ridiculous and unserious culture that crouched and enabled the term “far out” to last well beyond its shelf life.
‘’The band’s first album in more than seven years launches the listener onto a ten-song landscape orbited by two sonic ‘moons,’ Viridian Moon (tracks 11-16) and Cinnamon Moon (tracks 17-21), named for the colors bandleader Zac Little experienced through synesthesia while writing. … In a world orbited by two moons, lunar phases dance in tandem, tugging at the tides. Beneath these amulets of light lies the landscape in which Saintseneca’s new album Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs came to be.”
Ya dig?
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And the winner for this year’s most difficult-to-pronounce band name and album title belongs to … 夢遊病者 and their album РЛБ30011922. The production is raw, the experimentation unlimited and the sound just about as atonal as music can get. But sing-songy guitar passages and merciful breaks allow the listener to catch their breath and, like a good workout, push through what is ultimately a very rewarding listen that will make music fans who thrive on challenging themselves all the stronger for it. Read my full review at Treble.
What makes Strange Passage from Somerville, Massachusetts, strange in the raddest of ways is that their take on psych-rock is tight and precise, and their songs are well considered from melody and flow to texture and tone. Read my full Treble review here.
A lot of fucked-up up shit happened in the U.S. this year. Way, way too much of it. For many of us Americans who actually carry values in our hearts instead of bloviating about them or slapping bumper stickers on our monster trucks, it was almost too much to bear.
Fortunately, 2025 also saw the release of a staggering number of stellar records, which made the year a little more … well, bearable. Hence, for the first time ever, The Bad Penny is deviating from its usual annual tradition of limiting out favorite listens to just 10 and breaking them into a five-part series containing 10 records per installment.
What follows is the first batch.
41. Sharon Van Etten – & the Attachment Theory (Jagjaguwar)
Whatever you were expecting from a solo album by A Perfect Circle and Zwan collaborator Paz Lenchantin, you won’t be prepared for what you hear when you press play. Read my full review of Lenchantin’s Triste at Veil of Sound, one of Germany’s premiere sources for alternative, experimental and heavy music, with a particular predilection for post-rock, black metal and krautrock.
Strapped for cash but hungry for great music? You won’t have much luck camping out at the grocery store these days; Bandcamp is a way better destination. Here’s a rundown of 10 rad releases, about half of them newly released, that The Bad Penny recently came across on Bandcamp.
(Note: If you do have some green to spare, please show your thanks to these deserving artists and labels.)
1. Rose of the World‘s Heaven Is a Broken Heart (Sad Cactus)
It’s audacious for an NYC hipper-than-thou band to craft its first LP in the style of Sunny Day Real Estate. Those old codgers have not only come and gone but come and gone again, and then a third time. Hell, even most of their protégés have melted away at this point too. To their enormous credit, Rose of the World has pulled off a maneuver worthy of the Olympic Games with this catchy keepsake of a record. Just released on November 12, snag Heaven Is a Broken Heart before those who can make money off realize that palm-against-forehead revelation and start charging 18 bucks for it.
HEAVEN IS A BROKEN HEART by Rose of the World
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It’s a bright Saturday in L.A., and while throngs left town to get their holiday on elsewhere, the hipper masses stuck around to suck in the Save Our State Parks festival. A three-stage charity throwdown designed to offset the ever-looming California budget cuts, it’s taking place at the Los Angeles State Historic Park and featuring just about every “now” band you can name.
We’re talking Wavves, No Age and other frequenters of the Smell. We’re talking Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Torche and other smart metal bands that don’t have long hair. We’re talking Black Lips, the Thermals, Lightning Bolt and acts every other indie-rock blog out there is also yapping about. And to top it all off, Tim and Eric – they of Adult Swim fame – are conspiring to do something weird for 40 minutes.
We’re about to head off to the fest, and we’re going to try to pull off this while live-blogging thing, for the first time, at a show. We don’t know how the cell phone reception will be up there, we probably won’t be able to upload imagery till later on – hell, we’re not even sure if this is going to work. But if you wish you were going where we’re going, maybe you’ll want to pop over to the IndiePit Blog throughout the day, ’cause if we can actually pull off this experiment, it could be cool.
All right, enough dilly-dallying, Sally Salami. Time to get to the show, or we’ll be late.
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The Bad Penny (beta) 