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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Boise’s Music Community Unites Tonight for Ian Waggoner Benefit Concert

Posted in News with tags , , , , , , , on 10/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Boise came together in a massive way earlier today to participate in the nationwide No Kings 2 protests that spurred an estimated 7 million Americans to protest the authoritarian takeover of the country. Early accounts suggest the mobilizations will mark the biggest day of protest in the history of the country.

This evening, Boise’s music community is rallying together for another critical cause: to raise funds and awareness about mental health struggles that young people in this city are experiencing, and to celebrate the life of Ian Waggoner, who tragically died earlier this year. The event will be held in the form of a fundraising concert at The Shredder.

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On Tyranny: Sound Off on No Kings 2: A Communiqué About Community

Posted in Sound Off with tags , , , , , , on 10/18/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

This article was originally published in 2009 but, on what could be one of the most consequential days in America in the 21st century, if not in the entire history of the nation, it is now back online for your reading — and, hopefully, galvanizing — pleasure. Find your local No Kings rally here and, for the sake of free speech and freedom itself, please attend. Need further convincing? Read my 43-part series called On Tyranny, in which artists of every stripe tell me how they are being damaged and fear even more atrocious reprisals if the Trump regime and the right-wing scourge plaguing our country continues to run roughshod, unchecked, over the Constitution we have so woefully taken for granted for far too long.

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Week four of the IndiePit Blog is coming to a close. And what a month it has been. From interviews galore to liberal doses of commentary throughout to some wacky features, hopefully the content has been as much a treat to read as it has been to write.

If you’ve noticed, each week has closed with an installment of a series called “Sound Off” – in which, like the back end of a newspaper’s op-ed section, some closing thoughts on the week are provided.

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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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From the Vault: Isis’ Aaron Turner Called Revolver’s Golden Gods Awards ‘Demeaning,’ ‘Ridiculous’

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

[This article was originally published on Indiepit on June 18, 2009.]

Methodical. Serious. Fulfilling.

Those are three words that aptly describe Isis, one of the best things to happen to prog-metal since Maynard James Keenan first shook hands with Adam Jones in 1989. The band’s carefully calibrated, efficient – read: not a single note gone to waste – songwriting and live presentation have, over the course of their dozen-year history, graduated Isis to untouchable status. It’s gotten to the point where fans talk about Isis’ music as if it were a religion: each album an obligatory mass, each song a sermon that feeds both the mind and soul.

Coming off a string of their biggest concerts to date – and with their new album, Wavering Radiant, still sitting pretty on Pitchfork’s “Best New Music” lineup (it’s been months) – the sludge-slingers are at the top of their game. And best of all, as they’ve proven with each subsequent release, they just might find a way to top themselves the next time around too.

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