For a Korean boy band that had achieved worldwide dominance between the year they formed (2010) and the ensuing decade, the 2022 annual gathering intended to celebrate BTS’s stratospheric success was a shockingly somber affair. Officially designated as “BTS Dinner Party 2.0” but nicknamed “The BTS Festa Dinner,” what was intended to be a joyous occasion for the group’s members, family and friends — and, of course, admirers — felt irrefutably unsettling.
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Welcome to the 16th installment of The Bad Penny‘s Bandcamp Freebie series, in which we handpick our favorite free songs on the platform and dish them up for your consumption. We deserve lotsa high-fives this time around, because all 10 picks are full-lengths – of the highest quality, naturally – which makes us the most benevolent music outlet on the website. And which, in turns, explains we’re so unimaginably financially destitute that Merriam-Webster needs to adopt a new phrase for it.
(Go here for the 17th installment of Bandcamp Freebies, featuring songs by Restless Spirit, Meltt, Florist, Nòtt and Délirant; and Couch Slut covering Fugazi.)
(Note: If you’re financially capable of supporting any of these artists and/or labels, please consider doing so.)
1. Alienatör’s Pariahs (September 2019) and Regrets (November 2002) (self-released with help from the Canada Council for the Arts)
Hailing from Thunder Bay, Ontario – the municipality where Paul Shaffer also famously (?) grew up – Alienatör held the noise-rock torch between the years they released their two full-lengths. Whether Brad King (vocals, guitar); Sean Skillen (bass, vocals); and Simon Paquette (drums) threw in the towel after those two marvelous migraine-inducers is unclear. The three guys might also have a new album on their hands – but we say that without a shred of certainty, as there’s no mention of it on Alienatör’s Bandcamp page, and their Instagram account is still hyping Regrets. Isn’t that like two newlywed parents getting strangers to kiss their baby in Target because it’s a newborn? Perhaps the Target redshirt on duty can answer our questions. More likely, though, questions, critiques and the like will melt away upon taking Alienatör’s Pariahs and Regrets out for a test drive.
2. Side-Line Magazine‘s United 1 – The Freya Files and United 2 – The Odin Files by various artists (Side-Line)
If you’re even somewhat aware of The Bad Penny‘s devotion to democracy and whole-scale rejection of fascism, it’ll come as no surprise to you that we included these two comps – both released Friday – in our latest Bandcamp Freebies roundup. In fact, we just published an illuminating conversation with Bernard Van Isacker, the Belgian magazine editor and music fan who helped see these Ukraine-supporting collections to fruition. Learn a thing or two about the Ukraine/Russia war that could determine the fate of democracy in that part of the world, and throw down (as little or as much as you want) for these two darkwave compendiums.
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Portrayal of Guilt seemed to come out of nowhere in 2017, but once they did, they stuck their tongue to the frozen light pole and released five LPs, six EPs and three singles while our heads were still trying to catch up to their murderous maelstrom of metal. Once we got a good look at ’em, the brilliance of the band was on their collective face.
On paper, one would’ve sworn numerous bands had melded black metal and post-hardcore. But what makes Portrayal of Guilt’s music so magical is that whatever one deigns to describe in words (and yes, this writer is fully aware of the irony at play here) doesn’t do justice to the sound that bursts out of their amps like flames from a nuclear explosion.
That Portrayal of Guilt has surreptitiously tried to sidle up to the “grunge” qualifier is as laughable as the band is serious: Be proud of what you’ve accomplished, guys, by continuing to marry two heavy subgenres (to reiterate, black metal and post-hardcore) with the same success that Deafheaven did with black metal and shoegaze.
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Joey Alexander – Celestial Keeper (Mack Avenue)
Baby Mel – Drought single (Capitol/Motown)
Banda AL9 – Hey! Hey! We’re Banda AL9 (Wicked Cool)
Taylor Bickett – Nothing I Can’t Undo (If This Then)
The Black Drumset – Friends in Dark Places (self-release)
Boundaries – Yearning: The unbeautiful after (Sumerian)
BTS – Normal (Korean version) single (BigHit)
Day We Ran – Naked at Your Door EP (AnnapurnA)
Emptiness – Nowhere Speaks (Season of Mist)
Brian Ennals & Blockhead – Boatshoes (Phantom Limb)
Fuming Mouth – The Ringing Bell (Triple B)
Presley Haile – Hamilton Honey: Part I EP (Columbia)
Infected Disarray – Redisseminating Obscenity (2026 Redux) (Unique Leader)
Iris Temple – Ghosts of the Future (Sooper)
Jodeci – Naked At Your Door EP (Retreat)
Larry June – Who Coppin (feat. Swizz Beats, Jhené Aiko, Musiq Soulchild) (Freeminded)
Kamal. – How the F*** Does Everybody Else Manage? (Def Jam)
Kennedys – Without Us single (self-release)
Lathums – Vice Versa single
Left to Die – Initium Mortis (Relapse)
The Bad Penny revels in one of our favorite interviews to date: An all-encompassing conversation with Marios Iliopoulos, who founded Greek melodic death metal squad Nightrage in 2000 and has held the throne ever since. The reigning king leaves no stone unturned in providing the ultimate historical account of how heavy metal sowed its roots in Greece and developed there in the decades since.
From revealing previously unshared stories about the growth of extreme heavy metal in Greece to reflecting on past troubles and tribulations that he later vanquished to his staggering prolific output in Nightrage and beyond, Iliopoulos delivers what perhaps could be the greatest interview of his lifetime.
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Just like poker players have a “tell,” so do songs by eminently admired post-rock instrumentalists Mono. Faintly reminiscent of The Twilight Sad or Godspeed, but not enough to call them copycats, Mono songs typically start on a gentle note, slowly crescendo into a state of guitar noise, burst into a shimmering shower of affirmation, and conclude with a carefully crafted, rarely abrupt descent. Perhaps because Mono fans are accustomed to the shape of the band’s songs, or more likely due to the fact that this is the post-rock squadron’s 13th studio effort, Snowdrop is their smoothest deployment thus far.
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Warning‘s Rituals of Shame is an album effectively 20 years in the making, if not necessarily literally. Frontman Patrick Walker has released plenty of material during that time, but what we have here are five doom-metal masterpieces rather ironically untainted by the very trappings of the subgenre: repetition taken to tedious extremes, fogs of pot smoke so thick that the listener is blinded by what might very well be beauty at the core; overindulgence for overindulgence’s sake. Particularly on songs like “Station,” “Landing Lights” and “Night Comes Dawn,” Walker has created something fresh and new: clear-eyed, focused, minimalist yet illustrious doom metal. Perhaps it’s because he’s reached a transcendent understanding of the human condition, or something like it; the word “love” appears six times in the lyrics to the five songs.
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At the ripe age of 50, Leeds post-punk/alt-country collective Mekons revisit last year’s under-the-radar Horror LP as a dub record with the aid of Pere Ubu’s Tony Maimone.
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In case you haven’t noticed, the most disorienting senselessness that exists in our world is the reality we suffer through each and every day. As much as the vast majority of us would not only prefer not to hear the sound of reality but block our ears with our palms with such force that we might squash our own skulls like melons, Gunner buck up and administer the soundtrack of everyday life with Reality Soldier, an eleven-and-a-half minute brutal assault that leads you to re-evaluate the question, “can I hold my breath for that long if I submerge myself in water?”
Read the rest of my Post-Trash review here.
The Bad Penny (beta) 