10 Best Free Bandcamp Downloads #18: Fake Dust, Cvinger, Negativa, Tenebra, Why Bother?, Nott, Alienator, 2 Slices

Posted in Lists, MP3s with tags , , , , , , , , , on 08/20/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Welcome to the 18th 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. Are we gonna get out of this thing alive, dear readers? Let’s not think of that, shall we, even though I just asked you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we entreat you with our latest batch of free music of the highest quality. (And the lowest price.) Not as many full-lengths time around as in recent editions past. But we think you’ll survive. All 10 titles featured here are free. And yes, you ARE welcome.

(Note: If you’re financially capable of supporting any of these artists and/or labels, please consider doing so.)

1. Fake Dust’s Demo 2022 and Tour Promo

Portland’s power-violence grindcore goons Fake Dust are still getting their sea legs; they came together in 2020 but just put out their first full-length, Decrepitizing Din of the Cerebral Psyopticon, in May via esteemed label Iron Lung Records and Headsplit Records. But like a nice attendant working at an ice cream store, the quartet has granted us free samples of their music in the form of these two (albeit very short) releases.

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What You Readin’ For?: Melvins’ Buzz Osborne Recommended John Fante’s ‘Dreams From Bunker Hill’ to mr.phylzzz Frontman, Who Attests That It’s a Worthy Read

Posted in Features, What You Readin' For? with tags , , , , , , , , on 08/20/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

It’s been a minute since we’ve published an installment in our series What You Readin’ For, in which musicians discuss and recommend good reads to fans of their music and this website. The latest pick comes courtesy of Clinton Jacob, who handles vocals and guitars for self-described trashy grunge band mr.phylzzz from Chicago. The duo of Jacob and drummer Danny Sein are putting out their newest album, Fear the Lord, September 4 on Amphetamine Reptile, one of the most important noise-rock labels ever. (Fun fact: mr.phylzzz and Buzz Osborne‘s Melvins are the only two active bands left on Amphetamine Reptile’s roster.)

Get a taste of Fear the Lord in the video at the bottom of this post, but before you scroll down, read Jacob’s pitch for John Fante’s tragicomedy Dreams From Bunker Hill, available for purchase on HarperCollins’ website:

I read a lot, but if there’s one book this year that has held my attention more than doom-scrolling my life away, it’s Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante.

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The David Bowie Line in ‘Heroes’ Was Written About Two Real People Against the Berlin Wall

Posted in News with tags , , on 08/20/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

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.

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Cornelius Breaks the Rules Yet Again – to Winning Results – with Surprise LP

Posted in News on 08/20/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

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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Wild Pink’s ‘Still Coming Down’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 08/20/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

After documenting his recovery from cancer on 2024’s Dulling the Horns, Wild Pink’s John Ross returns with an album that reassures us that healing is always within our grasp.

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Hulder’s ‘Verbolgen’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 08/19/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Whatever hang-up Hulder homes in on throughout Verbolgen, her response is an unwavering middle finger throughout seven of the record’s songs (the other two are instrumentals). “I stand unbowed” is her refrain over the course of “In Blood and in Earth,” which explicitly lays out two options in the face of adversity: “fall upon your knees” or “face the dawn as it glows.” Similar sentiments are located in the last album track with vocals, “View from Nemeton,” in which the Belgian-born artist evokes Prometheus Bound—knowingly or not—when she screams: “The eagle’s beak has ripped my corpse/ Here I shall remain.”

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Best New Music Videos (July 2026): Cor de Lux, Insomnium, Body Stuff, Elephant Stone, Thao, Smirk, hijss

Posted in Lists, Videos with tags , , , , , , , , , on 08/19/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

Is it August already? Wait … it’s almost September, you say? Someone’s been sleeping under a rock – and I’ve got moss growing on me to prove it:

Anyway, I’m not gonna make you good people suffer the consequences of my hibernation and misdeeds. Will leave that type of sick, immortal behavior to Trump.

With that said, here are the best videos that came out last month:

1. Cor de Lux’s “The Deli”

2. Insomnium – “Gleam in the Black”

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Alienator’s ‘Brutal Occupation’: Two Cent Review

Posted in Album Reviews, Reviews with tags on 08/19/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

It’s not a negative that Brutal Occupation is another Alienator EP with four strong songs. It’s actually the highest compliment that can be paid to a band that has been unwaveringly devoted to hardcore since day one — and, for our money, will probably adhere to that philosophy until their final day as a band. The word “authenticity” gets bandied about way too often these days, because it’s misused nine times out of ten. Alienator’s Brutal Occupation is what authenticity really sounds like. Read my full review on Post-Trash.

A Joke About Mötorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister and Our 44th President

Posted in Comedy with tags , on 08/19/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

What dd Mötorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister say the night that Republican candidate John McCain lost in the 2008 U.S. presidential election?

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Thank You, Bad Penny Readers!

Posted in Essays, News with tags on 08/18/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

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.