The Bad Penny (beta)

“In the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.” -Lewis Rothschild (Michael J. Fox), The American President

Twenty-five years ago — shortly after the demise of Palm Desert, California’s Kyuss roughly 10 hours to the west — a new oasis of low-end heavy rock began to form in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The year 1997 saw the birth of MeteorCity Records, a label devoted to sludge, psych, drone and doom. The label quenched the thirst of hard-rock fans thirsty for more thunderous, bottom-heavy rock beyond what they found on Man’s Ruin Records (which collapsed in 2001).