Within days of No Kings I, The Armed gave us “Kingbreaker,” which could’ve easily served as the head-banging set’s theme song for the day. And then, less than two months later, The Armed unveiled The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, a long-form manifesto of the Detroit-based band’s opening salvo that made a spectacular case supporting the name of their latest album. Read my reflection on their LP as part of FLOOD‘s best albums of 2025 feature.
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Trivium, one of the hardest-working metal bands that also boasts an ever-reliably broad appeal, are close to clocking their 100th date in another year of rigorous touring. Their 2025 regiment has focused heavily on celebrating/resurrecting interest in their second full-length, Ascendency, a formidable effort – some might call it the Florida band’s breakthrough release – ostensibly because it came out 20 years ago.
But as Matt Heafy and company look back on that release – currently playing four selections from it in their current 14-song set, as The Bad Penny witnessed last month in Garden City, Idaho – we can’t help be reminded what short shrift Trivium continues to give 2006’s The Crusade, the successor to Ascendency. More specifically, we’re confused as to why the band continues to bury the record’s strongest tracks, which still constitute some of the best material Trivium have crafted in an admittedly cramped catalog with loads of compositions adored by fans of the band, thrash and metalcore, and even critics.
Chief among those neglected songs are The Crusade‘s opening track “Ignition”; first album single “Detonation”; and the most politically charged number in Trivium’s career, “Contempt Breeds Contamination.” Since Trump became president for the first time in 2016, the metal band has played all three songs two times in concert. Not apiece – combined.
The Bad Penny has knocked guitar maestro Heafy in the past for his sometimes substandard lyrics. But the ones he wrote for those aforementioned songs stand among his best-written, not to mention his most admirable. So why don’t we hear them – or, more importantly, the sentiments he expressed in those compositions – more often?
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It doesn’t take an economic genius to know that Donald Trump’s deranged obsession with tariffs – a fixed charge on an imported good that citizens of the country importing the good ultimately bear the cost of paying – is wreaking havoc on America’s economy. Not to mention the economies of many other countries across the world.
The policy is so plainly dumb and illegal – it’s the U.S. Congress that authorizes tariffs, not the executive branch – that it appears likely even the U.S. Supreme Court, which has failed to rein in Trump to the severe, perhaps irreversible detriment to our country – is going to strike down Trump’s unilateral move, which appears to be the only be the only kind he can make due to, you know, that whole separation of powers thing. (Hence the reason why this post is part of our On Tyranny series.)
Anyway, one of The Bad Penny‘s favorite record labels – Mumbai, India-based underground extreme metal specialists Transcending Obscurity – declared Monday that they’re executing a workaround to Trump’s moronic policy.
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Palm Ghosts’ Joseph Lekkas was all smiles when The Bad Penny caught up with him a little under a year ago. We connected with the bassist/singer in his residence via video conference call, and he was surrounded by his trio of devastatingly adorable dachshunds. Additionally, his long-running Nashville band, Palm Ghosts, were giddily on the verge of releasing new songs.
Fast-forward to roughly a month ago, when we checked in again with Lekkas and Palm Ghosts bandmate Benjamin Douglas (vocals, guitar, keyboards). We immediately noticed that they were burned out emotionally – and likely spiritually and physically as well – thanks to the terror that the Evil Empire Trump Administration is inflicting on the American public.
To most, it will seem incongruous that this website is cover footballing to any extent. Or applaud an American citizen whose net worth hovers in the $250 million range. But because the sport is caught between a pop mega-star and a hard right-wing contingent in the U.S., we find it fitting to salute NFL Commissioner (aka CEO) Roger Goodell for backing up Bad Bunny at a Super Bowl press conference this morning.
That’s not to mention that we previously covered the Latin hip-hop star’s decision to avoid touring the U.S. for fear of ICE raiding his concerts. And the fact that Trump, Kristi Noem and other sycophantic, bigoted trolls in the White House are unabashedly trying to limit free speech or even make it a crime. Ergo, the uproar over Bad Bunny’s scheduled performance at America’s most-watching sporting event should be made aware to musicians of all stripes.
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