It’s always exciting to hear any band at their most absurd and unhinged. On that note, new LP Caught the Nonsense marks the exciting debut from punky noise-garage-rock trio Dead Horse. The London/Kent-based band haven’t disappointed, making sure the four-year wait since their last EP was worth our while. There’s satire, sax and synth outbursts, and, oddest of all, onion-based carnage for all the family.

Earlier this year, we were teased with two singles: The Pistols-flavoured “Dynamite” and jaunty love song “I Would Die”: with the off-key, jagged guitar lines of first-wave Midwest punk.

Across the record, there are elements of rockabilly colliding with noisy garage, added sax skronk, and raunchy guitar breakdowns. Other tracks boast bouncy indie rock, increasingly deranged mutant rhythms, think Viagra Boys, manic “moron piano,” think The Stooges, and a mid-album instrumental packed with off-balance, dirty riffs, pounding drums, and surprising sprinkles of synths and strings.

Here’s where it gets weirder. “Onions,” with its witty lyrics and a trusty, rollicking riff, could easily have belonged to the early post-punk era. It’s bonkers but undeniably catchy, and 27-second thumper “Meat Room” unleashes some pent-up rage in true Oi! style.

“Funny Farm” is delivered in a sped-up rasp, with similarities to an early ’80s UK Subs track, also about a farm. Freeing dissonant guitar pairs with shouty yelps and theatrical baritone overdubs, as half-tongue-in-cheek lyrics address wealth disparity and injustice: “Can we have meritocracy? / Kill off all the aristocracy / Can we all have good health? / Harvest organs while making wealth.”

Other standouts include “Caught the Nonsense”: which takes on a moody, ’80s goth, dance-punk feel. There are even hints of The Fall and Billy Idol, but with loads more bite. Big drums, distorted twang, and muffled glitchy effects start the party, as organ, synths, and sax later add to the pandemonium.

Closer “Right Now” is the only track with an acoustic start, though that doesn’t mean it loses any edge. It soon evolves, as the band dress up their haunting feelings of despondency and dread with a sardonic, matter-of-fact narrative, which comfortably sits somewhere between Blur’s “Parklife” and the Dead Boys’ “Ain’t It Fun.” This is the track to go to if you don’t already know what these guys are about. Attacking the right wing, wealth-hoarders, and the monarchy, the peak of their warped humor sees frontman Kevin Lennon refer to old Winston Churchill as a “top cunt,” in one of his stuffy, regal, welly-brigade caricatures. The whole thing is a satirical yet perfectly constructed middle finger to all those who would dare to clutch their metaphorical pearls and shriek “off with their head” at them in retaliation. Just look at that album cover.

With this debut LP, Dead Horse have proved that they’re far from just slapstick and noise. As well as some excellent leading basslines, guitar is a real star of the show throughout, and many of their influences have led them to produce a more mature sound that, musically and lyrically, goes beyond typical punk sensibilities—yet somehow still fits into this madhouse. Dead Horse have well and truly caught the nonsense, and they’re infecting everyone else with it too.

Livia Sura have long been one of my favorite bands to come out of Romania. They were originally active in Timișoara between 2010 and 2013, but they have always seemed to me to have existed much longer. That is probably because I saw them several times during my hitchhiking trips across Romania. I stayed at the seminal Atelier DIY, or was hosted by members of Livia Sura and Pavilionul 32. Livia Sura guitarist Adi Crăciun, however, has always been the band’s central figure, and one of the most knowledgeable people I have met in the Romanian punk scene.

Livia Sura’s music is difficult to pin down to a single style. While they may be considered a crust punk band by both aesthetic and attitude, they play long, heavy songs filled with synths, folk elements, and influences ranging from stoner, sludge, to black metal. In 2026, Livia Sura released the Dureri ascunse EP, featuring reworked versions of older songs, followed by an album of previously unreleased tracks, Între pietre reci. An album that finally captures the production and sound the band have been striving for.

I won’t make this introduction any longer because the interview itself already covers plenty of ground, jumping from the history of the Romanian punk scene and Livia Sura’s music to broader political themes. So brace yourself for a long read.

It’s been a long time since I last saw Livia Sura live. For our readers, could you start with a brief history of the DIY punk scene in Romania and how Livia Sura came together? What was the scene like in Timișoara back in the day? I remember bands like Pavilionul 32, Haos, Arc Gotic, and others.

Adi: Necessarily, I will give you a subjective history, which may be inaccurate here and there. I would split it into different periods:

The ’80s and early ’90s:

I only heard the stories. There were some punk projects in Timișoara, and the music came in via Yugoslav radio and contraband tapes and records. After the regime change, in the early ’90s, local punks came together in what was called the Timișoara Underground Movement. There was even a location they got from an opposition political party: an old basement. After they cleaned it up, they were unceremoniously kicked out. Some early projects were Teens on Parade, whose members went on to form Arc Gotic, Umbre Zidite, and Terror Art; Haos; and Afiș Întunecat.

The late ’90s:

I came into the scene around 1996-97, after I became a student in Timișoara. There was a post-punk evening called PM6, organized in the basement of the university (weird, eh?). Then some of the people involved (Dacian Valcu, later of Umbre Zidite, Infectator.com, and Romantic Jurgen; the Guran brothers of Guranii; Andrei of Haos; Horațiu; and many others) came up with the idea of organizing what became the Timișoara Underground Festival. That’s where I got involved, and I have somehow continued to be involved ever since.

The scene back then was chaotic and wonderful. Times were tough, and you could hardly get any music gear or instruments. The scene was also somewhat confused. There were ideas, fragments, bits and pieces, sometimes contradictory and paradoxical. A couple of zines and more than a couple of tapes made their way into our hands. These were the early days of the internet, and information was scarce. Romania was emerging from the long “communist winter” and was in the middle of a dirty, aimless transition. However, the prevailing sentiment for us, I think, was this idea of freedom and doing things yourself. People were trying things out, searching for whatever it is that people were and are searching for: meaning, sense, fun, purpose.

A very important moment for the scene in Timișoara was in 1997, if I recall correctly: a concert by Under the Gun, which I unfortunately missed. Then, relatively soon afterward, Terror Art from Craiova, who played quite often in Timișoara, got out of the country, probably the first punk band in Romania to do so. They also recorded an album in Germany, Cu plămâni de noroi, which, for me personally, was the first album by a Romanian band that I would listen to over and over and over.

In those days, at the end of the ’90s, at least from my point of view, the Romanian punk scene had Timișoara, with the Underground Festival and punk bands Haos and Guranii, as well as Umbre Zidite, Radical din Val, and Arc Gotic playing various flavors of post-punk. There were also quite a few hardcore bands influenced by the NYHC wave of the day, like Implant Pentru Refuz and probably others I don’t recall. Then there was Craiova, which was the most coherent stylistically, with very dark punk and post-punk flavors from Terror Art, Anti Pro, and Null 00. I wasn’t aware of much else. There were some “alternative” bands I was somewhat familiar with, but nothing that stayed with me.

Early 2000s – INCA:

At the end of the 1990s, I left the country to study. This was when things were getting better for the scene. Bands from the West started coming to Romania. In Timișoara, people from the scene established the INCA cultural center. This is where Pavilionul 32 got started, as well as many other projects. No Man’s Band comes to mind, but there were others. Things were happening elsewhere, too: Cluj, Bucharest, Brașov, Bacău, Bistrița, and Craiova. People were organizing, and there were a lot of zines, bands, and people involved. In Timișoara, we had festivals like Underground Timișoara Festival, in a new format organized by a mix of new and old people, as well as No Borders and Love Kills.

INCA closed around 2006, probably. The location was too central, too premium to last in the center of Timișoara.

During this period, I returned from my studies and started playing music again. First, I played keyboards in a post-punk/goth band, Vals Hedone. Then I got my first guitar and started The Bad Days Will End, post-punk with situationist influences and a situationist stance, with Alex (later of Romantic Jurgen and Valerinne), Zan (later of Nomega and Tauusk), and Seba (Pavilionul 32, later Livia Sura).

2010s – Atelier DIY:

Atelier DIY was started around 2009 by people involved in INCA and Gluga Neagră. I played there at the beginning (so it must have been 2009) with The Bad Days Will End, and I ended up getting involved. Soon afterward, The Bad Days Will End was on its way out. People moved to different places, and we played less and less. Following that, we started Livia Sura with Punku and Seba, who had played with Pavilionul 32, and were later joined by Raul on vocals.

Atelier DIY was an informal platform for concerts, discussions, and activities. It was a focal point and, I dare say, an inspiration for the DIY scene in Romania and beyond. We had hundreds of concerts, festivals, meetings, discussions, and exchanges. Bands started, rehearsed, and even recorded there, including Livia Sura, Nomega, AWWO, and Grave for Sale. There were also interesting interactions beyond punk, but fused with the DIY spirit, for example with the stoner rock community around The Egocentrics, Fellatian Gore, and Methadone Skies.

And then came the inevitable end. As before with INCA, the pressure was economic and tied to gentrification. A gym opened in the same building, there was no mixing, and the punk place was the one that got kicked out. Of course, there’s also pressure on collectives to keep places running. Some people leave; others do something else with their lives.

The 2010s continued – TamTam and Armonia:

But some kept going. The next place we went to was TamTam, an artist-run space. They welcomed us, and we continued to put on shows for a while, until that place was also torn down.

Around 2018, some people involved with INCA and Atelier DIY, together with new people from the tek scene, started the Armonia DIY space. It lasted until the pandemic hit and was the last independent punk space in Timișoara, at least that I am aware of so far.

The 2020s – now I’m feeling gentrified:

It would be easy to say that the pandemic wiped out everything, and that would be somewhat accurate, but not entirely. The truth is that Timișoara, like many other places, I fear, became hostile to DIY punk and anything non-commercial. We feel lucky to still have some places where we can put on shows, such as Nemesis Art Club and Scârț Loc Lejer. And we keep doing shows, showing “them” how. I keep seeing old friends there, and I see new people, young people. Let’s see how or if this lasts. Maybe there will be other places. I don’t know how to quit.

I should note that the Romanian scene has kept producing nice surprises. There’s a wave of new punk and punk-adjacent bands, perhaps most prominently in Bucharest, but not only there. Constanța has had quite a few, as have Cluj and other places. A few projects come to mind, and many don’t, so I’m sorry for not mentioning them: Cold Brats, Scrag, D.E.N.I.S., Insurrection (now Banners of Extinction), Hjena Spit, Mossman, Thorn Bug, Bezna Minții, and others.

This was maybe a bit too much, yet I feel I barely scratched the surface and very likely forgot to mention a lot. Unsurprisingly, some of this overlaps with a scene report from Romania you published on DIY Conspiracy back in 2019.

I’ve been to several shows organized by the Gluga Neagră collective at Atelier DIY, which was a great space. One of the best memories was when I hitchhiked to Timișoara during Orthodox Easter for the Buddhist-themed black metal band Sadhaka show you organized. I remember you also published a zine and ran Dvvm Records, which is still active today. Could you tell us more about Atelier DIY and the other projects you were involved with at the time?

Adi: First, everything that needs to be said about Atelier DIY, besides the potentially infinite stories that can be told while reminiscing about it, is said in the Pavilionul 32 song “Atelier DIY”:

Minți deschise, picioare pe tavan, sânge-n nas, transpirație, filme faine-n cap, filme pe ecran, pisica chioară, divina inspirație, bere pe jos, miroase a fum, spirit de garaj, e un mod de viață, orașu-ntreg e întors pe dos, aici se creează cu dragoste și greață, Atelier DIY.

Translated, this would be:

Open minds, soles on the ceiling, blood in the nose, sweat, playing scenes in your head, films on the screen, one-eyed cat, divine inspiration, beer on the floor, smells like smoke, garage spirit, it is a way of life, the whole town is turned upside down, here we create with love and disgust. Atelier DIY.

To complete what I said before and address the projects I was involved with, some of them cover the time of Atelier DIY, while others stretch both ways, before and after.

Zines: The zines started back in the days of The Bad Days Will End. They were companions to our concerts, combining slices of our lyrics with situationist appropriation and deconstruction of comics and graphics. Similarly, we, mostly myself and Dada, who was Livia Sura’s singer at the time, made a companion zine for Livia Sura: Scrisori de la Livia Sura / Letters from Livia Sura. It was in the same vein: lyrics, opinion pieces, art, and interviews.

Dvvm Recs: When this started, I thought of it as a community project: a record label and concerts. It began as a vessel for the Hazarder/Livia Sura split release, but I always somewhat expected other people to get involved. Volodea (grvdwllr graphics, Void Forger, Bastos, Cold Brats, Scrag) joined, and we did some releases and organized shows in Bucharest and Timișoara. Volodea started his own thing, Summercide Records., and now Dvvm Recs. is practically a community of one, fitting in a way, as you will see below. It is still active. I organize shows when people ask me, and they keep asking. I don’t have the energy to do zines anymore, although I have spoken to different people about how, one day, we should do something. As they say, the future is unwritten.

AWWO: Following our tour with Hazarder in 2013, Livia Sura went on hiatus. That’s when I started A World With One. It was me and a drum machine. I released a split 7-inch with Pavilionul 32 and a series of demos, which are available on Bandcamp, and played a bunch of shows.

When people ask you to organize local shows, you often have to find someone to open for the touring band. Many times, that was Livia Sura, which allowed us to become really tight. After that, I did the same with AWWO. Later, whenever there was a need for an opening act and one was not available, I would put something together by myself or with other people, spanning sludge and doom (Scorpio Fly Goat, Five Foot Sky Goat, Something Doom), no wave and no jazz, later electronic music (Fru Inge Svart), and film scoring and electro (V.d. Anger). In most cases, these projects were or are improvised. But play often enough, and riffs crystallize. Some of the songs by VVVLV and Livia Sura came from such improvisations.

I’ve never been much of a metal fan myself, and Livia Sura’s sound draws from a lot of different places, including sludge, doom, black metal, stoner, folk, and synth-driven music. Do you consider Livia Sura a crust punk band, and what are you trying to achieve musically?

Adi: I do consider Livia Sura to be a crust punk band, that is, if we accept the meaning of crust punk to be punk that sounds like some sort of metal. It is punk on the basis of intent, subject matter, attitude, and worldview. Of course, in the meantime, crust punk has also become an aesthetic, and I guess we do have some crust punk elements in our music in addition to what you mentioned.

Musically, Livia Sura is a result of my experiences, and those of the other members, our exposure to and immersion in different forms of artistic expression, including music, poetry, and graphic art, as well as the world and life. If anything, I was always drawn toward good melodies that support meaningful lyrics, from the folk of Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, and Blaze Foley to Rudimentary Peni and New Model Army; Cascadian black metal like Addaura and Fell Voices; and the punk doom of Thou. Perhaps like everybody, I listen to many different kinds of music. Metal, too, but, as with everything, the type of music I listen to is generally aligned with my worldview, politics, and general outlook on things. So, for me, metal was more Nuclear Assault, Kreator, Carcass, and Napalm Death than Tankard, Cannibal Corpse, or whatever. I got into black metal from punk, through Iskra and later Cascadian bands like Addaura, Fell Voices, Leech, and others.

Returning to the music of Livia Sura, we’re also very interested in the way we produce it. We use tube amps and analog synths. For recording, we did not use studio tricks: no editing, no cutting and pasting. We leave the mistakes in.

We’re also particular about the graphic concept and packaging. Raul did the graphics, and Volodea helped with the new version of the logo and the layout for the tapes and vinyl.

What made you reunite in 2024-2026 and release new material? Tell us more about the new recordings, especially the lyrics, which are in Romanian and much longer than what you’d usually expect from punk songs.

Adi: We actually got back together earlier, I think at the beginning of 2022. It started with a phone call from Sebastian, our drummer. I had always wanted to continue and record the songs I did with Livia Sura. Once we got together, me, Sebastian on drums, and Raul on vocals, we were joined by Dorothea (Radical din Val, Exit Oz) on synths and, a bit later, Alessandro (VVVLV) on bass. It took a while to adapt the songs to incorporate the synths, and it took about two years to record, mix, and master them. We recorded an album, Între pietre reci, and an EP, Dureri ascunse. The EP contains re-recordings of the songs from our demo and split with Hazarder. The album’s songs were never recorded back in the early days, so you might have heard earlier versions if you saw us live back then.

Livia Sura’s lyrics were always outward-looking, offering commentary on and perceptions of the outside world. They address topics like the decay of modern life, capitalism and its promises, the trail of destruction and emptiness it leaves behind, state and domestic violence, hope, and struggle. As for the lyrics being in Romanian, I guess it was a way to reclaim the discourse and force myself to articulate all these things coherently. It was a deliberate effort to avoid using slogans. The words were chosen very carefully, with full awareness of and intent behind their meaning. I hope we managed to achieve this at a level comparable to Terror Art, Anti Pro, or Pavilionul 32, all of whom I looked up to for singing in Romanian.

When I think of bands like Livia Sura, I’m also reminded of the Mount of Artan festival in Serbia and bands like Hazarder from Croatia, with whom you released the split. Do you still keep in touch with the broader Balkan DIY scene?

Adi: To this day, I think Mount of Artan was the best festival in the world. :) Besides the fantastic setting, it was interesting and inspiring. I often felt in awe of the bands and artists I saw there. It was a kind of unspoken dialogue about music, art, struggle, and freedom. And I think I am not alone in this feeling. I am happy that I got to play there with the different projects I was involved with: Livia Sura, AWWO, and VVVLV. It is a shame that it did not continue.

And yes, I do keep in touch with people I met there. I set up some shows: Shon with Vipera, Goran, Stevan with Nastrom, Left to Starve, and Feedbacker. By extension and through these connections, I also collaborate with other people from the Balkans and anywhere else in the world.

I still hold on to some hope that, at some point, we will gather again under Artan.

I think one of the most iconic Livia Sura songs is “Poraimos” from your 2011 demo, which deals with the deportation of around 25,000 Romani people from Romania to Transnistria during World War II. Could you talk more about the song and its historical context, as well as the discrimination and other problems Roma people still face in Romanian society today?

Adi: Growing up at the tail end of the communist era and then through the early years of the transition, discrimination and racism toward Roma people were common and prominent in Romanian society. At the same time, very little was known about the history of the Romani people.

Poraimos, or Porajmos, is a Romani word meaning devouring, and it is the word for the genocide of the Roma people during World War II. Our song “Poraimos” was inspired by a relatively little-known documentary by Michelle Kelso, Hidden Sorrows, which addresses the deportation of 25,000 Roma to Transnistria, the trauma and experiences of survivors, and its lasting impact. In fact, the words of the song were partially taken from interviews with survivors.

On the current situation: discrimination, poverty, and social exclusion are still huge issues in Romanian society. However, as far as I can perceive, there have been some changes for the better and shifts in the general perception. The language is changing. The use of “țigan” or “gypsy” is less common and accepted, and more and more people are using the word “Romani.” Roma culture and Roma voices are more present in public discourse and no longer appear almost exclusively in stereotypical forms, such as manele.

The version of the song that appears on the new EP is called “Poraimos/Gaza.” We changed the lyrics to reflect the parallel between what is happening now in Gaza and what happened during the Holocaust and Porajmos. Never again. For anyone.

Romania has been going through a deep political crisis in recent years, with public discourse increasingly divided between nationalism and liberalism, as well as pro-Russian and anti-Russian sentiments. What’s your own analysis of the current situation?

Adi: Post-communist Romanian politics was traditionally defined by the contrast and contradiction between “liberalism,” the “reformist,” “modern,” and “future-facing” side, which is really some form of corrupt neoliberal traditionalism, and the “social democrats,” descendants of the old communists who are corrupt, anachronistic, and have totalitarian tendencies, which is really some form of corrupt neoliberal traditionalism. In addition, especially in the ’90s, we had quite a strong nationalist faction that, around 2000, was on the verge of significant electoral success.

Recently, as in many other places in this world, we have seen the rise of anti-establishment, right-wing populist nationalism, fueled by economic and social alienation, social media, and the dissolution of society. To give you a deep and well-thought-out analysis: it is a shitshow.

Anti-Russian sentiment is common in the region, for historical and more recent reasons. Sure. But it also provides a convenient cop-out and scapegoat. What makes people support these new right-wing populists is, in many cases, a valid plight. A big part of it is the fact that these people are ignored and dismissed. In this context, the pro-Russian label is just another form of dismissal. And, of course, the right-wing populists and nationalists are exploiting this.

Could you also talk about the surge in popularity of Călin Georgescu, the 2024 presidential election, and his subsequent trial over allegations of promoting the fascist Legionary movement? Is fascism on the rise in Romania?

Adi: Călin Georgescu is a ridiculous figure. An absurd one. In some sense, he is similar to Trump. His discourse is a mix of pompous ignorance and mystical, pseudohistorical hallucinations. His fascist and Legionary sympathies are expressed in this context, mixed with quotes from random films and TV shows and savant proclamations about language, economics, the nation, and whatnot. At times, it feels like a perverted art installation. So, to be honest, I don’t know what I can say about him or his rise. True, one can rationalize the potential consequences of his possible accession to positions of political power. But any such attempt seems like a game of absurd futility.

To address the question of fascism: it has always been present in Romanian society in the form of nostalgia, football hooligans, well-meaning uncles, and the liberal intelligentsia. At times, it flares up in different forms, such as populist movements like the current Georgescu movement and right-wing parties. In the past, fascists attacked DIY spaces and marched through the streets, and they still do so in somewhat more “acceptable” forms. This is, of course, worrying.

Just a couple of examples. A few days ago, at the time of answering these questions, our president, who was elected as the pro-European-values candidate, made an appeal for a “healthy” nationalism while speaking at an international meeting of young Orthodox people. So you see, coming back to the question of political sides, you have the extremist, nationalist, xenophobic, homophobic extreme right, who are some sort of fascists. Then you have the progressive, pro-European, liberal side, who are some sort of fascists. Oh joy!

Another example is the gamification of fascism. This is how young people are recruited online. They have a system of challenges and rewards: this many points for spraying a swastika or putting up a sticker, this many points for attacking people of color, and so on.

When I interviewed VVVLV, which shares members with Livia Sura, a few years ago, Vlad said, “The people in our government are nothing more than opportunistic idiots.” Do you still stand by that assessment today?

Adi: Definitely. Ethically super-flexible, servile, pompous, ignorant clowns.

I’m not sure most of our readers know that Romania has become an important hub for the Israeli arms industry, with Elbit Systems operating major facilities in the country. How strong is the Palestine solidarity movement in Romania, and how important is the issue within the local punk scene?

Adi: There could be explanations for the strong presence of the Israeli arms industry in Romania. There are historical connections between Romania and Israel. Romania used to play quite a prominent role as a mediator between Israel and Arab states back in communist times. It had good relations with both sides. On the other hand, Romania also had a significant arms industry during the communist era, so the infrastructure was there and labor was cheap. All these factors, together with our political and business elite, could facilitate the strong presence of entities like Elbit.

But these are just symptoms of the new global reality, one in which war is normalized, accepted, and expected. It seems these days that the two massive driving forces of the economy are AI and the military-industrial complex, or simplex, depending on the region. And they feed each other. I fear a future in which automation leads to a surplus of workers whose only outlet is to become cannon fodder, or drone fodder, to keep up with the times. Capitalism seems to have exhausted most avenues of growth and now depends on these autodestructive vectors. Damned be international law, human rights, ecology, and so on.

Getting back to Elbit, the issue, of course, is that weapons produced in Romania ended up being used in the Gaza genocide. This was reported in the Romanian press and pretty much brushed aside. The Palestinian issue is hidden and ignored in Romanian public discourse. The reality of the genocide is ignored, dismissed, and absent from mainstream public discourse.

But there is resistance, even if it is little known to the broader public. For the punk scene, Palestine is important, and there are many forms of solidarity and resistance. People have picketed Elbit factories, and there have been demonstrations in solidarity with Palestine, benefit shows, and benefit compilations.

Now that you’re much older and have been involved in this DIY scene for so long, how do you see its potential to actually transform anything in a world that increasingly feels like an authoritarian dystopia?

Adi: Based on my own experiences, yes, I definitely think there’s potential for change and transformation toward a better world, however broadly or personally one defines that world. A big part of this is opening a dialogue, sharing experiences and values, challenging and changing mindsets and discourse, and bringing together words and their meaning. I literally mean this. This is why I am in this scene; this is what I am looking for. I care little about virtue signaling or performative bullshit.

Thanks a lot for the interview. I hope I haven’t missed anything important. Is there anything else you’d like to add, and where can people find physical copies of your records?

Adi: Thank you for your interest and for providing this opportunity. I think we covered quite a lot. But let’s keep in touch, and I guess I am saying this to you, but also to anyone who may be reading these lines at some point.

Physical copies of our music are available directly from us. Contact us on social media (Instagram or Facebook) or email livia.sura@gmail.com. Our merch is also listed on Bandcamp. Also, if anyone who runs a distro or small shop is interested in distributing our materials, we’d love to hear from you.

It’s been five years since Austin, Texas residents Altar of Eden released their enchanting Chimeras album, and now they are back for more. The band have decided to dwell once again in The Grotto Screams, as they named their debut album, with its second part released back in February. This gothic entity excels at vampiric, cave-like, and primal death rock/post-punk, with fuzzy guitar tones echoing alongside dusty synths into the depths of working-class hell.

The Grotto Screams II consists of ten tracks, with a total duration of 46 minutes. Each listening session sounds like a batcave party, with the band staying loyal to the power of the drumbeat until the very end. Songs like “The Erasure” use cutting guitar leads to sculpt an artistic statement. Although Altar of Eden feel like a textbook band of the subgenre, they evoke an otherworldly dedication that is probably unmatched.

A large part of the aural mist rising through these songs comes from the lo-fi production. The Grotto Screams II feels like it crawls out of sunless dungeons, with only the basslines providing any glimpse of hope. The cryptic lyrics, somewhere between dark mysticism and social allegory, come alive through vocals that recall Christian Death and UK Decay, while the rhythm section echoes memories of early Belgrado. “The Abandonment II” challenges the listener to a nihilist dance of death, while “Days & Nights” feels capable of finding its place on any well-informed doomer/goth playlist.

The thing with Altar of Eden, though, is that while most of their tracks pass the four-minute mark, they never overstay their welcome. One of the most interesting things about The Grotto Screams II is the allure of what lies beneath the surface of its songs. Altar of Eden sound as focused as ever, and even when they decide to get slightly more complicated on “Eternal,” they manage to build a melancholic bridge toward an eerie finale. Then they carry that energy into the following “Vicious Circle,” which, despite its drum pattern, is still able to hold tension.

Altar of Eden have released one of the most enchanting death rock albums I’ve heard in a while. Their discography measures up as one of the best in the whole underground, unfiltered gothic rock realm, and their decision not to over-polish their sound, while keeping the rawer hardcore aspects of the guitars prominent in the mix, ends up being a rewarding one. The Grotto Screams II delivers more than it ever promised, and I am sure that once you get to know it, you will never let it go.

After a split with Destroy Yourself in 2024, Italian band Cranial Putrefaction finally released their debut full-length album, Occhio Per Occhio, co-released digitally by the band and Grindwar Records.

Two years of hard work have gone into this grindcore masterpiece, and it seems it was totally worth it. The band demonstrate a vast variety of influences, from crustgrind to more brutish noisegrind and very strong powerviolence elements. The result is a great record that has something for everyone, while maintaining the DIY spirit and ethics of the genre. It also tackles serious topics such as capitalist realism, the potential for change, and a burning desire for freedom from authority and tyranny.

Consisting of 23 brutal symphonies of DIY grindcore that rarely go beyond the one-minute mark, Occhio Per Occhio tickles the listener and even overwhelms with its eclectic influences and different compositional approaches. The album starts with “Agente Arancio,” one of the longer songs and, in my opinion, a track that encapsulates most of the sounds the band incorporate into the album. It has slow and sludgy powerviolence parts, catchy crust punk riffs, and explosions of grinding barbarity, preparing us for the rest of the record with its compact dynamics.

Vocalist Davide is in possession of an impressive range of beastly vocals, from ghastly shrieks to brutal low growls, typical powerviolence shouts à la Infest when the moment is right, and at times, something more death metal-ish, which gives the album even more variety. The guitar work of Ale is excellent. He is an absolute machine for grind riffs, delivering fast outbursts of noise, switching to slower, sludgier parts, and, when the time is right, crusty riffage and even small solos that give the album more complexity. There is not one weak or boring moment. Even if you only listen to the guitar, you will hear different genres, each of them done with an original twist.

The noisegrind passages flow neatly into the darker, slower parts and the more punk-driven riffs, only to return again, sometimes in a complex manner where the switches between styles seem effortless. When the guitars return to brutal noise outbursts, you can’t believe how easy he makes it look. Spectacular guitar and vocal work.

As for the rhythm section, it doesn’t hold back either. The genre-typical buzzsaw bass tone is always there and graciously supports the maniacal drumming of Giusanni. The production emphasizes the loudness and brutality of the bass lines, while the drumming is absolutely fierce. Giusanni is a beast of a musician, as such fast switches between slow and fast parts, crust/d-beat passages, and barbaric noisegrind eruptions require a level of talent and practice that few drummers can achieve. He manages to shift between blastbeats, slow-fast powerviolence parts, crust punk rhythms, and even some off-beat moments where he really shows his masterful abilities.

Your memory is a weapon, keep your mind lit

Think back to all the attempts eliminated and failed

We will be the plague that rises eternally from the ashes of your abuses.

The lyrics explore a variety of topics, such as the atrocities and aberrations of a civilization in decay, the modern human condition of apathy, hopelessness, and alienation, and the insufferable abuses we inflict on nature and each other. However, this bleak reality also creates the conditions for an uprising and a flourishing of the independent mind, taking root in the ashes of Judeo-Christian civilization and the encompassing techno-feudalism.

Find the record through the band’s official Bandcamp page and Grindwar Records. Combining fierce noisegrind, crustgrind, powerviolence, and death metal with a very strong sense of originality, the band appear as an elite example of the current grindcore genre, offering something for every fan of this type of noise pollution. Most importantly, it makes us think through its dark anti-civilizational themes while preserving the genre’s crucial DIY ethics and values. NOISE NOT WAR!

In early August, I was at the seaside, taking a break from writing about punk bands and releases. Then, while checking DIY Conspiracy’s IG feed, I was bombarded with posts about another round of culls in “alternative” music journalism. BrooklynVegan, Alternative Press, Revolver, and Goldmine had all been hit by layoffs at Veeps, the media and live-streaming company majority-owned by the corporate behemoth Live Nation.

This is hardly new. In 2023, roughly half of Bandcamp’s workforce lost their jobs during Bandcamp’s acquisition by Songtradr, with Bandcamp Daily’s editorial team smacked particularly hard. VICE Media was collapsing around the same time, filing for bankruptcy after another round of layoffs. In January 2024, Condé Nast announced cuts at Pitchfork and folded the publication into GQ as part of another corporate “restructuring.” The following month, VICE announced that it would cut hundreds more jobs and stop publishing on its website. Different companies, same bullshit; music journalism becomes expendable the moment the people in suits demand it.

One thing that followed this latest round of social media discussion around the “death of music journalism” was something we’d already seen after the cuts at Bandcamp, Pitchfork, and VICE: more writers starting their own paywalled blogs and newsletters. Soon enough, Instagram “indie music” influencers were posting reels and carousels about following the best “independent music writers,” which, unsurprisingly, mostly meant people publishing on venture-backed platforms like Substack. I even saw comments along the lines of “bring back blogs and zines, but make it Substack.”

That specific comment has been rattling around my head ever since. I don’t want anyone to lose their job, and I understand why writers are looking for ways to get paid without waiting for another corporate owner to pull the plug. But I’m worried about how often that search leads back to another company’s platform and another subscription model. I wanted to put down a few thoughts about it, hopefully without turning this into another old punk yelling at the cloud about how things were better before.

The Insatiable Content Maw

I’ve never been much interested in podcasts, reels, or video content. Written words have always been the thing for me, whether on paper or online. When DIY Conspiracy started in the 2000s, it was mainly inspired by zines like Profane Existence, HeartattaCk, and Inside Front. I loved those publications to death and wanted to do interviews and record reviews with the same musical and political direction, which I hope this site still carries today.

The online space looked much freer, more diverse, and more social back then. Bands were on MySpace, of course, but the web hadn’t yet been reduced to a handful of privately owned ventures deciding how people meet, what they see, and how they interact. There were countless free-download blogs, forums, message boards, and simple websites dealing with specific themes, all looking completely different from one another and reflecting their authors’ own creative and aesthetic visions. In the subculture circles I moved in, people shared music, writing, and knowledge freely because they wanted others with the same interests to find it. There was no need to put a real name and face in front of everything or claim individual credit for every contribution. Like plenty of others, I was happy to hide behind a ridiculous nickname, while publications with several contributors often used shared pseudonyms. My feelings haven’t changed. I’m still not a fan of copyright, and I believe that values and community matter more than authorship or personal recognition. Turning that participation in the music community into a personal brand or a revenue stream was far from what we had in mind.

All this started to change in the early 2010s, when “monetize your passion” became a thing and websites followed suit, becoming more commercial and more alike. Some music bloggers began building clout around their real names and faces, and soon enough the blog itself was becoming a way to build a career. In the rat race for followers, traffic, and quick monetization, a growing number of formerly independent music sites were absorbed into larger media companies, while many others took to clickbait headlines, ranked lists, gossip, PR, and a ceaseless flow of news meant to grab a moment’s attention and be forgotten just as quickly. Whenever a hyped artist released a new song, dropped a video, or announced a tour, a hundred sites would recycle the same story within minutes. Music sites today produce dozens of throwaway articles a day, every single day.

By the mid-2010s, I had started calling this the “buzzfeedization” of music journalism, as more websites copied the model of BuzzFeed and Bored Panda, two of the biggest factories of viral content online. That chase for viral attention continues today. The same stock phrases, templated headlines, and ranked lists are recycled so relentlessly that it barely matters which site you’re reading. Even back then, the writing had become so predictable that I started thinking about how easy it would be to build a computer program that could guess the next word in a sentence and produce articles in exactly the same style, to the point where nobody could tell a machine had written them… Well, we know what happened a few years later.

A recent example of where the chase for viral stories in punk and metal can lead came when a hardcore frontman singled out and humiliated a show-goer in a banana suit, and the whole incident became viral headline fodder across music and pop culture websites worldwide. Sure, the banana-man deserved some empathy, but the endless recycling of the story was all about engagement bait and publicity. Beyond all that, what bothers me just as much, as I mentioned earlier, is how relentlessly most of this paid music journalism relies on hype, press releases, and publicity campaigns from labels and bands with budgets and managers, rather than writers’ own curiosity to find new and exciting music.

Back in 2023, I interviewed Ian MacKaye for my irregular print-only zine with zero online presence. Ian described the internet as an always-open, insatiable maw, devouring everything in front of its face and never getting enough. A print zine, for example, has a finite number of pages, and those limits put a frame around the work. By contrast, a modern website may have no such fixed boundary. Add the pressure to keep visitors coming, stay on top of social media feeds, or keep subscribers paying, and there’s always a reason to publish more and more. The maw stays open, and everything, whether the music itself or someone’s words about the music, is bound to become “content,” with no natural end in sight.

At DIY Conspiracy, we’ve long had a policy of publishing no more than three articles a week. We can set our own boundaries online, but someone needs to make a conscious decision to do it.

Platforms, Middlemen, and Walled Gardens

In his book Enshittification, Cory Doctorow doesn’t just try to answer why everything online suddenly got worse. He analyzes how an online service gets worse and how that worsening spreads until everything else turns into a pile of shit. In the first part of the book, he traces the symptoms, mechanisms, and epidemiology of this particular social disease produced by late-stage capitalism, arguing that it infects a particular kind of digital business: the platform.

Cory explains that, in its purest form, a platform’s value comes from the people and companies using it, rather than anything unique the company itself creates. The more value its users produce, the more valuable the platform becomes. In other words, a platform is a middleman.

It’s not that all middlemen are intrinsically evil. In a sense, your favorite punk labels like La Vida Es Un Mus or Sorry State are middlemen too. They release the best punk records, distribute them, connect bands with listeners, and do useful work that most bands probably don’t want to do entirely by themselves. The problem begins when the middleman becomes powerful enough to stop merely connecting the two sides and starts acting as a gatekeeper, usurping the relationship between them. That’s why so much of the early excitement around the internet was about disintermediation: cutting out powerful middlemen and allowing people to communicate and exchange things directly.

Everyone knows how much of today’s digital creators’ income depends on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch, Patreon, or Substack. I’m not going to go into details here.

At what point does a platform become a gatekeeper? One obvious red flag is when one of these platforms starts locking its users into a gated community of some kind. If I don’t use Instagram and somebody sends me an Instagram reel or a photo, I’ll be prompted to log in or create an Instagram account, even if I don’t want to. If a band sends me a link to their music on Spotify (the link is something like open.spotify.com, even though there’s nothing particularly open about it), I can try to play the songs, only to be greeted by an annoying pop-up to “Sign up for free” or “download the app.” Bandcamp, for all its own problems, still lets people listen to an entire record seamlessly without creating a profile or installing anything.

A writer can be independent in what they say while still depending on a company to reach their readers. Who controls the writing, who controls its distribution, and who can read it are all part of this discussion.

The Substack Problem

Now, back to Substack.

I understand why writers and music journalists end up there. It’s incredibly easy to start, especially if you don’t know how to build your own website. I myself have thought about starting a Substack for things like sci-fi or other interests I have, simply because it would save me from building and maintaining yet another site.

For writers who have spent years being expected to churn out whatever might go viral, having a publication of their own can also give them room to write about the music, books, or culture they actually care about. They can be more selective, follow their own curiosity, and put together something more carefully curated than their former employers would have allowed. That’s a real gain in editorial freedom, and it deserves credit.

Is Substack a walled garden? Not in quite the same sense as Instagram or Spotify. You can still open and read public Substack articles on the web without having an account. Still, more and more of its architecture follows the same platform logic. Substack is free to publish on, but once you enable paid subscriptions, the company takes 10% of every transaction. Its financial interest is therefore obvious: the more writers who turn readers into paying subscribers, the more money Substack makes.

You can run an entirely free publication, of course, but the whole ecosystem is built around subscribing, following, recommending, restacking, and discovering more publications inside Substack. Its recommendation system encourages writers to promote other Substacks to their readers. There’s nothing wrong with writers recommending each other, but here those connections are increasingly organized inside one company’s limited ecosystem. Just follow enough writers in your niche and it becomes very easy to spend your entire Substack life quoting, recommending, and interacting with other people on the same platform. Before long, you’re living inside another platform bubble, much like Instagram or YouTube creators who interact mostly with others on the same platform.

That logic is precisely what makes platforms rule today’s commercialized internet. You don’t control the interface, the discovery systems, the rules, or what those rules might look like one or five years from now. Substack lets you export your posts and email list, but that doesn’t give you control over its recommendation network. Like any other middleman, Substack can remove content under its terms, and while you may own the words, you don’t own the ground beneath your feet.

As with so many venture-backed platforms, the question is what happens when the existing model can no longer produce the growth its investors expect. One of Substack’s long-term investors is Andreessen Horowitz, the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm that first backed the platform in 2019 and invested in it again in 2025. In January 2026, Andreessen Horowitz raised more than $15 billion across five new funds, doubling down on AI infrastructure and investments in so-called “national interests,” including defense. That’s worth remembering when discussing the financial interests behind this supposedly independent publishing ecosystem.

What happens when those interests demand more growth? Let me guess. More extraction, more walled gardens, more AI bullshit, and more features designed to keep people spending their money inside the platform?

Some of Substack’s choices have already had very shitty consequences. One of the first things I remember reading about the company was an Atlantic investigation titled “Substack Has a Nazi Problem.” It documented openly white-supremacist and Nazi publications operating on the platform, including some taking paid subscriptions from which Substack received its share.

In February 2026, The Guardian reported that Substack was still earning money from Nazi newsletters. The risks are not limited to the content the company chooses to host. That same month, Substack notified users of a data breach that had occurred the previous October, exposing some users’ email addresses, phone numbers, and internal metadata.

Whatever you think about newsletters, independent writers, or the convenience of the platform, these seem like fairly important details to remember when discussing what kind of “independent” infrastructure we are actually supporting and building on. Otherwise, we’re stuck in the Enshittocene: the era in which “the worst ideas of the worst people make the most money.”

The Monetization Question

Let me end with the monetization part. Substack isn’t populated only by professional writers and laid off journalists. It’s full of low-key enthusiasts like me: punks and ordinary folks who simply want somewhere to put their thoughts online and maybe find a few others who care.

The crux of the issue, for me, is replacing one corporate-owned, insatiable content maw with a more curated yet still platform-controlled space where much of the material ends up behind a paywall. On this very website, I’m still struggling with whether it feels right to ask people to support me as an individual creator rather than simply help cover the costs of collectively maintaining our own turf on the web. There are writers at DIY Conspiracy who earn their living from writing elsewhere, and I would love to find a way for their time and dedication here to be compensated too. Until then, maybe Substack, with all its flaws, really is the most practical place for some of them to go.

Getting paid for writing, however, doesn’t necessarily mean locking the writing away. There are other models, even if none of them offers an easy answer to how somebody actually makes a living. Cory Doctorow, mentioned earlier, offers an interesting alternative. He publishes essays for free on his own website under a Creative Commons license, distributes them through RSS and a mailing list, and mirrors them elsewhere, away from Meta but still on platforms like Medium. He makes money from books, speaking engagements, and other paid projects. Of course, an established author’s books and speaking engagements aren’t a ready-made livelihood for a music journalist who has just lost their job.

The basic principle is to spread the work as widely as possible while directing people back toward the parts of the internet you control. Cory is also realistic enough to acknowledge that not every writer can be their own editor, graphic designer, publisher, web administrator, distributor, and salesperson. As mentioned earlier, the problem isn’t the existence of a middleman but becoming dependent on one powerful enough to dictate the relationship between you and your readers.

There are plenty of imperfect middle grounds. You can keep the writing accessible by accepting some controlled advertising, as print zines have historically done with ads from small labels, or by asking for pay-what-you-want support without placing content behind a paywall. You can sell print editions or zines containing your writing and combine those with paid commissions elsewhere. During the Covid pandemic, DIY Conspiracy survived largely by producing and mailing monthly compilation tapes featuring bands from all over the world. The physical tapes sold out fast, while the music remained available digitally on Bandcamp.

None of these options is as frictionless as creating another account on somebody else’s publishing platform, and none guarantees that a writer can actually make a living. Perhaps surviving on the open web has always depended on combining several small sources of income and support rather than handing the whole relationship over to a single gatekeeper.

In my experience, keeping the writing free doesn’t make the work entirely free and easy to produce. Beyond paying various expenses out of one’s own pocket, it often means fitting the work around a nine-to-five job, giving up weekends with family and friends, or relying on support that other people don’t have. A publishing culture open only to people with enough spare time and money has its own large exclusions. That’s part of the problem we need to solve too. When I was younger, I might have told anyone who wasn’t DIY enough or willing to do everything for free to fuck off. These days, I better understand the realities of labor and why people seek some stability in their lives. I also have much more respect for the great work and important campaigns of groups like United Musicians and Allied Workers.

This rant isn’t really about singling out one bad platform. Switching to Beehiiv, Ghost, Buttondown, Medium, or another publishing service doesn’t solve the underlying problem. What we ultimately need is a more democratized internet and a social safety net that gives writers the time and security to do their work, so they aren’t forced to choose between corporate dependence, paywalls, and working for free.

I don’t have the answers, and I don’t want to tell anyone what choices to make. Still, I’m certain that the current economic model, where almost everything is rented and every app, website, or service gives you some crippled basic version until you start paying a monthly or annual subscription, is not the future I want to live in. There’s an important difference between asking readers to support something they value and turning the writing itself into another scarce commodity available only to those paying admission.

Sometime in the mid-’80s, an explosion tore through the Swedish punk scene. Bands such as Anti-Cimex, Avskum, Mob 47, Shitlickers, Asta Kask, Crude SS, and, of course, Totalitär took their devotion to Discharge and d-beat to an even more violent, frantic, and noisy level. Alongside later torchbearers such as Dischange (now Meanwhile), No Security, and Discard, they helped define what became known as kängpunk. Formed in Hudiksvall in 1985, Totalitär remain one of the style’s most influential bands and a sacred name across the global crust, d-beat, and raw punk scene.

Their distinctive black-and-white aesthetic, monumental logo, series of seminal EPs, debut LP, splits with Dropdead and Tragedy, and numerous compilations collectively embody an entire sound, both within and beyond the Swedish scene they helped create. Given the band’s landmark role in the global spread of DIY hardcore, news that they would return after 20 years with a new LP could hardly leave us indifferent. Following a path similar to the recording comebacks of Avskum and Mob 47 in recent years, Totalitär’s self-titled album is a compressed battlefield of sound that leaves no time to react.

The record packs nine tracks into just 16 minutes. Driven by exceptionally fitting production that keeps them from sounding overly anachronistic, Totalitär sound as though they have stepped out of a time machine. To be honest, however, the Swedes’ discography has never stopped sounding solid, crushing, and relentless. The band erases a two-decade recording gap with irritating ease, every song surging with unpretentious intensity, speed, and immediacy.

With releases like this, the overall impact tends to transcend the individual details, and Totalitär is no exception. “Stolta Barbarer” could easily continue for another minute and a half on its rocket-propelled momentum, while “Följ Din Diagnos,” by contrast, packs an entire pogo frenzy into 59 seconds. The groove of “Älskade USA” stands out as one of the album’s most memorable moments. The riffs in “En Dag Hos Terapeuten” may sound more British than Swedish, but they are every bit as electrifying as they need to be, even making room for a fleetingly delightful guitar lead.

On their major recording comeback, Totalitär do the dirty work loudly and convincingly. Far removed from grandstanding, fleeting hype, and the usual comeback clichés, the Swedish legends stand shoulder to shoulder with their younger and more demonic successors. That may be their greatest strength. They have no interest in anything beyond remaining honest and faithful to their musical and political ideals while playing at the peak of their abilities. It is precisely this unpretentious honesty and momentum that allows their self-titled album to command attention through the music itself, rather than merely through the aura surrounding it.

Total chaos.

A Greek version of the review can be found at Rocking.gr.