Opening with “Underside Of Your Head,” Pretty Out starts strong with a song about trying to find the good in the world, but eventually, it will wear you down, likening the resentment to a misery seed that will grow inside of you like a weed if left unattended. Whether this is written about one person in particular or society, the sentiment is the same either way. “Pay No Mind” is a more upbeat venture that expands upon the opening track’s theme of being let down by people, even if the guitars are brighter.

“Knife to a Flame (From Here I See the Decline)” and “Liquid Zoo” bring down the tempo while keeping the energy. There are plenty of moments where each instrument gets its own little tangent, whether it be a bass intro, guitar riff, or drum fill. The way this album utilizes the energy it creates is a balancing act, and these last two tracks are a good yin to the first two’s yang.

This record is damn good. Toe-tapping emo that doesn’t cry its feelings, but does present them in a less aggressive tone. While it cycles through the tropes of the genre, it does them well. The album’s four songs have a runtime of fourteen minutes, but they’re never boring and are well-arranged. Pretty Out has done their homework, and it shows. Meditative in spots with thought-provoking lyrics, Misery Seed will leave you wanting more songs.

This single is the latest addition to Ink Bomb’s extensive catalog which includes two full-length albums, the latest being 2024’s Saudade. Head over to their Bandcamp and work your way through their back catalog.

If you’re not familiar with this great band, it features Isa Anderson from Dead to Me on drums and some of the best former members of Culture Abuse: Matt Walker, John Jr., and Shane Plitt.

M.U.T.T. are unapologetically themselves while at the same time built their band around a community that embraces them.

The crowd was filled with other musicians and workers from other venues that took the night off work to support them. Their approach to punk has an earnest raw grit and yet has a refined execution.

Check out their record:

Supporting the show was East Bay band, Blue Zero. Another great band from Chris Natividad of Marbled Eye and Public Interest that blends DIY, shoegaze, indie, and post-punk sounds.

Blue Zero announced this is their last show with their drummer Rick Altieri. Check out their last album:

More photos on Instagram.

Physical copies of the record are sold as a double LP with three sides. This doesn’t make sense on paper given the record’s forty-five-minute runtime, but will make sense artistically as you make your way through. Like most musicians, Mike Ness has a history of widening the spectrum of genres he pulls influence from while composing his songs. Think of the jump from *Mommy’s Little Monster* to *Prison Bound*. *Mommy’s Little Monster* is a great punk album, while the band’s sound from *Prison Bound* forward is very influenced by Ness’s love for Johnny Cash. There are moments where “Born to Kill” feels like the missing link between “White Light, White Heat, White Trash” and what their music has been missing since original member Denis Danell’s passing in 2000.

The title track, “Born to Kill,” is a fantastic Social Distortion song and opening track. It’s explosive, channeling the 1990s era of this band, which is arguably their strongest. “No Way Out” feeds off that energy and Mike Ness’s ability to channel the rough times in his life with music and lyrics. Songs like “The Way Things Were” and “Tonight” are nostalgic in their lyrics. While Ness has been somewhat open about his struggles, whether health or addiction, the long gap between releases can leave it ambiguous as to what the songs are referring to. However, with “The Way Things Were,” it’s very clear that this song is reflective of his punk rock past.

The second side of this album leans heavily into Mike Ness’s non-punk influences. Fans of Ness’s punk rock songs may be turned off by the band’s cover of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” As usual, Mike Ness wears his honky-tonk heart on his sleeve with “Crazy Dreamer,” a duet between Mike Ness and Lucinda Williams. This far into his career, Ness is as adept at playing country as he is at playing punk rock. At one point, these songs would have fit on one of Mike Ness’s solo records. However, since the death of Dennis Danell, Social Distortion’s output and Mike Ness’s solo records are one and the same.

For as strong as this record is, the third side is definitely its weakest, with “Walk Away (Don’t Look Back)” being pretty bland, but it also features “Don’t Keep Me Hanging On,” a song leftover from the *White Light, White Heat, White Trash* sessions. As with most of Social Distortion’s songs, there is this throughline of redemption you’d get after getting clean and trying to make amends with those around you and your life. A couple of years back, Mike Ness was given the key to the city of Fullerton, California, where most of this debauchery took place in the 1980s. While the search for redemption continues through the last few songs, by the end of the record, it very much feels like he found it.

“Born to Kill” is a return to form in many ways for Social Distortion. While it doesn’t break new ground, it doesn’t need to. The last two Social Distortion albums felt very experimental for Mike after losing his longest-standing collaborator at the time. Since then, Mike Ness has carved a place in music that is undoubtedly his own. This record feels lived-in and reflective of the many lives this band has had throughout its decades-long career. The long wait between those periods of inactivity where Mike Ness opens the curtain and shows the world the results is meant to be special. This time, it was worth the wait.

Born to Kill is out now on Epitaph Records.

The quartet, based out of Richmond Hill, Ontario, has been rocking live shows and cranking out some of the best music everyone loves since 2002. Between the time and hard work this band has put in, it’s safe to say they’ve earned the recognition and loyalty among punk rock fans across the world.

The Flatliners have released seven studio albums and a plethora of EPs during their twenty-four years as a band. Starting with their debut Destroy to Create in 2005, followed by The Great Awake in 2007, Cavalcade in 2010, Dead Language in 2013, Inviting Light in 2017, New Ruin in 2022, and now Cold World, their seventh album releases today.

The excitement for the release of Cold World has been building over the last few months. The hype is very real, fans have been anticipating new music from The Flatliners and they did not disappoint. The band released “Good, You?” as a single on February 17. “Good, You?” seems to ask how we are doing while acknowledging the struggles and feelings we have as people. “So tragic, so blind to the ever-open wound, good, you?” The song has the slow-paced guitar buildup we all have grown to love about this band. Melodic, emotional and with purpose, this is why we love The Flatliners. An excellent peek at what is to come for the album.

“Inner Peace” is somewhat of an ironic name for this song if the listener is to go by the pace of the music itself. An aggressive, in-your-face, loud, and hard-hitting song, the chorus slows down to form a melody that is familiar. Features the signature raw vocals from frontman Chris Cresswell (Yes, THE Chris Cresswell, the same dude who moonlights as a member of Hot Water Music) and is very much complemented by the drumming of Paul Ramirez. “So deflated, turn it on, breathe your air into me or I’m gone,” a search for something uplifting, perhaps enlightenment.

Big guitars, big drums, and some ohhs and whoas showcase the intro song for Cold World, “Stolen Valour.” Once Creswell chimes in, we know where this is going. “Together in disintegration we fall first. Completely it will come apart, it just gets worse,” these lyrics will be stuck repeating in your head while contemplating your sense of belonging. This is The Flatliners we want to hear, a song that will get the crowd moving when played live.

Perhaps the most poignant song on Cold World is “And They’re Off.” This is the song that we will be singing together in dive bars while drinking cheap beer and lamenting the past. “Catastrophe, sitting on the shoulders of what used, what used to be. The horse we’re betting on is already dead, so what’s the use?” This is a statement to keep going. “Set foot in the past, keep planning now for the future.” Let this song soak in and enjoy.

“Pulpit” is very ambitious, heavy, and sounds like it should be played in a stadium. “There’s beauty in the way we have decayed,” finding the good when things are going bad. Another example of a chorus that’s going to be stuck in your head. “Burn” might be the best pound for pound song on the entire album. It’s the classic sound of The Flatliners and is a reminder of how far this band has come. Play this one at full blast and get those fists pumping. “Burn, don’t let it burn away, Burn, what’s lost cannot be saved.”

Overall, Cold World, is an absolutely fantastic offering from The Flatliners. Much like their previous albums, it has charm, melody, ingenuity and compassion. It breathes. It speaks. It feels. There’s so much there and it easily is going to be the best album of the year to most of us. It is such a big album, from the guitars to the impact of the songs. A lot of reflection but also a lot of enthusiasm. The Flatliners have been through it and they’re still going through it.

The Flatliners are currently on The Cold World World Tour. Visit their website for tour dates here. The album Cold World is released through Equal Vision Records, and can be ordered here.

Matthew Rosenberg’s Four Records:

0-10: Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water 

Teenage: Faith No More – King For A Day, Fool For A Lifetime

Twenties: Avail – Over The James

Recent Record: Skinhead – Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt 

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www.DyingScene.com

Opening song: Rad Skulls – Loud as Shit

Closing song: Lucas Perea – Underneath Ashes

As part of a year-long run of shows honoring the BAGIA anniversary, The Hold Steady announced a four-night stay at the Sinclair, a venue nestled in the general Harvard Square area in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn is rather publicly a graduate of a fellow Beanpot school, Boston College. And while The Sinclair didn’t exist during Finn’s showgoing years on the Heights, there’s something that feels very Hold Steadian (Steadyian?) about the venue and the surrounding area. The venue itself soudns great and is well lit and has an unassuming industrial/subway air about it that is authentic in ways that newer gastropub microbreweries can only dream about. The jangly brick-lined sidewalks and narrow, paved-over pre-Revolutionary cowpaths have long been a way station for a wide cross-section of society; for generations it’s been home to the stereotypical “haves” for sure, but also counter-culture revolutionaries and wayward souls and well-read gutterpunks and upper-middle-class kids from suburbia in search of something close enough to ‘danger’ but also close enough to the subway to be able to return to their safe, suburban homes before the streetlights came on long traveled far and wide and populated The Pit (R.I.P.) and The Garage (also R.I.P.) and the bookstores and coffeeshops and back alleys.

Anyway, as per usual, I digress. On this evening, the first of those four celebratory evenings, The Hold Steady wasted no time in getting on with the business of celebrating, serving as their own opener and playing Boys And Girls In America front-to-back. (Editor’s note: nights two and three featured Jimmy Montague and Happy Little Clouds, respectively, while night four was a stripped-down, storytellers THS set). As proof of the album’s cultural staying power, especially within the Unified Scene, the overwhelming majority of Boys And Girls In America has long been regularly featured in the band’s live sets. Still, it is a different sort of experience hearing the album basically start to finish, in order, the same way so many of us first experienced at the initial needle drop or, I’m sure in most cases, the first time we put the disc in the aftermarket stereo in our 2001 Mazda Protege, a small handful of years before that car literally rusted away into nothing. But I digress again. Longtime Boston-area scene vets Ryan Walsh (Hallelujah The Hills) and Ezra Furman joined the crew for the boy and girl parts originally made famous by Dave Pirner and Elizabeth Elmore on “Chillout Tent,” which is undoubtedly the least-performed song from the BAGIA oeuvre for perhaps obvious reasons. I say “basically start to finish” because the band did insert a bit of a pre-planned audible, sliding BAGIA-era B-side “For Boston” in between “Chillout Tent” and album-closer “Southtown Girls.” It was an appropriate homage to Finn’s former home (not only did he spend his college years in the area, but he was born at the now-defunct St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in nearby Brighton).

The band took a normal opener-to-headliner-sized break of fifteen minutes between sets before returning to the stage for the main set. As interesting as it is to hear a set of exclusively Boys And Girls… tracks, it’s almost more compelling to see a full, headliner-length set that includes zero Boys And Girls… tracks because ten of the album’s eleven tracks have been set staples for so many years. The main set kicked off with “Multidude Of Casualties” from the band’s sophomore release, 2005’s Separation Sunday. The eighteen songs that followed were a pretty representative cross-section of the entirety of the band’s catalog, from Almost Killed Me‘s “Killer Parties” to the as-yet-unreleased “Dream Down By The Water.” Heaven Is Whenever bonus track “Ascension Blues” was a fun highlight from the lesser-played song archive, as was Teeth Dreams‘ “The Only Thing.” I have a soft-spot for that record and feel like it doesn’t always get the appreciation it deserves. Of course Mosh Pit Josh joined for the hardcore-style breakdown at the latter half of “Stay Positive.”

To look at the band is to see a crew of a half-dozen different guys from seemingly different scenes – from Nicolay’s frequent suits and bolwer hats to Selvidge’s 70s cocksure swagger to Finn’s English professor – who’ve felt the same gravity to create iconic, rock-and-roll music. The band has had a few different lineups over the years and each has its own merits, but I genuinely believe that the full-Voltron lineup that for the last decade has found Finn and (essentially) original members Tad Kubler (stage left guitar), Galen Povlika (bass) and Bobby Drake (drums) joined by both Steve Selvidge (stage right guitar) and the inimitable Franz Nicolay (keys, harmonica, accordion when the time is right) is the best lineup in a live setting. It might seem difficult for each of the members to carve their own space into the live sound, but The Hold Steady seem to pull it off effortlessly. Kubler and Selvidge trade massive hooks and frequently double or counter-melody each others leads, creating a swirling wall of guitars that Nicolay weaves his textures into and out of. Povlika and Drake, for my money, might be one of the more underrated rhythm sections in modern American rock, serving as the structural foundation for songs that are built with a lot of layers in a way that is understated without being simple and basic. And Finn…well, Finn is Finn. Equal parts poet and preacher and post-grad lecturer, more storytelling peer than bombastic prototypical frontman, Finn’s got an accessible, everyman quality that makes him instantly relatable to the scene as ‘one of us,’ while at the same time having a tremendously Springsteenian ability to create characters and carve stories that make him transcendent; not simply ‘one of us,’ but ‘the one of us who could actually do this and tell our stories and unify our scene.’

Finn routinely brings shows to a close by pointing out that there is so much joy in what the band does night in and night out. While the music is very much modern American rock-and-roll, there is an old hardcore show vibe of unity and that we’re all in this together in their live show, with the audience playing just as big a part in the vibe as the band. We might all be from different scenes and different crews and different area codes (my little corner of the pit had folks from a neighboring suburb and New Hampshire and Vermont and St. Louis and New Jersey and Seattle) but we are ALL the Hold Steady. Stay positive, and check out more photos from Night One below (and stay tuned for more of a look back at Boys And Girls at Twenty this fall)!

Born into Alutiiq culture in Kodiak, Alaska, Thomas Michael Swenson gives us his bona fides on how he got into punk rock, starting with a box of records procured by his mom in exchange for controlled substances. In this collection of records, he found the Ramones’ album Rocket to Russia, along with a George Carlin record and lots of rock from the ’60s and ’70s. This, combined with repeated viewings of the punk rock film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains, a film that featured members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols would provide Swenson’s punk rock foundation. While his mom was working, He would make mixtapes with tracks off these records. Something he continues to do at the beginning of each chapter, resulting in a playlist that makes reference to punk bands like The Germs and OFF!, but also makes room for Native American punk bands and their relation to punk rock as a whole whether they sound traditionally punk or not.

Swenson goes over what sets his region’s punk rock scene apart from others, such as James Cook’s monument, the colonial history, and their looming presence over the Native Americans who live in Alaska.  A show from Canadian Hardcore band DOA kind of set the scene on its path. It’s relatable as each region has that show or band that lit the powder keg, whether it be the Ramones first playing England or the Stooges playing for the first wave of punks. His arguments for punk rock are simple: punk is definitely political, and being born native is to be born into politics given the government’s treatment of Native Americans and the shrinking sovereignty they are experiencing.

Each chapter’s connective tissue is a little too transparent, but serves as a decent preview for what’s to come and even if each section’s thesis is stated too bluntly. Whether this is on purpose or not, it feels a little clunky mechanically, but works as a bit of a highlighter rather than a deterrent. While the text may be dense, as is par for the course on a lot of academic books, this keeps a reader from getting overloaded. In general, the actual mixtapes from each chapter are pretty cool. A good portion of these chapters center around a non-native setup, then provide their arguments using examples from Native American punk scenes across the country. Swenson shouts out a good number of bands, from old-school hardcore punks Skate Death, who played with DOA at that fateful show in Alaska, to Sub Pop artist Ya Tseen, and pop-punkers Friends of Cesar Romero.

While there have been a few academic books that seem to stretch their material, Where’s Next, Columbus?: A Native Punk Mixtape is not one of them. Each point is argued thoroughly without overdoing or repeating itself too much. Swenson’s experience and assertions regarding punk rock are more than valid and should translate well into other aspects of life and art, much like punk rock in general. If you are one of those people who feel like punk doesn’t have much to say, then you’re looking in the wrong places. Swenson’s book is a good place to start. Where’s Next, Columbus?: A Native Punk Mixtape by Thomas Michael Swenson is available through The University of Oklahoma Press.

“[Smile…] is about the struggle between good and evil and battling inner demons.  A constant theme that can be applied in multiple aspects of life. How little choices can shape and define your path and your future. Redemption or ruin are around every corner.”  

Stream “Smile… (see you in hell)” below:

Physical copies of the split can be pre-ordered at Cursed Blessings Records website.

Canada, HET UP! has a couple shows coming up. Check them out at the dates below:

May 15 – The Opera House – Toronto, On w/ the Buzzcocks

June 13 – Way Too Fest – Welland, On

All the way from Cardiff, Wales, post-hardcore/noise rock trio Mclusky consists of founding member Andrew Falkous (vocals/guitar), Jack Egglestone (drums), and Damian Sayell (vocals, bass, guitar). I first learned of Mclusky from Chicago post-punk rockers Ganser, who toured together in 2024. I really wanted to catch that tour but wasn’t able. Finally catching up to the mysterious Mclusky was worth every minute of their set. As this was the last night of their North American tour, they went out with bang! See you next time.

• Mclusky’s setlist follows:
• Fuck This Band
• Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues
• Without MSG I Am Nothing
• Collagen Rock
• What We’ve Learned
• unpopular parts of a pig
• Whiteliberalonwhiteliberalaction
• Day Of The Deadringers
• as a dad
• way of the exploding dickhead
• You Should Be Ashamed, Seamus
• She Will Only Bring You Happiness
• Icarus Smicarus
• kafka‐esque novelist franz kafka
• Alan Is a Cowboy Killer
• The World Loves Us And Is Our Bitch
• the battle of los angelsea
• Rice Is Nice
• people person
• Chases
• Dethink To Survive
• i know omputer
• Whoyouknow
• To Hell With Good Intentions

Hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, indie/noise rock band Pile consists of Rick Maguire (vocals, guitar), Alex Molini (bass), Kris Kuss (drums), and Matt Connery (guitar). This was my first run in with Pile and I was pleasantly surprised. They were the perfect opener for Mclusky. I hope to see them again and hope you get to see them in your neighborhood.

• Pile’s setlist follows:
• Texas
• The World is Your Motel
• Deep Clay
• A Loosened Knot
• Prom Song
• Baby Boy
• Born at Night
• Special Snowflakes
• Hairshirt
• #2 Hit Single
• The Soft Hands of Stephen Miller