The quartet took the stage at just prior to 9pm and immediately launched into the title track from Not Bad For New Jersey, an uptempo singalong that evokes the best of Gaslight run through an 80s album-oriented rock (read as: Bryan Adams) filter. The four Not Bad For New Jersey tracks fit nicely with the rest of the eighteen songs (no encores!) over the course of the next hour-and-a-half. Armed with his signature Fender Custom Shop Telecaster for the duration of the set, Fallon and Friends rocked through a set that spanned the bulk of his non-Gaslight oeuvre, including a couple Horrible Crowes tracks (“Ladykiller” and “Behold The Hurricane”) that some among us thought we’d not get the chance to hear live again. The plugged-in nature of the set created an interesting texture for some of the tracks that have traditionally been more acoustic in nature, particularly those from his last solo record (not counting the Christmas one), 2020’s Local Honey. The Painkillers are a trio of heavyweights. Salisbury creates an unassumingly intense groove. Leon is immensely fun to watch, effortlessly creating a compelling groove with octopus-like dexterity as he incorporated numerous percussion instruments into his traditional drum setup. And Murphy…well, he’s Nathaniel Murphy. If you’ve got a guitar and/or the internet, you’ve no doubt come across Murphy’s virtuosic videos. (Side note: it was a little strange to see Fallon backed by a band that didn’t include Ian Perkins for what I think was my first time ever? Maybe? Though he did apparently jump on stage for a few songs in Toronto a few nights later.) Ever the guitar nerd, Fallon seemed in great spirits throughout the night, making repeated reference to the special nature of this particular band having played two full-band shows in the same afternoon. He seemed especially happy watching – and guitar dueling with – Murphy and his iced tea burst Les Paul.

The Not Bad For New Jersey tour features a bunch of openers doing a week or so each; Ben Nichols and Tim Barry and Donovan Woods and Chris Farren all occupy the opening spot on certain legs; the northeast brought longtime Fallon friend and tourmate Dave Hause and his brother/wingman Tim to town. The Hauses opted for an all-acoustic set that started with “Look Alive,” one of a handful of cathartic singalongs from Dave’s latest full-length, last year’s brilliant Dave Hause…And The Mermaid. It was pretty much all singalongs, all the time for the Hauses and the crowd who seemed up to the task, especially on “Damn Personal” (inspired by and dedicated to Dave’s longtime friend, the late Mike Gill), “Autism Vaccine Blues” from 2013’s Devour, and “Cellmates,” also from the latest record. We also got treated to the new track “King Of Madness,” slated to appear on Hause’s recently recorded next full-length and inspired by his old friend and mentor, Sick Of It All’s Lou Koller. It was a heavy and unifying set that did a perfect job of setting a high-energy bar for Fallon and his merrymakers to meet.

Check out a bunch more shots from Brian Fallon and the Painkillers and the brothers Hause below!

Tyler Sonnichsen’s Four Records:

0-10: The Cars – Heartbeat City 

Teens: Ash – 1977 

Mid Twenties: The Afghan Whigs – 1965

Recent Record: Carolina Durante – Cuatro Chavales

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www.DyingScene.com

Opening song: Rad Skulls – Loud as Shit

Closing song: Lucas Perea – Underneath Ashes

The Jasons’ brand new live album Live At Reggies releases tomorrow and will be available on three variants: red vinyl, clear w/ black splatter, and clear w/ white, red & yellow splatter. Mummula’s LP The Curse Of Mummula will also be available on three variants: slime green, purple, and clear w/ black marble colored vinyl. Both records will go live on the Mom’s Basement Records store at 12pm eastern time.

We’ve got an exclusive first look at all the color variants, so you can decide which ones you’re gonna grab or prepare your wallet to collect ’em all. Check those fuckers out down below!

By the way, if you’re in Europe, The Jason’s Live At Reggies will also be available from I Buy Records in Italy.

From time to time Rankin has released solo material. The previous two solo releases, Farewell Catalona and Come Together Fall Apart,  have mostly kept with the same themes of Good Riddance albums with a much more personal flair. While those records don’t go as hard, this doesn’t make them any less impactful. It’s just a different route to get the same sentiment Rankin has been preaching in all his years of punk rock. This week Russ Rankin releases an EP of solo material, A Season in Hell on Indecision Records. The record consists of six songs, three originals and three covers that give us an idea of where Rankin is at and what’s influencing him these days. 

(edited for clarity)

Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis): The record’s called A Season in Hell. Is that an Eddie and the Cruisers reference?

Russ Rankin: Good for you for picking up on that, but have you seen the sequel? The first one is a decent film; The sequel is pretty faulty, but worth watching just for that experience.

Dying Scene: What does A Season in Hell mean in the context of where you were emotionally when you wrote this album?

Russ Rankin: I’ve just been having a really tough time with music. The most recent Good Riddance album is a solid release. So far, the reviews and feedback has been incredibly positive. The actual process of getting the album together, on my end, was not super fun. There was a point where I even wanted to stop playing music at all.

A Season in Hell makes it sound overly dramatic, like something crazy happened. It wasn’t nothing like that. It was a long process. The album came out almost a year after it was recorded. Then there’d been about a year before that when we first began writing for the new album. It was a really long period of work on it. For some reason, I was just thinking about the movie Eddie and the Cruisers. 

In the movie, there are rumors that he recorded this lost album, but it never came out. Where did he record it? What happened? I was just thinking about that, and I thought it was a cool-sounding title. It coincided with how I was feeling at the time: really divorced from any kind of joy around creating music, which is something that, for me, is foreign. I’ve been doing it for a long, long time, and I generally enjoy the studio process, as difficult as that can be sometimes. For whatever reason, I just was not feeling it. I didn’t pick up a guitar for almost a year after that album was recorded. So, in a way, it was a little cathartic, I guess.

Dying Scene: Do you feel these songs were a response to recording that album?

Russ Rankin: These were songs that I had written and really thought were strong, but they were sort of in conflict with the overarching theme of the stuff Good Riddance was coming up with for the album. I kind of knew they wouldn’t have a place there. Yet I’d spent a lot of time crafting these songs, I believe in them, and I’d like to do something. I battled internally for a long time with recording them on my own, and part of me was like, “I don’t want to bother; what’s the point?”

Then it was my therapist that convinced me to do it. She thought that it might sort of have some measure of mending my relationship with music, and that ended up being true. The experience in the studio recording these songs myself was joyful and productive. I remembered all the reasons why I liked doing music again, so it was really cool.

Dying Scene: Do you feel there is a difference between your solo voice and the voice you use with Good Riddance?

Russ Rankin: Like, my delivery?

Dying Scene: Not delivery, like the songs you’re writing.

Russ Rankin: I don’t think so. There’s a universe that exists where those could have been Good Riddance songs, and it wouldn’t have ruffled anybody’s feathers. A Good Riddance fan wouldn’t have heard them and said, “Oh my god, what is this?” We put out a record called Operation Phoenix a long time ago, and it was very different from what had come before it. It ruffled plenty of feathers, but it also got us some new fans. It also established us as a more diverse band than a harder band. I think that it’s not a different voice; it’s still me. It’s still lyrically definitely some things that would be at home on a Good Riddance album.

Dying Scene: Did you play all the instruments on the record?

Russ Rankin: Except for drums, it’s Adam Gomez; he plays in the Dickies and D.I., and he’s played for the Adolescents when Mike couldn’t.

Dying Scene: Did any of the songs go through different versions before landing where they did?

Russ Rankin: They did, but it was a long time ago. By the time I was in the studio, there was almost no revision of the three originals. So Paul Miner, who was the engineer that did the recordings, would offer some subtle suggestions here or there, but very little. They were fleshed out. I knew exactly how they were going to go, and there wasn’t a lot of experimentation, if that’s your question. I got into the studio with these loose ideas, and then with Paul, we sort of molded them into songs. Actually, no, they were pretty well intact front to back, and it was a matter of just performance, recording, and getting the right feel.

Dying Scene: Had you worked with Paul before this?

Russ Rankin: Yes, I want to say he engineered, I cannot remember exactly, but I used to produce bands in the early 2000s, and I produced a band whose session Paul engineered, and he definitely recorded my first solo album, Farewell Catalonia, in 2012.

Dying Scene: Was the experience of working with Paul on the first album what made you want to work with him on this new one?

Russ Rankin: I wanted someplace that was relatively close, and I had a really good experience recording my first solo album with Paul. Neither one of us had done a solo acoustic album before, so neither of us knew what we were doing. He was so great at steering the ship and coming up with ideas, although that level of oversight and guidance wasn’t really necessary this time. With his demeanor in the studio and his engineering acumen, I felt really comfortable doing it with him. It was down in Orange, California; I could fly down there, get a hotel, and knock this out. We didn’t think it would take very long. He had worked with Adam before, and I think it was a combination of things. I felt like he was a good candidate to do it. I hit him up, and he was available and happy to do it.

Dying Scene: There are three original songs on here. Did you have more original songs you wanted to put on the record?

Russ Rankin: I wrote a massive amount of songs in the process of putting together the last Good Riddance album. I wrote a pretty good amount of songs that were rejected by one band member or the other during the demoing process that I felt were strong. There were extra arrows in the quiver. I thought, well, for my purposes and the free time that I have, this would probably be a pretty good amount of songs to do. These are three of the strongest songs I have written in a long time. I think there is a world where they are maybe a little too on the harder side for what Good Riddance was going for. Although I want to say that the most recent Good Riddance album does have a pretty dark and hard feel to it, and that was by design. These songs were just a little too much or would stick out as being just too different.

That said, I feel like they were really strong, which is why I held on to them and kept thinking, even if these aren’t going to be Good Riddance songs, I would kind of like to see them recorded and finished, just to have them, even if nobody was going to put it out or anything. If I just had them, I would feel some sense of closure, maybe. Look at them as finished products rather than just these demos I had sitting on my computer. I really felt they were strong. I still do.

Dying Scene: I agree. I enjoyed “Rising Tide.” It reminded me of a Dag Nasty song in some parts.

Russ Rankin: That’s a huge compliment. I’ve been on a big Dag Nasty kick lately. I feel like Dag Nasty might be the perfect band, as far as a band that lived in a melodic world and a hardcore world. I love Dag Nasty.

Dying Scene: I feel like every time I listen to a hardcore album, I can feel their fingerprints all over. 

Russ Rankin: Their influence is infectious, and it’s everywhere. It’s not the first band that a lot of people would come up with as, like, “Oh, I can sort of hear some of so-and-so in this,” but I think it ought to be. They’re not like a secret. They’re not some band that no one’s ever heard of. They were a pretty popular band. Even now, their music stands up to today’s music, but they’re not the first band off the tip of people’s tongues. 

Dying Scene: The other half of the record consisted of cover songs: an Avengers song (“Cheap Tragedies”), a power pop song (“Starry Eyes”), and “The World Turned Upside Down.” The last one feels like a Billy Bragg song.

Russ Rankin: Leo Roselson wrote the original, but I covered Billy Bragg’s version. He arranged it and popularized it. It’s much more stripped-down. I was covering a guy covering another song.

Dying Scene: It’s good, though. It’s very appropriate for the times that we’re in. How old is the original?

Russ Rankin: From the 70s.

Dying Scene: It’s a song that feels relevant fifty years later.

Russ Rankin: I totally agree with you. I’m a huge Billy Bragg fan, and a lot of his songs that give me all the feels for reasons like you said; it’s prescient, it’s valid now. It’s really a song about classism, about property rights. A lot of the things that ail Western culture today. I think it was relevant. The way that it’s delivered in the Billy Bragg version particularly is just so direct and emotional for me. That song has always sort of given me chills whenever I heard it. I thought that’s definitely one I would love to take a run at. 

The Avengers: I heard “Cheap Tragedies” on a comp when I was probably like early high school, when I was first diving into punk rock. When I first was getting into it, I would buy compilations because it’s a cheap way to find out bands you like. I heard that song, and then when I found out they were from the Bay Area, I thought that was cool. Then I learned that they were one of the bands that opened for the Sex Pistols at the very last Sex Pistols show that I acknowledge.

Starry Eyes: I listened to a lot of First Wave on SiriusXM because it’s my jam. It’s my generation, like all those songs from the 80s, and what’s funny is so many bands on First Wave are bands that I couldn’t stand when they were relevant, like when I was in high school. I’m like, “This isn’t punk,” like Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths. I just wrote it off. Now I listen to it, and I’m like, “This is fantastic.” I don’t know whether I’ve grown musically and opened my mind up enough, or whether it’s just nostalgic for me. 

People seem to gravitate towards music from a time when they were teenagers, before they were weighed down by responsibility and adulthood. So I think it might be a combination of that, and then I heard this song “Starry Eyes”, and I was like, I had never heard of the band (The Records), and I thought, this song has so many hooks. This is fantastic songwriting, whoever this is. I looked them up, and they really never had any other hits. They weren’t around for a long time. That song kept coming on, as if it was telling me, “Hey, don’t forget about this song.” When I hear a song like that, a lot of times, just for fun, I’ll try to cover it on my computer at home. I’ll learn it in lyrics, I’ll learn it on guitar, then I’ll record a version of it, just for my own entertainment. 

That’s a song that I think I actually petitioned the band to cover on this last album. There I was, just humming this song by the records over and over again by myself. It’s got tons of hooks. It’s a great, well-written song, but it just sounds too slow to me. The guitars are too twinkly for me; I want some oomph in it. I thought, “What would it sound like if Generation X played this song?” This sounds like it should be a Generation X song, and that was the road I went down when I decided to cover it. Bring up the tempo, make it a little bit punchier, and try to make a Generation X song.

Dying Scene: Were there other covers you considered?

Russ Rankin: I don’t think so; I can’t remember any right now. Those three were the main ones. I just couldn’t escape them. They were in my head. I listened to that Billy Bragg version of that Leo Russell song many, many times and just thought the story was brilliant. It was timeless. Politically, it spoke to me. Made it somehow even more urgent and angry-sounding. A million other people have covered Billy Bragg, and that’s fine. I thought it was interesting that it’s not his song, but I thought his arrangement of it and his delivery of it kind of made it his song. When I’ve done press, it’s always been important for me to acknowledge that this is a Leo Russell song. He is the guy that wrote it. 

Those three songs I just couldn’t escape. There’s other Avengers songs that I love, “The American in Me”; there’s a bunch, but I love “Cheap Tragedies” because it was so melodic for the time. I write a lot of songs and listen to songs from not a critical place. I put my songwriter hat to unpack it. “Here they’ve got a half bridge here, they’ve got a chorus here, then they do this, then they do that.” I’m always breaking songs down that way. It’s a really well-written song, especially for kids in the late 1970s. I thought the Avengers were ahead of their time, seminal band, and fantastic that they’re from the Bay Area.

Dying Scene: Does The Season in Hell feel like a standalone moment, or the start of something new?

Russ Rankin: I think it’s more of the start of the end of something. It’s me putting to bed the what-ifs, and actually having something tangible. Fortunately, Paul and my relationship is good; his rates were reasonable, and it got done quickly. Even if every label had said, like, this is garbage. If it never was going to get released, I wasn’t bothered with that. I just wanted to record it. I just wanted to have it. I wanted to see if I could have a pause to bring my mindset back to looking at music positively. As I said, I hadn’t picked up a guitar in over a year, and I was thinking about never wanting to play music again; that’s never happened. I think it was cathartic, and it was a way to get me back in love with music again.

Russ Rankin’s A Season in Hell is out tomorrow on Indecision Records.

I will say upfront there is much about McNeil’s story that I will not spoil. It’s too fun not to let readers discover for themselves.

It’s an engaging memoir which will likely spark moments of nostalgia for those there and open the world to those who weren’t.

McNeil starts the memoir at NYC punk rock’s ground zero, the now-shuttered CBGB.  While I have never been to that institution, my sister has seen the later-stage Ramones there.

But alas, when crashing with my NYC-based siblings, I often visit the Joe Strummer mural. The East Village I see is the sanitized version, with a Starbucks being the first thing visible coming out of the train station. I was a kid growing up on Long Island in the era of most of this book, so it was a blast to take this journey through punk’s heyday on the Lower East Side.

McNeil quickly detours to describe his years growing up in “my least favorite place,” Cheshire, CT, with his friends John Holmstom and Ged Dunn. McNeil vividly the agony of growing up in the CT suburbs as he recalls a teacher calling him by his birth name (It is among the interesting bits I won’t spoil for the reader), dealing with his severe dyslexia, and enduring corrective surgery to shorten his right femur.  After losing his father at just three months old, McNeil, his brother, and sister were raised by his now-single mom. His desire to escape hit him at an early age and only grew as the years went on.

His one obsession at the time was reptiles, and he became so well known for that he earned the nickname The Swamp Rat, which was shortened to Rat. Seems McNeil was not fond of that nickname, as it reminded him of Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman’s down-and-out character in the Best Picture Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy).

But he did manage to have a few adventurous moments —too many to describe and too good to spoil here- before finally finding his way to NYC. At 19, he and his friends Holmstron and Dunn created the seminal PUNK magazine. The magazine chronicled the burgeoning punk scene in NYC. McNeil’s official title at the publication was “Resident Punk.”

McNeil became good friends with many legends in making, including Joey Ramone, whom he calls his best friend. McNeil vividly sets the gritty atmosphere as he describes the struggles and successes of co-creating PUNK. 

McNeil admits to being a bit of an asshole, a view apparently shared by many others. He also recounts his many sexual exploits with beautiful women, yet it does not come off as braggy or crass, Just a matter of fact for a handsome young man.

McNeil was a bit of a chaos agent, and it seems he was not altogether impressed by some of the established superstars of those days. He shares his resentment of one in particular who stole an important album from McNeil.

Along the way, he also befriends two of the most acclaimed and legendary American writers, and makes us a bit forlorn that we were not able to partake in the conversations but glad we get to “listen” in. He also dates a future music and cultural icon and dabbles in international conflict journalism as a respite from all things punk.

Resident Punk..is funny, insightful, and a hell of a fun read. It’s also very compelling and satisfies a need to feel on the ground in the East Village, meet icons before they became icons. Including McNeil himself. Lace up your Docs, enjoy the ride.

The night started with Wrong Intentions, 22 Grief, Barricade, and Lose Sight. The sense of community was immediately one of the defining parts of the show. The pit was already starting to take shape early on, but what stood out most was seeing members of the other bands jumping in to support whoever was on stage. Members of 22 Grief and Barricade could be seen moshing, dancing, and singing along during sets. It gave the opening and idea of how a genuine DIY hardcore show feels, where the lineup felt less like a collection of separate acts and more like one scene showing up for each other.

Combust made their first appearance at a South Florida hardcore show and brought plenty of new faces into the room with them, bringing their New York Hardcore sound to the south. The crowd welcomed them with a serious amount of energy, quickly making it clear that people had been waiting to see what they could do. Their set kept the momentum moving while introducing themselves to a South Florida crowd that seemed more than willing to give them their attention, leaving the room wanting more.

Coming down from Philadelphia, Scarab followed with one of the most intense sets of the night. The energy in the room became noticeably more aggressive as the crowd turned the pit into a chaotic, physical space, with bodies flying, fists swinging and the crowd throwing down without hesitation.

(Got my glasses broken during this set)

Then came Collateral. As the band took the stage for their EP “The Reset”, it was obvious that this was the moment the crowd had been waiting for. Collateral has become one of the most embraced bands within the South Florida hardcore scene, and the response throughout their set reflected that connection. The room gave them everything, moshing, singing, and showing their support from the first song to the last. More than simply being an EP release show, the night felt like a snapshot of what makes the South Florida hardcore scene special: bands supporting bands, new people discovering the scene, and a crowd showing up for the music and each other. “The Reset” now has a release show that will be remembered as a particularly memorable night in the South Florida hardcore.

Photographs and article review by Juan J. Zapata

The poster and flyers for the show listed the name as Inpost; however, all of their socials have this band named as First State. Whatever the case, this band kicked ass. They played songs that were definitely a love letter to the emo bands of the late 1980s and early 1990s, going as far as to cover Braid. I say this a lot, but these kids have done their homework. If you threw one of their songs into the middle of a mixtape from 1995, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. After playing a set that would make fans thirty years their senior cheer, the band ended with a cover of the Ramones’ version of “Do You Wanna Dance?” While trying to figure out the band’s name, the Chudson guitarist/singer said they were a ska band the last time he played with them. That is a pretty cool flex in 2026.

It is hard to pin down a genre for most of these bands, although mixed bills are not unusual, especially in a county with a handful of venues. Willowbark! came out with a ton of energy. Sometimes they had a member of the band playing keyboard and sometimes they did not. They seemed to be quite content with not fitting into one genre. They were much more experimental with sound than most bands I have seen. Almost everything blended together and did so well, even if it did feel like a mash of sound. One song started slow and almost morphed into a Misfits-like song. Willowbark! knew how to get the crowd to move. I do not know exactly what I saw, but by the reaction of the crowd of kids, it was working.

I have been a fan of Chudson since I saw them at Chain Reaction last year, but I haven’t been able to see them since for good reasons. They were either on the road or had set up a house show that sold out before I had a chance to get tickets. As always, they started explosively and did not stop for the first few songs. While they have definitely improved in the fifteen months since I last saw them, there wasn’t too much to improve on. They still come out with the same energy, but they are able to harness it a lot better, preferring to play in smaller rooms than bigger venues. They played some newer songs that leaned a bit into pop punk but definitely still sounded like Chudson, although some new songs didn’t stray from the formula, like their song “I Hate Live Nation.” In the last year, they’ve had the experience of playing bigger venues. Chudson recognizes the level up but still sees the inherent bullshit that comes along with it. I haven’t seen a band push back on leveling up this hard since the Replacements, and I respect it.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between punk, ska, or even metal or emo kids. The styles just seem to meld together like this newer generation’s taste in music. I don’t know if this was meant to be a mixed-genre show, but it ended up being one. If you were hoping this could be a regular spot for shows, this venue had been shut down previously by the city of Garden Grove, but had somehow re-opened. Who knows if and when this will happen again This county needs spaces like this. Bands like this need a place to play. Each of these bands should be out there more than they are.

Mugger, a hardcore punk band from Austin, Texas, joined The Suicide Machines for their tour stops in Nashville, Atlanta, and Miami, bringing plenty of energy and intensity to the stage. Their powerful performance helped fire up the crowd and build the anticipation throughout the night, setting the stage for The Suicide Machines to take over.

From the moment Jason Navarro and the band hit the stage, they unleashed a massive dose of their signature ska-punk sound. As expected, they kicked off the set with “New Girl,” one of the standout tracks from the album celebrating its 30th anniversary.

The crowd erupted from the very first notes, singing along, jumping, dancing, and skanking in the pit throughout the entire show. The energy never let up, turning the anniversary celebration into a full-on ska-punk party from beginning to end.

Check out the gallery show!

See You In Hell, Poser! is ten songs of punk rock that sounds familiar on the surface but stands on its own two feet as you dig into it more. Andy and Matt talk about the road to their first full-length record and how they balance punk rock and their families.

Dying Scene (Forrest Gaddis):  How did the Rad Skulls come to be?

Andy: Pat (drums) had put a Craigslist ad up basically saying, “I’m a middle-aged punk rock dad that plays drums, looking for other middle-aged punk rock dads to make middle-aged punk rock music with.” So, I emailed him, and we kind of went back and forth a little bit, and it almost didn’t work out. We found out we lived about an hour away. He shared some of the other bands he’d been in and some touring. It was like Latterman playing The Fest as a reunion band and some other stuff. I was like, “Hold on, I’ll make it work; I’ll come to you.”

I called Matt and said, “Dude, I’m talking to the drummer from Latterman who wants to start a punk band. We’re making dinner plans to see if it’s a good fit. We get along if somebody’s weird or whatever.” We went to a small town in the middle of nowhere that was about a 45-minute drive for each of us. I didn’t realize Pat was a vegetarian, and we ended up meeting at a barbecue place. We got together, and it was like we all had the same influences and similar musical backgrounds. Obviously, he had more musical success than Matt and I have had, but it was like we were on the same page in our lives personally and musically. It’s been a little bit of a revolving door of other characters, I suppose. For the most part, it was the three of us starting, and I think we have a pretty good lineup now.

Dying Scene: Did you two play together in a band before The Rad Skulls?

Matt: Andy and I have been playing together for seventeen or eighteen years, something like that. We crossed paths twenty-plus years ago without knowing it; both of our bands played the same house show, but we didn’t really meet then. I responded to an ad he had posted on Craigslist about forming a band. We started talking and realized we knew a ton of the same people and had been in bands with similar people. We had a band called Fortune & Glory about 15 years ago, and we released one record and an EP, playing in the area a bunch.

Andy: Got to Minnesota a couple of times.

Matt: It didn’t really catch on; we put a lot into that band. We used to practice maybe thirty hours a week. It just didn’t catch; it just didn’t stick.

Dying Scene: What kind of music was it? Same type? 

Matt: It was like hardcore-influenced pop-punk. We were a little closer to easycore, although that word gets kind of used and abused, I think. We were a little more the New Found Glory type. We had breakdowns, but we were super fast. Definitely hardcore-influenced. Our frontman had fronted hardcore bands, so it was a lot of that kind of perseverance-type stuff.

Andy: Tough guy lyrics over New Found Glory breakdowns.

Matt: There were a bunch of little projects here and there. Andy and I stuck together. We’ve been best friends the whole time. We tried to get a bunch of different ideas off the ground in between building our lives, raising our kids, and trying to advance our careers. This is the first thing since Fortune & Glory that has kind of taken off a little bit. It has just been awesome.

Dying Scene: The lineup is: It’s Pat from Latterman and you two from Fortune & Glory. Who else rounds out the lineup?

Andy: We had Joe. He was our singer, that we’ve recorded everything with. He had some personal things going on. As soon as the record was done, he bowed out; we were able to bring in Bryce on vocals, and we have Sean on bass. 

Matt: Bryce is also from a post-hardcore band called Collapse Create. Sean is just a bass player who has been around; he has been around the block in a lot of metal bands because, as a bass player, you always got a gig, right? 

Dying Scene: Is he the Wisconsin-Illinois bass player that’s like, “I’ll do it, sure.”

Andy: Pretty much; if you need a four-stringer, he’s your guy.

Matt: He rips, though; you can hear it on the record. 

Dying Scene: When you brought the new vocalist in, did anything change on those songs, or have you just kept them as close to the originals as possible?

Andy: We’ve just kept them as is to get him up to speed. We’re always trying to write and come up with new ideas. There were a couple of things that we just didn’t have fleshed out before the record was done, so we’ve been working a little bit as we ramp him up, get him caught up with the album, and make him familiar with our writing style. Once the dust settles, we’ll be able to create new songs that incorporate his style.

Dying Scene: Do you guys feel like you’ve clicked with him creatively yet, or are you still feeling him out a bit?

Matt: Bryce is great. He has a serious set of pipes. Secondly, he has the experience and the stage presence. We already have some demos cooking for new material. I can’t wait to start doing pre-production with him to hear him put his stamp on it because he is doing an awesome job of stepping in and singing the record as is. He just says the record is a record; it was recorded that way, and it is a record of the songs, so we will just do them like that.

Moving forward, he’s going to have his stamp on everything, and it’s going to be, I’m stoked. I can’t wait to hear what he brings to the table. And we’ve already got some demos done, and it’s, yeah, I’m hoping to get probably this winter. We’ll start, pre-production for stuff I’m thinking and we’ll do that ourselves.

Dying Scene: Has he been able to match Joe’s vocals pretty well? 

Andy: Yeah, I would say he, he’s probably got more of, probably a little more grit. He’s got a little more gravel to his voice, or maybe rasp. 

Matt: He’s got all the range.

Andy: You know, talking in sports terms, it feels a little bit like we went from Joe Montana to Steve Young. Like we went from one Hall of Fame quarterback to another Hall of Fame quarterback. 

Matt: You mean Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers, I believe. 

Andy: Well, you know, there’s, I feel like you alienate or invite a certain set of audiences, and you start dropping those two names. So I was avoiding them. 

Matt: Spoken like a true Bears fan. 

Dying Scene: How collaborative is the band when it comes to songwriting?

Andy: I think it really depends on where we’re at in our lives. We’re all an hour away from each other. We don’t get an opportunity to get together in a basement and write for four hours. We’re doing a lot of our own work and sharing ideas virtually. We’ve got a Google Drive. Matt or I will have an idea like, “Hey, this is 90% of where I hear the song. What do you guys think? I kind of hear this as a verse. Do you have a part that you think would come after that?”

“Dotted Lines” is a song that we’ve been sitting on for probably two years. Pat wrote the drums and structure. He sent the drums. We’re trying to put guitars to a drum beat. I’ve never tried to put a puzzle together like that before. I think there’s a lot of self-critique when something gets presented to the group. 

Matt: What generally winds up happening is Andy and I will write all the songs at home in our offices. We’ll program the drums how we hear them in our heads, but we’re not drummers. We’ll polish them, show them to the guys. They might be like, “That’s cool, but the bridge sucks.” You rewrite the bridge or whatever.

Once we’re rounding third on them, we’ll take them to band practice, learn them together, and then flesh out anything that’s not there yet. When Pat wrote “Dotted Lines’ drums first, it was a wild thing to do. It’s always whatever’s best for the song. If there’s something that needs to change for the betterment of the song, anybody can bring it to the table.

Andy: Poor Sean, he’s had a couple of bass lines that got cut. The joke is always, ” Let’s take it for a walk and then it’ll go crazy, but not that. You tried a little lead lick, or you put a little sizzle on the steak, and everyone’s like, “nah, that, that ain’t quite it.” Something that you hear in your head, you get together in a room, and it transitions a little rough or doesn’t quite sound as cool. 

Matt: I’ve written some stuff that I thought was pretty cool, but I’ll show it to the guys. Sometimes we’re not doing that.

Dying Scene: Is there a way to tell who wrote what song, or does everything just kind of go through the Rad Skulls’ voice and end up being an everybody type of thing?

Matt: It’s pretty easy as far as this record goes; Andy wrote like 95% of it. He was on a heater, and we went with the hot hand. He was just cranking out song after song. I added my own parts over it. Sean added his parts his way as well, but the basic concepts of the songs and most of the guitars and arrangements and stuff that you hear are Andy’s. Joe wrote the lyrics and the melodies. 

Andy: I want to say there was a lot of group effort. Between Matt and I, Matt is the more technical and skilled guitarist. There were times where I would try to come up with a little lead lick. I’m like, “Do you want to play it since you’re better than me? He would say, you wrote it, you play it. I still think even for Matt to say, I wrote 95%, I’ll argue that day and night. This was a Rad Skulls effort through and through. I just happened to have a few ideas that everybody liked, and we ran with them at the time.

Matt: Stuff went through a ton of iterations. Some stuff we pretty much did almost verbatim, like how Andy cooked it up in his beat lab. “They Seem Cool” is one of my favorite tracks on the record. It was brutal coming together. We could not figure it out. We couldn’t play it for the longest time; something didn’t click. I don’t know what it was. It just felt clunky the whole time. When we finished it, it’s actually one of my favorite songs now. I thought we were going to cut it.

Andy: I will say, when I was writing “Bronko,” I kind of got in the zone and was like, “Oh man, this is going to be a really good song.” Then as I kept going, it was like 11:30 at night, and it was a weekday. I was supposed to get up and go to work. I’m fired up. I sent that out to the guys and went to bed. My wife, Lacey, asked if I was alright. I told her, I think I just wrote one of the best songs I’ve written in a really long time. I was on high for a minute.

Dying Scene: Between the release of the demo and the LP, were there any new influences that influenced the new record?

Matt: That’s when we got a solid lineup. This all happened because we found the right guys. It took a while to find Sean. We did not have a solid bass player right away. That period of time you’re talking about is when Sean came in and clicked. That piece of the puzzle was settled. We’re locked in there. 

Finding a good frontman is not easy. We got really lucky. The transition happened after the record, but I think it’s more the sum of the parts. For a long time, it was mostly just Pat, Andy, and I trying to make it work. Then all of a sudden we had five dudes in the room bringing all their stuff to the table. There were a lot of different influences coming in as far as melody and stuff.  If Andy and I had written all of the melodies and lyrics for the record, they would have been different. It would have been considerably different. I don’t know exactly what they would have been. What you’re hearing is a lot of different influences coming to the table and mixing on the record. Sean’s had different backgrounds too. He’s a big thrash guy too.

Andy: Joe was about ten years younger than us. He knew some of the bands that we grew up listening to. In a historical sense, he was more of a pop-punk, kind of emo sort of guy. So a lot of the melodies that he wrote came out of left field for me. As a hardcore punk, a lot of the songs that we have recorded up to that point, the demo and the Seeing Rad EP, some of those songs were either completely written or were at varying degrees of finish before Joe was even in the band. We were trying to write for a singer. By the time we got to recording and writing for the album, we had an idea of who Joe was as a vocalist and what his strengths were.  We had a singer that was so good and a bass player that could fill the space, that maybe we didn’t need to try to do as much with guitar, and we could let those other things kind of take over and shine.

Matt: That’s a good point. We’re kind of starting to understand what’s getting brought to the table vocally here. We can cater to that a little bit. We can write to instead of just writing. You know, Matt and Pat and Andy back and forth in a triangle. We can write to Joe’s strengths, and now we’re going to be able to write to Bryce’s strengths. Sean is there as a backbone for it all.

Andy: I think a guitarist’s best friend is a good bass player because you’re just like, I’m going to let this note ring, and you do something cool on the bass.

Dying Scene: What do you feel is the emotional center of the record for you guys?

Matt: For me, I don’t know. As far as the theme of the lyrics, that was in Joe’s mind. Making this record, the emotional connection with us, for sure, is that we tackled it. We’re all a little older, and we all got jobs and families and stuff. We set kind of a ridiculous goal for ourselves to put out a full-length. We did not give ourselves a lot of time once we solidified the lineup. Once we solidified the lineup, it was like five months. 

Personally, the connection is just that we climbed that mountain, and we did it with everything else that we all have going on in our lives. That’s what it’s always going to sound like to me: the mad dash to the finish line. We actually pulled it off together is definitely my takeaway personally. As far as lyrical content, you’d have to crawl deep inside Joe’s mind for that one. A lot of it is just relationship stuff. 

Andy: Joe would come back from tour, and he would take some of those lived experiences, and they would find their way into rad cool songs. Like in “123 Kid,” he talks about a girl at Subway getting cussed out by a customer. He came back from being on a tour with his other band and told us that story. I think he had a lot of personal stuff going on in his life. He was in a newer relationship. He was around guys who were a little bit older and at different points in their lives. He had a little bit of a window into just what other people had going on.

To echo Matt, I think this record is going to be a little bit of defiance. In the words of Jerry Reid, “We got a long way to go and a short time to get there.” I think maybe part of being a dad is doing this stuff now in our life. We have kids that are older and may be able to recognize our dads have hobbies and they’re passionate about something. Like, my girls think it’s cool that I’m in a band.

The hope is maybe when they get older to reflect and be like, “My dad was in a band and still raising a family and going to work. He was able to hold on to what made him, him” a little bit. So, and then, so I’m going to flip this on you for us. When you listen to it, what are you getting out of it?

Dying Scene: I liked that it has those pop-punk melodies to it, but it’s a rocking record. It’s tough. Like you kind of were saying with Fortune and Glory. You guys are kind of doing the opposite. It’s good, fast punk rock in the background. It’s not 100% pop-punk-y lyrics, but there’s that influence of pop-punk on it. You can definitely hear it. It’s a good balance.

Andy: I was talking with Joe about this when we were recording, and I said, “I don’t know if this is just because it’s our project and I’m biased, and I think we’re good. Or are we good?” We’re able to draw on a lot of different influences, to where what we listen to and what we like maybe isn’t as obvious. You and I talk a lot about music, and you’re like, “If you like this band, you’ll like the band that they came from.” I like Saves the Day; then you’ll like Lifetime. Cause there’s very obvious direct lineages. I hope when people listen to us, they just know the sound, what we’re doing, but it’s a little bit different than maybe what’s out there. I don’t know if that’s just personal bias and pushing on stars.

Dying Scene: It works out well. So you mentioned that you guys in the band are in two different states, mostly. Wisconsin and Illinois. What are the logistics of that?

Matt:  Andy and I live in Madison, Wisconsin. We practice at Pat’s house in Rockford. Shout-out to Pat’s wife for letting us practice in the basement. Thanks, Erica. Andy and I carpool down there once a week. Sean also lives in the DeKalb area. So, he’s like an hour in another direction. If he plays shows in Madison, it’s like a two-hour drive for him. Bryce is in the area. He’s in Rockford. So he’s only 15 minutes from Pat’s house. 

That’s why we do a lot of writing at home and share online because we just don’t have the time to do it the old way. Where we lock ourselves in a room and just throw out riffs until a song comes out. To be honest, it’s probably more productive doing it this way, where we have the bones of a song done before we even step in the room together.

Andy: I would say it’s been tough too. Within the band, Sean went back to school. So he’s got night school that he’s doing on top of a day job. Matt, you took a new position at work and traveling sometimes. We all have kids. There are times where we’re trying to scramble. 

“Can we practice on Wednesday night this week?” Or, at the last minute, “I lost my babysitter. I can’t make it.” You’ve got to coach basketball. I think we’ve all done our best, to the degree that we can, to make this a priority and something that we try to do.

Dying Scene: Does it ever feel like it’s fragile? Like if something happens to one member, it can kind of like collapse, not because of in-band tension, but because of outside circumstances.

Matt: Not anymore. I think we’re in a good spot. We’re in a real good spot right now. Like I said, the Matt, Pat, and Andy tripod started this thing like three years ago now. It’s been a walk. It was a long, long, hard road to get to the lineup we have now, but we’ve been locked in. We played one show with Bryce so far; he’s newer to the pool, but he’s, he’s our guy. When Joel bowed out of the band, he recommended Bryce for the role because Joe fronts his own band called Clementine. He’s the brains behind it; he plays, he’s the main songwriter, he plays guitar in it, and fronts the band. That’s his baby. They were going on like a long tour, and I didn’t have time for both, but he recommended Bryce for the gig.

He is so enthusiastic and brought a great amount of energy to the band. I can’t wait to start just demoing stuff with him. We got like one demo with him on it. It’s a shorter, more hardcore song that may or may not ever see the light of day, but he just ripped on it. I think we’re more poised to take over the world than we have ever been; that’s for sure.

Andy: I’m trying to, trying to do the math in my head. Sixteen months ago my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. With her understanding and our safety net of friends and family, I was still able to meet, practice, and write songs. From a personal perspective, if we can survive that, I think we’ll be okay. 

Matt: Pat blew his knee out at one point. We’re like, “Well, you don’t need a closed hi-hat anyway; you’re in a punk band, you’ll be fine.” If the drummer from Def Leppard can do it with one arm, you can do it with a bum knee.

Dying Scene: Punk Rock feels like it’s being played more and more by people our age, give or take five to ten years either way. It feels a little more limited now because of responsibilities and geography, and members not being able to tour as much. That has to be a hurdle when you are trying to build a fan base.

Matt: That’s our one big drawback because we can’t hit the road and live out of a van. It’s logistically impossible for us to do that, raise our kids, and provide for our families. We will do as much as we can for shows, and get out there as much as we can. Hopefully, some good opportunities come by that we can say yes to, but we’re not at that point in our lives where we can be road dogs anymore.

Dying Scene: How many members of the band are experiencing some of these things for the first time, like making a music video or recording?

Matt: Andy and I have had some studio experience before. We made, I would say, one proper record. I’ve made one proper record before, and a bunch of dude has a studio in his basement EPs. I got a mess of those, but nobody ever heard them. I think this might have been the most proper recording experience that Sean ever had. Joe had; his stuff was DIY. 

Andy: I think most of us, never made a music video. We just DIY’d the hell out of that. We got one Saturday afternoon to bang the sucker out; let’s just figure it out. You’re gonna have to look through this through the lens of six dads that got four hours of free time on a Saturday.  It was definitely my first time recording a full-length album, doing a music video, getting something pressed, released, type of thing. For me, there’s a little bit of some bucket list things. I’ll send the group text every once, a screenshot of the pre-order being up online on the Sell the Heart website, and I was like, “Oh, hey guys, just check this out.” I’m taking a minute to reflect, and I kind of have a moment, and subjecting them to it. But I would say for the most part, we’re all kind of experiencing this stuff for the first time together. 

Pat’s obviously had a ton more experience writing, recording, and touring. We’re all just trying to play catch-up to Pat, and he’s, like, the one who’s really driving the band. He was the one who was like We need to record a full-length. We’re booking this date.  He’s kind of the guy behind the runaway train. He’s the conductor here a little bit.

Dying Scene: Do you guys have a guiding philosophy or rule that you guys follow when you guys make decisions?

Matt: Family first, pretty much. As far as opportunities that come by, we’ve got to consider that first. Otherwise, it’s punk rock DIY ethics, right? We’ve mostly just been doing it all ourselves. So it’s approved by us by nature. I don’t know; that’s a good question. I guess we’ll see. Hopefully, a lot more stuff comes up that we have to make decisions on. 

Andy: This whole thing just sort of feels like it snowballed a little bit. When we got together, it was like, “Oh, it’d be cool to hang out with your friends and make music.” Then it was Let’s record a demo. Then it was “Let’s show people the demo.” Then, “Let’s record more songs. Let’s tell more people about our band; let’s book shows.” Now here we are, being interviewed by you for a full-length album that we recorded.

Dying Scene: “See You In Hell, Poser!” Is being released on Sell The Heart Records; you’re in a good group of bands to be lumped in with. They put out a lot of great records.

Andy: Just a quick shout-out to Sell the Heart Records, Engineer Records, High End Denim, Scene Police out of Germany, and Waterslide Records out of Japan. They’re the ones that came together and made all this happen. It was originally Engineer Records that we reached out to. They liked the record and wanted to work with us and were able to bring in the other four people. We got really lucky. I feel like we’re really lucky there. We’ll see where the world takes us next.

Dying Scene You said you were working on other demos. Are you guys going to start working on those in the wintertime?

Matt: There’s no definitive timeline, but we have a good start on whatever we do next. There’s been talk of themed EPs, but there’s been talk of another full-length as well. Who knows what we’re going to cook up. We have a handful of demos that are done, and we’re starting to work on the songs together as soon as we have them down. We don’t want to jump the gun. As the record sounds, that’s us playing. It is as close to a live record as you can get nowadays without actually recording a live record in some huge library or whatever. Minimal takes, minimal editing. Jeff Dean was like, “I make records that just sound like you guys playing in a room together.” 

So, we only have, like, computer-sounding demos. Once we learn the song together, we’ll do the pre-production ourselves, and they’ll sound raw, like they should. Then Bryce will be on those, and it’ll be really sick. I can’t wait for that. I would think we’d be tackling that in a few months, probably.

Dying Scene: You mentioned earlier in the interview that you guys had one that was kind of a hardcore-type song that you weren’t sure was going to make it out of the studio. Is it one of those “we’re not sure if that’s what a Rad Skulls song should sound like type of things?

Matt: A little, yeah. But I mean, Rad Skulls can do whatever Rad Skulls wants to do.

Dying Scene: You guys do a fantastic “Seeing Red” (Minor Threat) cover.

Matt: At this point in time, I don’t see why we would put any limitations on what we can do.

Andy: “Loud As Shit” is a hardcore song.

Matt: We have other stuff like that because we have a few different personalities as far as shades or whatever. Sometimes we’re Kid Dynamite leaning. We all love Kid Dynamite. Being adjacent to that is cool. At the same time, there’s a Strung Out influence. I was always a big New Found Glory fan.  A little bit of that sneaks in there at times. Andy loves Terror. I also love Terror, but Andy really loves Terror.

We have some stuff that’s got flavors, essence, a little bit more of that stuff. We’ve kicked around the idea of maybe doing like a self-produced DIY EP that would be a little more hardcore-leaning or short songs even. We have no formal plans. Maybe I’m spilling the beans here a little bit. We don’t know what direction we’re going to go, but we’re throwing seven different kinds of smoke right now.

See You In Hell, Poser is out now on Sell The Heart Records. You can catch The Rad Skulls at a pair of record release shows:

10/2 – 5 Bar – Beloit, Wi

10/25 – Gamma Ray Bar – Madison, Wi

None Shall Sleep – Bread and Circuses

New Jersey’s None Shall Sleep released their newest album Bread and Circuses on August 22nd. The record includes the song, “If Not Now,” and is full of the punk rock angst you’d expect from these punk rock veterans. You can check out the track below

Slim Jim Carrey – Alright Then

This week’s award for the band with the best mashup is Slim Jim Carrey. Punk rock from Maine has never sounded so damn good. They recently released their EP, Alrighty Then, on Ninja Yeti Records. They’ve released a video for their song “Crack the Code”:

Stephen Egerton – I Think You’re Over Thinking This

When Stephen Egerton is not noodling his guitar for the Descendents, he’s been working on a solo album of his own. I Think You’re Over Thinking This is his first solo record in sixteen years. As with his previous record, Egerton recorded the instruments at the legendary Abbey Road Recording Studio. Check out the latest single, “Roland Grace” below:

Stephen is on the road with the Descendents and Social Distortion, but you can catch him playing a solo set at Riot Fest on the Radical Stage on 9/18/2026 at 4:15 PM. 

Old Sparky – Mad At The World

Formed in 2018 and Hailing from Muenster, Germany is Old Sparky. Finding that sweet spot between old school, skate, and melodic punk, Old Sparky released their latest album, Mad At The World earlier this year. Check out a track off the album below:

That’s it for this week. If you have record or a music video you want to get some eyes on, please contact us at the Dying Scene Discord or email us at DyingSceneMusic@gmail.com