We’re doing something a little different this month with our featured stream. Raging Nathans, from Dayton, OH, just released their third full-length Oppositional Defiance on July 24. While that record is already available, SPB has the exclusive on its companion piece, Live From Wonkfest. The band is including a free 7” with all vinyl orders. The 7” contains material from their 2019 set at Wonkfest at The Dome (London, UK).

The recording was mixed by Simon Short (Lyoness, Wonk Unit) and features six songs that total just under 10 minutes, for a taste of the band’s live prowess and personality. With a “bootleg-style” design, it serves both to showcase The Raging Nathans’ live feel (in a year, so far, without live music) and to give fans something a little more special to pair with the new LP.

Or, as Josh Goldman (guitar/vocals) puts it:

We thought it would be punk as fuck to give away a free 7” with every order of our new LP.

Get a first listen here:

Junior Bruce is back with the new Pray For Death, a full-length set for Oct. 30 release on Sludgelord Records.

The Florida-based band has a new song from the album, "The Sleep Awakens," available for streaming now.

As of yesterday, Boris has started to share some out-of-print catalog items from the band's impressive discography on bandcamp.

In what will be a six-volume archive series, the band kicked things off on Aug. 7 by re-releasing 3 live albums that were originally released in the US on aRCHIVE record label and limited to just 600 copies.

Reissued as Archive I (start off appropriately with the “Archive” series, 3 live album CD’s released in 2005 from the US label, “aRCHIVE”, limited to 600 copies that sold out immediately. 

In addition to live material, the releases contain demos and add up to 6 CDs' worth of listening pleasure.

Boris self-released NO earlier this year.

We're beginning to see the artistic fruits of this year's stay at home orders. In something-new-something-old record called From Exile, The Menzingers have reimaged their 2019 record Hello Exile, with 12 stripped down, acoustic takes. The new record will be available through digital platforms on Sept. 25 and on vinyl on Nov. 13 courtesy of Epitaph.

The band, who cut their Australian tour short when COVID-19 required various stay-at-home orders across the planet, eventually decided to record the re-worked songs from their own homes.

"We wanted to document and create in the moment, and though we couldn’t be in the same room together due to social distancing lockdowns, we got creative," Guitarist/vocalist Greg Barnett explains.

Listen to the new "High School Friend" below.

“We would track the songs from our own home studios, share the files via dropbox, and pray it all made sense when pieced back together. Initially, we planned for the album to be similar to our acoustic demo collection ‘On The Possible Past,’ but we quickly found out that this batch of songs benefited from more detailed arrangements,...We rewrote, and changed keys and melodies. We blended analog and digital instruments in ways we never had before. We dug through old lyric notebooks and added additional verses. We got our dear friend Kayleigh Goldsworthy to play violin on two songs. No idea was off limits. Hell, I even convinced the band to let me play harmonica on a song (no small feat!). The recording process ran from mid-March till June, and upon completion we sent it over to our dear friend and close collaborator Will Yip to mix and master.”

Armon Jay, who has also played with Dashboard Confessional, has announced his third solo LP, The Dark Side of Happiness, which releases on Sept. 18. The first single, "Half Life," is out now.

The record was recorded at April Base studio outside of ERau Claire, WI, with Armon working relelentlessly for two months on the project. “As heavy lyrically as the album is, it was the most fun I’ve ever had making music,” Jay says of the process, in which he worked approximately 14 hours each day. “I woke up every day with a feeling of purpose which felt right. It felt good.”

A video for "The Last Big Gulp" debuted this week, created by Ani Kyd Wolf. The song itself is to be included on the group's upcoming new album, Tea Party Revenge Porn.

Details are still minimal about the upcoming record, but it will be on Alternative Tentacles. A video for "Taliban USA" previously debuted. Check out both clips below.

Website OutwitTrade has posted a story that interviews multiple bands about different methods of getting started -- not specifically their origin stories, but more in line with a how-to manual. As our own coverage (especially the 1QI Series) tends to discuss life as a musician, we wanted to share a similarly-minded piece.

Comedian Tim Heidecker has a new album coming out on Sept. 25. Titled Fear of Death the album is a music departure from his previous comedy-based work.

He is joined on the labum by Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood), Drew Erickson (Jonathan Wilson, Dawes), Brian and Michael D’Addario (The Lemon Twigs), Jonathan Rado, and string arrangements by Trey Pollard (Foxygen, Bedouine, The Waterboys, Natalie Prass). Arrangements on the record even include a 14-piece string ensemble.

“I didn’t know that this record was going to be so focused on death when I was writing it,” Heidecker says. "It took a minute for me to stand back and look at what I was talking about to realize that, yes, I am now a middle-aged man and my subconscious is screaming at me: 'You are getting old, dude! You are not going to live forever! Put down that cheeseburger!’"

The album, available via Spacebomb Records, follows What the Brokenhearted Do…, released by Heidecker in 2019.

SPB caught the Tim & Eric Mandatory World Tour in early 2020 in Australia.

Ryan Allen, who has also played with Extra Arms and Thunderbirds Are Now!, released a surprise solo album today that goes by the title of Song Snacks Vol. 1.

The record was recorded at home in Detroit, MI and collects 20 tracks of new material that he put together while social distancing this year.

Speaking to Song Snacks' inspiration, Allen says:

I’m always working on songs. Some of them make it to records. Others get demoed but never fully developed. Others just exist and then seem to disappear as quickly as they arrived. But with no end to the pandemic in sight and an avalanche of songs that seemed to fall out of the sky, I decided to try and capture lightning in a bottle. And since I couldn’t see anybody, the record became an almost completely DIY project, featuring me as writer, performer (I played all the instruments), engineer and mixer (shout out to Andy Reed from Reed Recording Co. for the mastering assist).

Song Snacks Vol. 1 attempts to follow in the tradition of classics like GBV’s Alien Lanes, The Wrens’ The Meadowlands and Olivia Tremor Control’s Black Foliage, turning out to be a genre hopping, home-recorded, fragmented journey that attempts to capture the excitement and magic that surrounds laying every idea you have to tape. I played it for my dad and he called it my White Album. It’s not that good, but I’ll take it.

Check out "Barking Up The Right Tree" below.