For anyone keeping score at home:  2020 was going to be the year of Van Weezer -- the big riffs rock album Weezer made as an homage to the metal bands they loved growing up -- until, thanks to the global pandemic, it suddenly wasn't.  The entire time, however, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo was busy at the piano, writing a very different album that took inspiration from another vital musical touchstone of his youth:  The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.  Throughout the summer of Covid-19, he and the band -- along with a 38 piece orchestra -- chipped away at masked recording sessions using all analogue

Angst-fueled punk 'n’ roll band NOPES return with their third head-butting album "Djörk", which shows the Bay Area foursome more than ready to bury one of the most disastrous years in recent memory in a cacophony of disaffection and feedback.

Bristling with angular riffs and glass-cutting hooks, "Djörk" is as unapologetically weird as it is offensively loud and noisy. True to their punk roots, NOPES bristle lyrically against work, class divisions, and the gentrifying soullessness of city life as youthful dreams are mercilessly stripped away.

NO YEAR, a Portland quartet comprised of veterans of the city’s underground music scene are poised to inflict gripping, visceral psychedelic post-hardcore on the listening public with the release of their first LP, “SO LONG”. Named well before the shit-showery of 2020, the title has taken on all new meaning at the end of the longest year of our lives.

On Wild Pink’s third album and first for Royal Mountain Records, A Billion Little Lights, Ross explores the dichotomy of finally achieving emotional security—of accepting the love and peace he deprived himself of in his twenties—while also feeling existentially smaller and more directionless than ever before. The record is a two-pronged triumph: an extraordinary reflection on the human condition presented through the sharpest, grandest, and most captivating songs Wild Pink have ever composed.

Austin, Texas indie-rock/garage-punk outfit Parker Woodland have officially announced the release of their debut EP, The World's On Fire (and We Still Fall in Love), out everywhere on February 5th.

Where 2018’s “Among The Ghosts” brought with it a more stripped back sound – along with haunting spoken word interludes courtesy of actor Michael Shannon – “When You Found Me” finds the band tapping into a more atmospheric widescreen vision, while expanding on their sound with heavier rock sonics. The use of keyboard player Rick Steff’s extensive collection of vintage synthesizers conjures an aural world of classic tracks with a firm foot in the present.

Toledo-based rock powerhouse Citizen have returned to announce their upcoming fourth full-length Life In Your Glass World, due out March 26th via Run For Cover Records. For over a decade Citizen have been challenging expectations and on Life In Your Glass World the band once again refuses to be easily defined. Every aspect of the album was made completely on their own terms, with vocalist Mat Kerekes building a studio in his garage where Citizen tracked the entire album. The result is a set of lean, raw songs that represent the most unfiltered version of the band's daring vision to date.

Crammed with high-octane, yet deeply personal, punk cuts, Drones' forthcoming full-length ‘Our Hell Is Right Here’ documents a traumatic period for McDougall. “It’s been a pretty rough ride for the past couple of years,” she says when looking back on the journey the  band have been on to get to this point. “But I struggle with claiming my problems and sadness as valid because they are disproportionate to the danger and loss that many face every day. It got to the point where I was almost ashamed to write songs about my own life.

Nearly 40 years in, what else is there to say about NOFX?

And aside from the occasional negative headline, how can one of the pioneers of SoCal punk—a style hardly known for experimentation—surprise anyone these days?

The answers lie on Single Album (Fat Wreck Chords, Feb. 26), NOFX’s 14th full-length studio album. There’s the nearly six-minute post-hardcore opener (“The Big Drag”). The meta sendoff for the band’s best-known song (“Linewleum”). The reggae-inflected song about a mass shooting (“Fish in a Gun Barrel”). Even a piano ballad (“Your Last Resort”).