For Rick Maguire, work always comes first, and that work is writing, creating and playing music with Pile. Over the past decade, work has been good…
Hard Noise
Interview: Gatecreeper’s Chase Mason on Defying the Sophomore Slump
Ask Chase Mason and he’ll agree that the sophomore slump is real—just not for his band. In the lead up to the writing and recording of…
How Viagra Boys Use Satire to Push Punk Into Deeper Territory
Listening to Swedish Post-Punk band Viagra Boys is like stepping into a comical nightmare of misadventures with no sure way out. If you have ever experienced…
Album Review: AJJ – Good Luck, Everybody
Arizona folk-punks AJJ (formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad) have always been outspoken, tempering their music’s humanistic messages with offbeat humor. Now, at the beginning of…
Interview: Joe Songco on the Revival of Outburst
A few years ago, I was in a darkened downtown bar accompanied by a former fanzine editor who came from the early era of New York…
How Facebook Shitposting Groups Unite Music Fans IRL
Philadelphia-based Joon Daniele Kim didn’t want to just create his music in a vacuum. He wanted to broaden what he was doing and introduce new viewpoints…
The Hard Times Guide: 2019’s Best Albums of 2009 (part 2)
The year 2019 is about to become just another bad memory, and every music site is churning out list after list of the best songs, albums…
The Hard Times Guide: 2019’s Best Albums of 2009 (part 1)
The year 2019 is about to become just another bad memory, and every music site is churning out list after list of the best songs, albums…
Happy Holidays! Here’s a Horror Story
Save yourself. Live better. Lucy didn’t think there could be anything worse than going home for the holidays. It meant taking time off she couldn’t afford,…