Siberian Mad Dogs
Psych (live) Digital EP
(Monkey Temple Production)
The seething and snaking "Slip Slip Slippin' In" and "Psych" were on the Dogs' Vodka and Kalashnikov, also issued in 2024. Poison-pen missives, offered now in versions more frequently than not in slo-mo venomousness, they typify the menace amassing formidability cut by cut. It's magnetic in its malfigurement. It's Psychobilly.
Prahúa 13
30 almas y un dia (30 Souls and a Day) EP
(Self-issued)
Before us are unveiled compositions unpretentious and wonderfully of the common man. Vocals adopt no showy airs. Properly absent are studio affectations that so often detract from relatability. In their place is austerity that conveys human sensibilities and perspectives, as only it can. They prove adept at ruggedness. But elsewhere, strings are well plucked, ivories touched off in dignified fashion, and percussion administered with solicitude.
Recommended: "Canción del adiós," "La memoria de los peces," "Olvidado" "Sombras"
Videos: "La memoria de los peces" "Sombras"
Billy Cobb
Halloween X Digital EP
(Please Sign Me)
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In but a clawed handful of fortnights, Jack Pierce willing, All Hallows Eve's shadowy silhouette will fall across our thorny paths. Composer/producer/multi-instrumentalist Billy has issued trick-or-treat discs in past years, and this crispest unfurls characteristically macabre pleasantries. ("Vampire Girls" suggests that Teen Angel might have had pointed ears all along.) SEE misshaped aberrances lurch at dusk! HEAR Rock'n'Roll agitate gravel as materializes the orgy of the dead! THRILL as vampire girls undulate mesmerizingly!
Recommended: "13 Knocks," "The Werewolf Feeds," "Vampire Girl," "Psycho," "Mysterious Mose"
Videos: "13 Knocks" "Vampire Girl" "Mysterious Mose"
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Johnny Thunders & Wayne Kramer's Gang War!
s/t
(Skydog Records / Jungle)
In a moment here that captures Johnny's too-cool-for-any-a'you attitude, he prefaces "These Boots Are Made for Walking" by offhandedly snorting at the audience: "Shut up, shut up. You're gonna get what you get anyway. So shut up!"
(I recall a Creem magazine bit from the time. Wayne recounted a Gang War gig incident in which Johnny emptied a full pitcher of beer on the heads of front-row fans, who loved it. "I thought, 'We've got something here,'" the former MC5er laughed.)
July, 1980: I was in the crowd at Minneapolis' Sam's, and Gang War were headliners. Local legends The Hypsterz, who ignited 1960s fun tunes with post-'77 Punk flamethrowers, had opened to raucous acclaim.
The headliners gave raving attendees (who came in all technicolor descriptions) all the slapdash icy-kool Rock'n'Roll we'd shelled out for. Wayne's MC5 heritage and Johnny's Dolls dream/nightmare background collided and made spectacular messes we thrilled to, all over the club later immortalized in Prince movie Purple Rain.
The night previous to the Sam's show I witnessed (having managed to be in the second, stage-front pogoing row), Wayne/Johnny/Gang War had played in the same building's crackerbox 7th Street Entry club. That gig had surely featured identically hep phenomena: Rousing and electricity charged performances from Wayne and the rhythm players; a truly kicky string of tunes transmogrified into new creatures with sneering talons; and Johnny's characteristic loveable shambolism (which Walter Lure told an interviewer was at times affected -- y'know, image.)
Wayne's calculatedly fierce guitar lent sinew to the curled-lip enterprise. It was offset, in skewed counterpoint, by the wreckless-crazy careening up-and-down the neck for which Mr. Thunders was globally infamous. As a graffiti-note stylist, he was, and will forever be, without peer. (Who knew treble strings could sound like razor blades?)
Issued by Skydog in 1992, and rereleased last year as a limited-edition, red/black splatter vinyl LP by Jungle, this has since been produced as a compact disc. Barreling sideways from its grooves are the magic that JFK-era teens dug from ear-pressed transister devices, but wonderfully twisted and thrown out LOUDER by leathery Punk Godfathers who'd not just tooled around the Rock'n'Roll block, but were also wise to its alley's perils -- and were entirely cool with them.
(In closing, Johnny blasts the audience: "You kids have been disgusting!")
Recommended: "Ramblin' Rose," "London Boys," "These Boots Are Made for Walking," "M.I.A.,," "The Harder They Come," "I'd Much Rather Be With the Boys," "Hey Thanks," "Courageous Cat theme," "Around and Around," "Do You Love Me"
Videos: "London Boys" "M.I.A." "The Harder They Come" "Hey Thanks"
Facebook (Wayne)
Facebook (Johnny)
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Squelette
Within night clouds overhead brews a wicked, lightning-streaked torrent. Oi! street soldiers, inured by city impersonality and with splenetic notes jarring in hearts, strike back instinctively at pretty much everyone and everything.
Video: "Soir d'Orage"
Wayne Hancock
Within the twanged echo of Americana troubadour Wayne's inimitable phrasing can be heard (and must be respected) his decades of zig-zagging across our glorious land, spreading common-folks' musics as only he can. On his tour bus as we speak. One of the greats.
Video: "Lonesome Whistle" (live 2026)
The Phantom A.D. - Torment or Treats (and Torment)
In a months-long spree only just begun, the Phantom A.D.'s Horrorween Tour will storm its maliciously lunatic way across Norman Rockwell's placid states. (Have a care, square ones: Attending these sinister soirees may well bring premature persishment to the unhip.)
Included on the invasion itinerary are Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida, Oregon, Washington, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, and the rocker-from-beyond's own California.
For the monsterman, every night is All Hallow's Eve. It's like 1993 movie Groundhog Day, but if it had been scripted by Curt Siodmak.
A chill gust chases off twisted and spindly tree branches' remaining withered leaves; witching-hour streets are barren, save for ghosts busying themselves with grotesque diversions; a pale blood-moon shines unforgiving glare on the innocent orb mortal men call Earth...
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And The Phantom A.D. couldn't be happier -- in the cruelest of manners. As a composer, he cleverly interlaces forbidden poetry and charging Rock'n'Roll birthed in some netherworldly jukebox. His frenzied guitar summons forth a remorselessly-lashed, phantasmagoric creature stitched from fret-stranglers who preceded, and who knew how best to contrive raucous infectiousness.
To all that, he ladles on idiosyncratic manueverings that ring precisely right.
And in his guttural intonations, one hears the testimony of a man who not only sat through innumerable drive-in scare-flicks, but probably dove into the screen to gleefully abet the deviance.
As this writer puts quill to parchment, crazed acolytes in slated environs will soon revel in the straight-from-the-fridge madness he unleashes at perilous volumes. Finger-popping bizzaritude can be reliably predicted to ravish ears, whether they dig it or not.
His crusade of the freakish has sordid history. A part-time substitute teacher, Harley Isaac Rother intuits his destiny is to tear apart temporal distance from eerie dimensions uncharted, through Rock'n'Roll that respects no reasonable stricture.
Albums documenting his dire mission include 2015's The Unspeakable Horror of Isaac Rother and the Phantoms and The Terrifying Return of Isaac Rother and the Phantoms. Later assuming his rightful title, The Phantom A.D., he issued The Phantom A.D. Plays Ghoulish Rock'n'Roll and this year's Revenge of the Phantom. (All were released by Rock N Rhythm Records.)
As ever, in that latest wax, The Phantom A.D.'s cobwebbed, latex-monster hood features darkness as a 24/7 proposition. Splenetic chords race like risen-from-beneath, demolition terrors, hip to the ways of lost avenues Rock'n'Roll. Swirling his cape while surfing atop a saucer, The Phantom A.D. growls enunciations that bespeak horrors good men know not.
Martin Milner scrambles for exit, though Mickey "Bip Bop Boom" Hawks and Shadowman Link stick around where the action is.
In 2025, he greeted creature cogniscenti, shared his swinging hideousness, and mongered merch at the Famous Monsters of Filmland convention in Pennsylvania. That costumed spectacle befit a man whose prodigious lurkings amidst midnight spook-show haunts feature catchy songs suited variously to mausoleum exhumations, TV cathode rays, and beach party bingo.
In a Facebook post at the time, the caped archfiend said: "This is such an honor to be included, given the incredible legacy of Famous Monsters. In the pre-internet world, Famous Monsters Of Filmland was THE place to learn about horror movies. Its legacy is unmatched."
Those souls thronging to The Phantom A.D.'s Horrorween Tour 2026 appearences may snap cell-phone photos, but should not be flabbergasted when they later find that his image has not been preserved.
Videos: live in San Francisco (2025, 10:50) "Chainsaw Rock" "I Go Where the Party Takes Me" "The Brain that Wouldn't Die" "MK Ultra Rock" "Even Sasquatch Wants to Rock"
