Unsung Podcast

Exploring the Magickal History of Coil (Part 2) w/ P6 from OMO, Desalvo, Stretchheads and Security

Last time we admitted defeat in our attempts try to summarise a fifty-plus album discography. This time our play P6 turns up with an actual diagram (which you can see right here) and we spend an hour and a half trying to work out whether that's a genuinely useful map or just a very elegant way of saying "it's complicated." We get into what actually meant when they called one period of their music “solar music” and the other “moon music”, both to themselves and to people writing about them afterwards. We begin with Scatology and then go into a long stretch on Coil as a queer band specifically: not queer-adjacent, not later reclaimed as queer, but a band who were writing directly out of the AIDS crisis while the gay mainstream press was too frightened to touch them. We talk about the rejected Hellraiser score, Clive Barker's actual bowels, and how a soundtrack too creepy for a horror franchise ended up as one of the most bootlegged, most fought-over corners of their catalogue. We get into Trent Reznor giving them free run of a New Orleans studio for their aborted album Backwards, the slow drift into drone and ritual with Time Machines, and the posthumous artefact economy that's grown up around the band. There's a lot of Coil in this episode that isn't really music in any conventional sense; arguably a lot of it is more like documentation. Documentation of a relationship, of a pandemic that was devastating their community, and of two people slowly working out what they were for. Whether that makes the later, harder-to-love records worth the effort is something we argue about without really resolving. We’d say give it a go anyway – you might find something you love. Chapters 00:00 – Welcome back, and the state of the venues in Glasgow 00:04 – Phil's solar/moon diagram, and the pivot point of Horse Rotorvator 00:07 – Scatology as manifesto: no personality cult, just "this is us" 00:12 – Defining solar vs moon in Coil's own terms 00:16 – "Kill a queer for Christ": the hostility Coil were writing against 00:20 – Coil as a queer band, not a queer-adjacent one 00:24 – The AIDS pandemic as the actual subject of the solar period 00:27 – Why Coil succeeded where Frankie Goes to Hollywood and the "gay icons" of the 80s didn't 00:31 – The Spanner case, outlaw community, and the limits of gay respectability 00:35 – The artefact economy begins: box sets, reissues, and "picking at the corpse of Coil" 00:36 – The rejected Hellraiser score and Clive Barker's bowels 00:44 – Love's Secret Domain, clubbing, and ecstasy as a response to the fear of touch 00:48 – Derek Jarman, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Phil's own ordination 00:55 – Into moon music: The Angelic Conversation and the shift toward mysticism 00:57 – Trent Reznor, free studio time, and Nine Inch Nails' debt to Horse Rotorvator 01:02 – Membership shifts: Danny Hyde, Drew McDowell, and Thighpaulsandra 01:04 – Black Light District and the "dank, downbeat" transitional period 01:14 – Moving toward live performance and the birth of Coil's occult stage identity 01:19 – Balance's addiction, Funeral Music for Lady Diana, and the Foxtrot testimony 01:26 – Post-9/11 visuals, prisoners, and a return to transgression on stage 01:27 – Closing thought: boredom, labour, and what it cost to make this music

Exploring the Magickal History of Coil (Part 1) w/ P6 from OMO, Desalvo, Stretchheads and Security

Coil have a reputation for being genuinely difficult: ritualistic, transgressive, the kind of band you approach the way you'd approach a locked door marked "occult correspondence, keep out." So it's a bit disarming that this episode opens with hand-written Christmas cards from Jhonn Balance and Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, sent to a teenage psychiatric nursing student in Paisley who wrote to them out of genuine fandom. Coil, it turns out, wrote back. The student in question is Phil Eaglesham, or P6 as he is perhaps better known, formerly of Desalvo, Stretchheads and currently of OMO and Security. He's returning after breaking our brains once already with Cabaret Volatire, and this time he's turned up armed with decades of correspondence, first-hand context, and a refusal to let Coil calcify into myth. We trace the band from Jhonn Balance's teenage letters to Throbbing Gristle, through Psychic TV and the deliberately porous, ceremony-blurred confrontation of early industrial music, into the Temple of Psychic Youth and its uncomfortably close relationship to actual cult structure. We get into the brass dildos sent to record labels as a two-fingered thank-you-for-nothing. We get into AIDS-era queer culture, MDMA, and the particular kind of self-medicating grief that eventually caught up with Balance. And we get into why a band this steeped in the esoteric and apocalyptic was, underneath it, trying to build something more human and more DIY than the mysticism suggests. Jhon Balance himself suggested that Coil would forgotten within ten years after their end. They weren't. Whether that's a triumph of the work outlasting the intent, or proof that even planned obsolescence can't out-manoeuvre a good back catalogue, is something you can decide for yourselves. And we'll give you a bit of time to do that, because there's a whole second episode of this still to come next week. Highlights 00:00 – Welcome back, Phil Eaglesham 00:04 – Setting the scene: resources, Tony Dickey, and the Coil album map 00:06 – The letters: correspondence with a psychiatric hospital 00:10 – Reading list: England's Hidden Reverse and Everything Keeps Dissolving 00:14 – A quick word from our sponsors (that's you) 00:16 – Origins: Jhonn Balance, Throbbing Gristle, and teenage letter-writing 00:20 – Psychic TV forms, Warner Brothers money, and the 23 brass dildos 00:23 – Temple of Psychic Youth and its uncomfortable proximity to cult logic 00:27 – Coil as an alternative: queerness, esotericism, without the cult of personality 00:29 – Ecstasy, connection, and the AIDS-era comedown that became alcoholism 00:32 – "In ten years, nobody will remember" — legacy, reissues, and Mute Records 00:34 – Sleazy in Bangkok, and his death in 2010 00:39 – Peter Christopherson's design career: Hipgnosis, Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols 00:42 – The boy shop window, the leg, and the police raid 00:44 – Industrial music's roots in performance art and danger music

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What Does the Explosive Reaction to King Tut's and DF Concerts Tell Us About the Growing Sense of Injustice in Grassroots Music?

If you've been tuned into the news around the Scottish grassroots music scene at any point in the last few weeks, you'll likely have seen there's been a bit of controversy brewing around King Tut's Wah Wah Hut in Glasgow and their owners, DF Concerts. Following a piece published in The Bell, where numerous people spoke out about the poor terms that King Tut's offers to emerging artists, various corners of social media were ablaze with righteous fury. It prompted DF to threaten to take The Bell to court, and also saw The Herald get in on the action. So we think it's fair to say that this is a blaze that might be threatening to run amok. The terms that King Tut's offers has been something of a known issue in the Scottish music community for a number of years, and whilst there are certainly reasons for small artists to be aggrieved (reasons which we share), the matter is not quite as clear cut as The Bell article would have you think. On this week's episode we draw from our own experiences as musicians and promoters to try to give a more complete picture of the issue. We also do a wee exercise where we map out whether putting on gigs yourself is more cost effective, using examples of the rates offered by many venues in Glasgow to paint a picture of what the costs of running a show yourself actually are. Which ultimately leads us to ask a few questions: is what King Tut's offer fair? Is it just better to put on gigs yourself? And if King Tut's parent company, DF Concerts, used their corporate backing to pay artists more, what might be the outcome of that on the wider grassroots scene as a whole? If you like this episode please consider subscribing to our Patreon at www.patreon.com/unsungpod

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IN SESSION: Jonzip from The Zips Talks About the Life and Times of Being in Glasgow's First(ish) Punk Band

This week we sit down with Jon Zipp of The Zips — one of Glasgow's original 1977 punk bands — for a conversation that doubles as an oral history of Scottish punk. The Zips' story is a strange and charming one. Formed in '77, gigging by '78, split by the end of 1980 after two small-run EPs — 500 copies of the debut, sold out in six weeks — the band lay dormant for over two decades until a record collector tracked down the drummer via the West of Scotland phone book. It turned out The Zips' records had been bootlegged all over Europe, their EPs had become prized collectors' items, and a new generation of bands citing the Clash and Buzzcocks as influences had made the world safe for them again. They've been at it ever since, complete with a "Zips USA" franchise lineup, European squat tours. But the real revelation of this episode is John's first-hand account of Glasgow's infamous punk "ban". In the late 1970s, Glasgow City Council — having decided after a Stranglers gig at the City Hall that the city "had enough hooligans without importing them from down south" — made it known that any pub or venue hosting punk bands risked losing its licence. The effect was chilling: a generation of would-be Glasgow punk bands strangled at birth, touring acts like Elvis Costello turned away on the day of the show, and a city now famed as one of the great music capitals of the world temporarily hostile to the most vital music of its era. Along the way we get John's reflections on punk's flirtation with fascist imagery and provocation, why John Lydon is his biggest disappointment (and Paul Weller one of his quiet triumphs), the surprising resurgence of very young audiences going wild for original 77-style punk, and a truly outrageous tale of how, with his post Zips band in the 80, how he blagged — via the Mitchell Library's phone books and Harvey Goldsmith's office — onto a 30,000-capacity bill at Ibrox with Rod Stewart in 1983.

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FROM THE VAULT: Split 7" - Our Perfect Festival Line Ups

We reach into the vault this week to extra an old bonus episode that has a fairly unique format we liked to called the Split 7". In this episode, we talk build our own festival line ups. ORIGINAL SHOW NOTE We’re going to be 4 years old soon and for pretty much every single week of those 4 years (with the sole of exception of around this time last year when a technical issue made us lose an entire episode) we’ve been able to release an episode a week. However, this week we just couldn’t. Some life things got in the way and we had to take care of that. We couldn’t just leave everyone hanging though, so we decided to reach way back into our vault of bonus content and excise this little gem from back in October 2019. One of our subscribers, Chris Hynd, asked us what our perfect festival line-up would be and we duly obliged. So enjoy as Chris, Mark and Dave talk about who would play their festivals. We will return next week with special guest Neil from The Accordion Podcast as we talk about Finelines by My Vitrol.

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IN SESSION: Mark Davyd from the Music Venue Trust Talks About How PRS for Music Refuse to Show Artists The Money

In this interview, Mark Davyd, founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust, mentions the "famous" and famously misattributed Hunter S. Thompson quote about the music industry. It goes "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." It's now common knowledge that Thompson didn't actually say this, or at the very least if he did it wasn't about the music industry. Mark acknowledges as much in this interview. And yet, it remains a perfect summation of the music industry at large even today, and in this interview Mark expounds upon that at length. In April 2026 he unleashed a series of 4 Substack posts which shone a light on the dodgy dealings of the UK's performing rights body PRS for Music. In them, he details how each year millions of pounds earmarked for artists who perform in grassroots music venues is "held" by PRS because they are unable to attribute it to anyone — ostensibly because many of the artists who are due it have never signed up to PRS, and thus the money goes unclaimed. After 3 years, this money is then distributed to the largest music publishers and most successful songwriters in the world. The true figure is difficult to ascertain due to the opaque nature of PRS' reporting, but it is estimated to be around £18m — more than the combined profit generated by all 800+ grassroots music venues in the UK each year. What's happening is, in effect, a reverse Robin Hood scenario where huge amounts of money are being transferred to the most high-profile, wealthiest musicians and publishers. In this episode we dive deep into those 4 articles with Mark, getting to the heart of all that is rotten with the current PRS model, the organisation's response, and some suggestions for how it might be fixed. You can read Mark's articles here: Part 1: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots Part 2: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots-5a0 Part 3: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots-618 Part 4: https://markdavyd.substack.com/p/prs-for-music-and-the-grassroots-3d9 Highlights: 00:00 Grassroots Cash Grab 00:24 Meet the Hosts 01:46 What Music Venues Trust Does 03:30 COVID Crisis Response 07:23 Venue People Helping Venues 09:16 Why PRS Matters Here 12:45 How PRS Works 16:02 Unclaimed Royalties Problem 21:35 Archaic Setlist System 23:22 Tariff LP vs Tariff P 27:35 Real World Money Example 30:40 Show Me the Money 32:00 Unclaimed Royalties Black Box 32:58 Venue Economics And Losses 34:00 Rules Court Case And Publishers 35:53 Broken Reform Promises 39:20 Why PRS Won't Change 42:00 Estimated Bills And CCJs 44:44 Scale Of Grassroots Impact 48:18 Audio Recognition Solution 55:08 PRS Rebuttals And Backlash 59:16 Wrap Up And Where To Read

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IN SESSION: An Interview with the Lord of the Logos, Christophe Szpajdel

You might think you don't know Christophe Szpajdel's work. You almost certainly do. The Emperor logo. The Metallica Mankind clip. The Rihanna lettering that went a hundred feet high at the MTV VMAs. If you've spent any time near heavy music, his hand has been on things you've stared at without knowing his name. This week we sit down with the man known as Lord of the Logos — Belgian-born, Devon-based, currently on shift at the Co-op — to talk about a career that has produced somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 logos, and counting. We get into his early years doodling in school notebooks in Liège, the Art Nouveau obsession that underpins everything, and how a chance encounter on the Tube ended with his work displayed at one of the biggest awards shows on the planet for £500 — a fee he only learned was for Rihanna after he'd already quoted it. We cover the Emperor logo that defined his reputation, the Metallica commission that required him to draw at Heathrow five hours before a flight to Japan, and the Foo Fighters Christmas jumper that was a mutilation of his work, and what he did about it. We also discuss the readability question that divides the scene, the three-month creative block triggered by a South Korean band, his forestry degree and why nature sits at the centre of everything he makes, and the political stance on Ukraine that has cost him ten logos in one go. The question running through all of it: how does someone this prolific stay original? Highlights 00:00 Intro 01:00 Meet Christophe Szpajdel — Lord of the Logos 04:00 Logo Count and the Goal of 20,000 by 2030 06:00 The Process Explained 09:00 The Unsung Logo and Chris's Tattoo 10:00 Background: Belgium, Poland, Ukraine, Devon 11:00 The Co-op Day Job and Why It Works 13:00 Side Projects: Murals and the Polish Calendar 17:00 Musical Influences: Kiss, Motörhead, Celtic Frost 19:00 First Logos and Early Career 21:00 The Emperor Logo 25:00 Chilean Influence: Rick Zuniga 26:00 Nature, Art Nouveau, and the Forestry Degree 28:00 Best Work Comes from Anger or Obsession with Death 29:00 Symmetry, Creative Block, and the Client Problem 33:00 Live: Working Through the Drag Logo 38:00 The Readability Debate 43:00 The Rihanna Story 47:00 Metallica at Heathrow 53:00 The Foo Fighters Bootleg Response 54:00 The Mandy Soundtrack 57:00 AI and Market Saturation 59:00 Ukraine, Politics, and the Russian Flatmate 01:02:00 Losing Ten Logos Over a Political Stance 01:03:00 Black Metal, Church Burnings, and Forbidden Fruit 01:08:00 The Trump/Putin Artwork 01:09:00 The Books: Lord of the Logos, Archaic Modernism, Oracles in Black

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Are Cabaret Voltaire Britain's Most Pioneering Electronic Act? (Side B) with P6 from Stretchheads, Desalvo and OMO

In our previous episode, we went deep into the history of Cabaret Voltaire and their importance to UK industrial and, latterly, dance music. Now, we follow the trail we laid therein by taking a journey through the band's extensive discography, really fleshing out how they went from a Sheffield attic in 1973 to a Patagonian field site recording lizards for David Attenborough. Along the way, we take in televangelists, voodoo, Charles Manson samples, Velvet Underground covers, a near-miss with Todd Terry, and a Taylor Swift pressing-plant mix-up that turned a forgotten ambient track into a viral curiosity decades later. Phil Eaglesham (aka P6 - ex-Stretchheads and De Salvo, current OMO frontman) returns to bestow upon us his encyclopaedic knowledge of the band and British industrial music. We start in 1974 with the lo-fi bedroom experiments of Cabaret Voltaire 1974–76, work through the rough-edged early Rough Trade EPs, the spring-reverb wilderness of Three Mantras and Voice of America, the cult monument that is Red Mecca, and the band's stylistic pivots through Hai!, 2x45, The Crackdown, Micro-Phonies, The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, Code, and beyond. We also pick at the more controversial late chapters, including the major-label years, the slightly-too-late acid house pivot, and Richard H. Kirk's solo reactivation of the name. Along the way, we explore the band as a video production company that happened to make music; their roles as curators and tastemakers via Double Vision; the Burroughs-and-televangelism worldview that made them frighteningly prescient about Reagan-era Christian nationalism; and their unsung debt to Black American music and dub. Chris also offers a wider reflection on what it means to lose the egoless purity of your earliest creative work as ambition and industry pressures take hold. We get deep in the weeds talking about the producers they worked with (Flood, Adrian Sherwood, John Robie, Marshall Jefferson); the labels (Rough Trade, Some Bizzare, Virgin, EMI, Mute); their collaborators and contemporaries (DAF, Wire, Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Soft Cell, New Order, The Shamen); and the bands that lifted from them wholesale (Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, The Rapture, White Zombie, and a generation of Glasgow acts you've heard but can't quite place). It all culminates in us taking a closer look at Eight Crepuscule Tracks, a record that Phil thinks is their best and a very pure statement of what the band can and did achieve. We also settle upon what is perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from the Cabs' music: the importance of never compromising on your vision. By entering the belly of the beast and somehow remaining intact, they became one of the rare bands in this corner of music history whom nobody has a bad word for. Highlights 00:00 Intro 01:18 Welcome Back, Phil 02:46 1974–76: Egoless Experimentation 04:51 Bedroom Records 06:30 Extended Play and DAF 07:37 The Velvet Underground Cover 08:26 Nag Nag Nag 10:20 Van With a PA 11:38 Three Mantras 12:24 Mix-Up 14:50 William Burroughs 16:48 Voice of America 19:35 Peter Care and Double Vision 21:41 Red Mecca 24:25 Encyclopaedia Bands 27:36 Hai! 29:36 2x45 in New York 32:07 Sheffield's Family Tree 32:55 Chris Watson Leaves 36:16 The Crackdown 42:23 Micro-Phonies 46:38 Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord 49:48 Drinking Gasoline 51:45 Code 54:58 Listen Up and Reissues 57:12 Groovy, Laidback and Nasty 1:00:15 Body and Soul 1:03:56 Shadow of Fear 1:04:51 The Taylor Swift Accident 1:08:27 Richard Kirk's Death 1:14:50 Bus Shelter Bashes 1:19:58 Sincerity vs Seriousness 1:25:00 Debt to Black Music 1:29:00 Eight Crepuscule Tracks 1:51:00 Why Everyone Loves Cab Vol 1:58:36 Coming Soon: Coil?!

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Are Cabaret Voltaire Britain's Most Pioneering Electronic Act? (Side A) with P6 from Stretchheads, Desalvo and OMO

Cabaret Voltaire are no one thing. Depending on which corner of the internet you found us from, you might know them as the caustic Sheffield noise act who preceded post-punk, the sinister electro-industrial outfit with a penchant for evangelical samples and anti-fascist agitprop, or the dancefloor-adjacent act who fetched up on Factory's Belgian satellite label and made something close to club music. You're all correct. This week, we have a guide. Phil Eaglesham — P6, former front person of Stretchheads and De Salvo, current singer in OMO, musical walking tour operator, man of broad and alarming musical learnings — is here to help us navigate one of the most complex and wilfully uncommercial bands to come out of the UK, via their transitional compilation Eight Crepuscule Tracks. We trace the band's origins in a Sheffield attic in 1973, chart their debts to dub, Black American music, and the sci-fi soundscapes that shaped a generation of working-class ears, and make the case that Cabaret Voltaire — despite their apparent difficulty — were one of the most industrious and fundamentally political bands of their era. We also get into their time at Western Works Studio, which functioned less like a recording facility and more like the gravitational centre of an entire Sheffield scene; their complicated relationship with Rough Trade; and their connections to Joy Division, Lydia Lunch, Clock DVA, and the bands that would become the Human League and ABC. Along the way, Phil brings original artefacts including a signed 1979 TG/Cab Vol/Rema Rema poster from Tottenham Court Road, and the original 12-inches the album is built from. We also ask what would have happened to Cabaret Voltaire without punk — and conclude they'd likely have ended up an academic footnote rather than a foundational text. Highlights: 00:00 Intro 03:56 Meet Phil Eaglesham 07:47 P6 — The Name and the Character 09:29 Queer Identity in the Industrial Scene 12:55 Pseudonyms and Rockism 17:44 Cabaret Voltaire: The Basics 22:32 Sheffield, Western Works, and the Scene 25:18 Rough Trade, The Fall, and Being Prolific 29:10 Working-Class Roots and Industrial Culture 32:33 Sci-Fi Soundscapes and Electronic Prehistory 35:11 Musique Concrète to Cab Vol: How Close Were They? 36:13 Dadaism, Situationism, and Confrontational Art 38:40 Punk's Effect on Audiences (Not Just Music) 40:11 The Counterfactual: Cab Vol Without Punk 41:43 Black Music, Funk, and the DNA Nobody Talks About 43:39 New Wave, No Wave, and New York Connections 46:29 Factory Records, Crépuscule, and the Belgian Connection 47:49 Original Artefacts: Posters, 12-Inches, and History 50:31 Why Eight Crepuscule Tracks? 52:54 Looking Towards Next Week and Outro

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Did Hollywood Kill Jóhann Jóhannsson?

We don't often cover classical or neoclassical music, as it’s a wee bit out of our wheelhouse. But that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy it—often, our entry into that world is via film soundtracks. Jóhann Jóhannsson is a perfect example, having scored some of the most iconic films of the last 20 years. However, that’s only part of the story. Jóhannsson also released a series of acclaimed solo records; this week, we’re focusing almost exclusively on that solo output, while also providing an account of his life, his key cinematic works, and his tragic passing in 2018. We chart his path from early days in indie bands to the cross-genre think tank Kitchen Motors, and his meteoric rise as a composer for films like Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, and The Theory of Everything (for which he won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination). From there, we take a closer look at his solo discography, including IBM 1401: A User’s Manual (built from his father’s vintage computer recordings), Fordlandia, and the short-film soundtrack And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, as well as posthumous releases like Gold Dust. We cap things off with a discussion regarding his death and the question of whether the pressures of Hollywood played a role in his demise, before focusing exclusively on his 2016 masterpiece, Orphée. 00:00 Intro 03:56 Meet Jóhann Jóhannsson 07:47 Early Life And Indie Bands 09:29 Labels And Influences 12:55 Chris' Hildur Guðnadóttir Facebook Scam Story 17:44 Solo Albums Breakdown 22:32 IBM 1401 Masterpiece 25:18 Fordlandia And Later Works 29:10 Film Breakthrough And Awards 32:33 Blade Runner Score Rejected 35:11 Blade Runner Score Shakeup 36:13 Zimmer Versus Vangelis 38:40 Jóhann Interview Clues 40:11 Who Made The Call 41:43 mother! And The Scrapped Soundtrack 43:39 Experimental Sound Design 46:29 Final Projects And Legacy 47:49 Last And First Men 50:31 Posthumous Releases 52:54 Death And Tributes 55:39 Did Hollywood Kill Him 58:48 Orphée Album Deep Dive 01:08:32 Why His Music Matters

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Rock and Roll Killing Machine by Drowningman

This week, we're talking about two things we think are quite interesting. First off, we chat about the early mathcore/metalcore band Drowningman and reflect on why they never quite reached the heights of their peers, such as Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan—bands they often found themselves touring with in the late 90s and early 00s. While that story is compelling in itself, Drowningman can also count themselves among the artists who tried to sabotage a contractual obligation to a record label. As the story goes, they hit the studio with Kurt Ballou (Converge, God City Studios) to record a very weird album, tentatively titled Best Album Ever. The record was never officially released; it was allegedly created with the sole intention of being purposefully bad in order to satisfy, and terminate, their two-album contract with Revelation Records. In the end it never saw the light of day. This got us thinking about other artists who have tried to escape their contractual obligations. We use this lens to take a wee sojourn into the annals of music history, unearthing stories of several big-name artists who tried, and sometimes succeeded, in doing something similar. We hope you enjoy! Highlights: 00:00 Intro 01:27 Skipping the Discourse 01:56 Viral Bands Debate 02:59 Patreon Pitch 05:37 Awkward Party Exits 06:17 Meet Drowningman 08:19 Origins and Scene 12:00 Early Releases Breakdown 16:07 Rock and Roll Killing Machine Era 21:07 Later Records and Fadeout 24:47 Did They Deserve Bigger 27:05 Contractual Obligation Albums 35:38 Ozzy Contract Loophole 36:25 Speak of the Devil Drama 38:05 Ozzy Album Aftermath 38:57 Neil Young vs Geffen 39:49 Beach Boys Owed Album 40:55 More Contract Escapes 42:40 Sisters of Mercy SSV 45:46 More Obligation Oddities 47:43 Rolling Stones Provocation 50:31 Zappa Lather Bootleg 51:25 Prince vs Warner Saga 57:42 Drowning Man Review 59:32 Track Highlights Breakdown 01:02:56 Final Verdict and Wrap 01:06:21 Outro and Thanks

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FROM THE VAULT: Corollaries by Lubomyr Melnyk

This week's episode is another FROM THE VAULT as we travel back to one of our (sadly) many episodes that were recorded during the pandemic. This one is actually a condensing of two episodes on the weird/genius/odd/interesting music, and personality, of pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. Enjoy! Chris has been chomping at the bit to do this Lubomyr Melnyk album for a while. In fact, some may even remember that he brought it up during our Pandemic Mixtape. Well, the time has come to finally tackle this post-classical/minimalist work and in doing so we absolutely had to cover his…interesting thoughts on musical philosophy. Which cascades into his questionable thoughts on the actual science of how sound works. Which takes us down a big old rabbit hole, as I’m sure you can imagine. All of this to say that it takes us a while to get to the album as a result. Also, the dude’s done like 20+ albums (although we don’t cover all of them) so that’s another whole thing we had to deal with. We also talk about continuous music (the genre he reckons he’s in…of which he is the only practitioner), his incredible piano playing speed and a bunch more things. Our voyage into continuous music comes to a close as we dig into Lubomyr Melnyk’s eighteenth (!) album Corollaries. For the unfamiliar, Melnyk categorises his style as being something almost beyond classical music, yet this release sees him team up with neoclassical composers Nils Frahm and Peter Broderick. This album seemed to give Melnyk a new lease of life; upon getting together with Frahm and Broderick he stated “Where were you in my thirties?”, a statement that stands in stark contrast to his general aversion to playing with other musicians in the years before. There’s a lot to be said about Melnyk’s playing, and I think we cover most of that in the episode. Once again, potato quality audio from Mark but hey, it isn’t terrible.

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FROM THE VAULT: Never Better by P.O.S

THIS WEEK ON FROM THE VAULT we revisit episode 25 and our dive into Never Better by P.O.S. It's a great example of what this podcast does best, and we hope you dig this episode if you haven't heard it before. In the intro Mark talks a little about what's happened to P.O.S since too, specifically around the allegations made against him in 2020, his apology, and where he is now. Original shownotes follow: Folks, we did it. We managed to find a hip hop record that Chris Cusack enjoyed. We're fairly sure that this is one of the signs of the apocalypse so we're probably just going to end the podcast here. Thanks to everyone who listened. Joking aside though, this is a screamer of an album. People have been drawing comparisons between punk and hip hop since...well, forever. The line between the two is drawn pretty clearly on this album. P.O.S himself was a punk kid, but growing up in the cultural and musical melting pot that is Minneapolis meant that there was a great deal of other influential music lurking just around the corner. Indeed, the diversity of the artists that come from the city is telling of the city's cultural and creative landscape. And did we mention that it was the home of Prince, perhaps one of the masters of genre-hopping? This is P.O.S third album, and like every album before or since, it's a singular musical, tonal entity in his oeuvre. He's artist that never wants to cover the same ground twice, and whilst we all couldn't necessarily agree on if each of his records are successful at melding together as many disparate influences as this one, we all certainly agreed that this is his best work. And we all agreed that this should indeed make it into our discography of unsung classics.

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The Band That Made One Album About the End of the World (Then Disappeared)

You may be shocked to hear that Lift to Experience made one album. One. A ninety-minute double CD concept record about the apocalypse, set entirely in Texas, written by three boys from Pentecostal and Baptist backgrounds who genuinely believed they had something to say to God. And then, more or less, they vanished. In this episode we cover the Texas Jerusalem Crossroads in full — the vision behind it, the religious fervour that powered it, and the question of whether you need to share any of that fervour to find the record genuinely moving. We'd argue you don't, and the band themselves seemed fairly relaxed about that. We also get into the wider story, which turns out to be just as compelling as the music. The album that couldn't be bought in its home country for years. The label that mixed it without the band present and broke their hearts. The tour that never happened. The beard competition. The sandwich grill. Along the way we ask a question that feels increasingly relevant right now — what does it actually mean when Americans start singing about Texas as the site of the final battle between good and evil? In 2001 it seemed like a grand artistic conceit. In 2025 it feels a little different. Is the Texas Jerusalem Crossroads the unsung post rock record with actual things to say? We think so. But it's a ninety-minute album, so you've got time to make up your own mind. Highlights: 00:00 Intro and Whether We’re Actually Living in the End Times 03:11 Album Introduction 04:46 Millennium Anxiety 09:17 Band Origins 11:19 Sound and Influences 12:22 Post Rock With Vocals?! 17:33 Name and Release 19:48 Religion and Meaning 25:46 Art Versus Belief 29:46 Lyrics and Apocalypse 32:00 Track Highlights 33:51 Shoegaze Favourite Track 34:50 Dynamics of Cloud Nine 36:27 Maximalist Texas Vibes 37:03 Album Art Joke Explained 38:56 Religion and Tech Rants 40:53 UK Success US Absence 44:22 Recording Struggles and SXSW Myth 49:19 Bad Mix and Band Fallout 53:17 Aftermath and Cult Legacy 56:02 Reunion and 2017 Reissue 59:41 Remix Reviews and Changes 01:02:42 Apocalypse Talk and Final Thoughts 01:07:45 Outro

FROM THE VAULT: Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

This week we're throwing back to June 2018, when this pod was only six months old. Things were simpler - the research was less onerous, episodes were shorter (this would easily be a two parter these days), Dave was still part of the crew and the world wasn't ending... Godspeed You! Black Emperor don't really do brevity. They do epic, sweeping, often joyous, always elaborate, suites of music that are designed to move you. They're thorough, crafting songs with painstaking attention to detail. In keeping with the spirit of the band, we thought we'd do the same, so we present to your our longest episode yet. But trust us when we say that it's probably up there with our most interesting listens. We dive deep into the band's back catalogue, stopping along the way to talk about the politics of the band and yes, we do offer a take on some thorny subjects. With this band it's something that can often be inseparable from the way their music, and image, is presented, so it had to happen. The Foo Fighters Nexus also returns (jingle pending) and Chris has a full on GY!BE superfan nerdgasm, while Weaver whacks his politics degree on the table and Mark takes issue with the label "post-rock". This is a fun and captivating listen. We understand that the title of "best Godspeed album" is a contentious one, so we're intrigued to see if people agree with our decision to include this in our canon Unsung classics.

When Artists Aren't What They Seem - Ghost Bath Musical Catfishing and Hoax Bands - 380

You may be shocked to hear that musicians sometimes lie about who they are. Some may say this is not shocking at all - it's almost a tradition. But there's a meaningful difference between Ziggy Stardust and a band from North Dakota claiming to be a Chinese black metal act to game the press. In this episode we try to map that difference. We spend a healthy portion of time on what we're not talking about - aliases, concept bands, anonymity for anonymity's sake - before getting into the genuinely murky territory of bands that have used fabricated identities for commercial advantage. We cover the fake Zombies that toured America simultaneously in 1969, The Masked Marauders and the elaborate Rolling Stone prank that accidentally became a real album, Silibil n Brains, Dundee rappers who got signed to Island Records on the strength of their American accents, before discussing Ghost Bath, the project that brought this whole phenomenon into focus for us. Along the way we also get into AI-generated music, Milli Vanilli (and why what they did is arguably less dishonest than what plenty of current pop stars do routinely, and a genuinely unresolved case involving a supposedly Iraqi black metal band that may or may not have put its members in real danger. The question running through all of it: does context change how we hear music? And if it does — what does that say about us? Highlights: 00:00 Introduction 01:24 Catfish and Hoax Bands Explained 02:11 Patreon 05:10 Famous Death Hoaxes 05:42 Mystique Versus Scams 09:02 Not Aliases or Roleplay 10:43 Anonymity and Masks 13:23 Fake Touring Lineups 19:03 Concept Bands and Bits 24:28 AI Bands and Deception 27:54 Outright Music Scams 30:13 Milli Vanilli Then and Now 30:53 Pop Star Fraud Culture 33:39 Mask Marauders Hoax 35:20 Orion Elvis Impostor 38:50 Platinum Weird Backstory 40:25 Syllable American Rap Ruse 43:38 Jana Mystery Metal Band 46:06 Velvet Cocoon Troll Scam 48:36 Ghost Bath Identity Debate 54:40 Context and Cultural Relativism 58:10 Ghost Bath Fallout and Ethics 01:02:53 Outro

FROM THE VAULT: ПАСХА (Paskha) by Shortparis w/ Rebecca Yurivna

WELCOME BACK TO FROM THE VAULT. That's right, on our off weeks we'll be pulling an episode from our extensive vault that we love and we think is somewhat relevant to goings on in the modern era. And our latest episode is about Pashka by Shortparis. An episode which has been through into sharp relevance by the recent death of singer Nikolai Komyagin, who passed away in mysterious circumstances on Feb 20th 2026. We hope you enjoy. This week we’re joined by American artist and academic Rebecca Yurivna to talk about the Russian band Shortparis. Shortparis is a Russian experimental rock band hailing from the city of St. Petersburg. The band was formed in 2012 and musically, the band are quite difficult to catagorise. They take in elements of post-punk, electronic, and avant-garde music with traditional Russian folk melodies and lyrics. Their sound is quite unique, and is characterized by intense vocals, complex instrumentation, and a theatrical stage presence. More recent albums are almost exclusively sung in Russian, with the occasional lapse into English and French peppered throughout their career. Chris is fairly new to this band, as are Mark and Rebecca, so it was fun to get under their skin. We also chat about their political stance, which until the recent Russo-Ukrainian war, was somewhat ambiguous in their music. This often contrasts with their videos, which are more overt in their pro-LGBT+, almost anti-Russian stance. Indeed, they’ve become quite outspoken critics of Russia snice the war. In this episode we go through all of their records whilst also touching on the political situation in Russia today, and take a quick look at some other protest music that has cropped up in Russia since the war. Check out Rebecca’s music here, and give her a wee follow on Instagram here. It was great to have her on the show. Hopefully we can link up again soon! Let us know what you think of Shortparis on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Is Insomniac by Green Day an Unsung Classic? (Side B) w/ Rick Bruce from Coffin Mulch/Moondshine Docs - 379

You may be shocked to hear that Green Day have a lot of songs. Some may say, in fact, that they have too MANY songs, because there does come a point where they all just blend into on another. In this episode we explore this phenomenon, and it is exclusively (in our view) an issue that plagues the latter half of their career. We cover everything from American Idiot to Saviors, and whilst not all of these albums are afflicted in such a way, it definitely seems to become more prevalent as we more closer to the present era. We also ask a crucial question - is Green Day punk? The answer is probably not quite what you expect, but we do debate the finer points. Suggesting that perhaps they could be Schrodinger's punx... All this leads us to trying to answer the real question - is Insomniac Green Day's unsung classic? Let's find out. Highlights: 00:00 Intro 01:53 Car Album Debate 05:07 Legacy Act Question 09:31 Setting Up American Idiot 10:24 American Idiot Phenomenon 14:22 Stadium Band Status 23:08 Broadway And 21st Century 31:15 Uno, Dos, Tre And Rehab 35:38 Revolution Radio To Father Of All 37:38 Father of All Reappraisal 39:03 Critics vs Short Runtime 39:49 Side Projects and Salty Pretzel 43:18 2020 Output and Pandemic Era 44:18 Saviors and Derivative Sounds 48:42 Compression and Phone Listening 52:49 Is Green Day Punk? 01:00:28 Defining Punk and Yardsticks 01:19:59 Insomniac Context and Backlash 01:21:21 Critics and Rawness 01:22:22 Sales and Fan Backlash 01:24:01 Honest Bridge Album 01:26:28 Opening Tracks and Tone 01:30:29 Singles and Track Picks 01:32:56 Production and Gear Talk 01:39:54 Songwriting and Label Control 01:53:48 Closing Tracks and Verdict 01:59:22 Wrap Up and Goodbyes

Is Insomniac by Green Day an Unsung Classic? (Side A) - 378

Could it be done? Is it possible to call anything Green Day have ever released both unsung AND (crucially, because there's a fair bit of 'meh' in their catalogue) good? Well folks, this week and next we're going to do our very best to find out. And we're joined by our good friend Rick Bruce from Coffin Mulch and Moonshine Docks. Our contention? That their fourth album, Insomniac, is an unsung classic. This is all relative of course--in the 90s and 00s they sold bucket loads of records. How many people had copies of their records knocking about in their car footwells before 2010? Probably millions. And it hasn't stopped. They're still pulling down millions of streams per month. Objectively, they are huge. And somewhat less objectively, they're probably the biggest punk band ever, and certainly one of the biggest bands on earth. I mean, Insomniac itself isn't even their lowest selling record. And in this episode, we don't even get to it! It's a two parter after all. No, in this episode we talk about everything from the 1000 Hours EP right up to, and including, Warning. With a brief detour into Pinhead Gunpowder too. We'll tackle Insomniac itself in our next episode--as is our way. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 02:08 Green Day at the Super Bowl 04:47 Is It Even Possible for Green Day to be Unsung?! 05:23 Support us on Patreon 06:53 Mark's Album-a-Day Project, Power Pop Rabbit Holes & Mic Banter 08:45 Green Day 101: Origins, Pop-Punk Blueprint & Gilman Street 10:51 Influences Deep Dive: Hüsker Dü, Replacements, Costello, Op Ivy & More 15:21 Which Album Is Unsung? Debating Kerplunk, Nimrod & Insomniac 20:27 Early Timeline: Sweet Children, 1,000 Hours EP & 39/Smooth Era 22:40 Scene Discipline vs Scottish Modesty: Getting Good on Purpose 33:03 Kerplunk Breakthrough, Major-Label Controversy & Setting Up Dookie 35:27 How I First Bought Dookie (and Why It Wasn't a 5/5 Yet) 37:03 1994: The Year Pop-Punk Exploded (Offspring, NOFX, Weezer & More) 38:04 Green Day's Mainstream Breakthrough: MTV, Grammys, and the Blink-182 Ripple Effect 43:56 Insomniac (1995): Darker, Faster, Burnout After Fame 46:55 Nimrod (1997): 'Good Riddance' and the Genre-Hopping Era 51:38 Seeing Green Day Live: Glasgow Shows, Merch Regrets, and Peak Memories 53:17 Do Novelty Songs Ruin Pop-Punk? The Big Debate (Descendents, The Offspring, Blink) 59:50 Warning (2000): Polished Pivot, Chasing Hits—or Underrated Growth? 01:09:12 From Warning to American Idiot: The Stolen 'Cigarettes & Valentines' Sessions 01:12:12 On the Cusp of American Idiot (Wrap-Up & Next Part Tease)

IN SESSION: Stewart Home - Musician, Author, Artist and Punk

This week we've got a really fascinating chat with Stewart Home. Originally a punk in London in the early days of the movement, he's since forged a career as a musician, author and visual artist. In this interview we talk at length about his early days as a punk in London in the late 70s and early 80s, and dig into how his own perception of the genre has helped to inform his outlook on music ever since. We dig into his 1994 treatise on punk rock, Cranked Up Really High, discussing his rather unique take on the genre and its legacy—including his controversial argument that punk rock wasn't actually influenced by Situationism. Naturally, conversation drifts into how right-wing oi! music grew out from the genre, touching on figures like Ian Stuart, Skrewdriver, and the uncomfortable middle-class origins of many prominent fascist punk bands. From there, we tie things into his latest book, Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order in Wellness, which takes a close look at the origins of modern yoga, uncovering the grifters and white supremacists who sat at the heart of the movement as it grew throughout the mid to late 20th century. In it, he argues that yoga served as a blueprint for the tactics and ideology that permeate the modern wellness movement—and traces the pipeline from 1960s counterculture libertarianism to today's anti-government conspiracism. Which, once again, leads into the far-right. Because, y'know, that's what we do. We thoroughly recommend both books: Cranked Up Really High is available to read fully on his website. Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness currently available at all good booksellers, published by Pluto Press. Highlights: 00:20 Welcome to the Show 02:36 Stuart's Journey and Punk Rock Insights 12:05 The Evolution of Punk Rock 17:40 Fascism and Music: A Complex Relationship 20:53 David Bowie and the National Front 31:38 The Intersection of Esotericism and Fascism 34:28 The Evolution of Link Records and Skrewdriver's Iconography 36:17 Boyd Rice and the Punk Scene 39:01 Tony Wakeford and the Controversies of Sol Invictus 42:17 The Working Class Roots of Metal and Neo-Folk 46:18 The Rise of Neo-Nazi and Fascist Music 50:55 The Intersection of Wellness Culture and Alt-Right Ideologies 56:34 The Role of Doubt and Disinformation in Modern Politics 01:00:58 The Punk Rock Influence on Chan Culture 01:06:48 Conclusion and Final Thoughts