Alternative Tentacles Rock & Indie 21 Items

At last, one of the all-time bat legends, Nomeansno has returned to Alternative Tentacles Records. The entire catalog no less, starting with their most beloved album, Wrong. Using the original all-analog master, from the original mother, as engineered by George Horn, John Wright, and Jello Biafra.

At last, one of the all-time bat legends, Nomeansno has returned to Alternative Tentacles Records. The entire catalog no less, starting with their most beloved album, Wrong. Using the original all-analog master, from the original mother, as engineered by George Horn, John Wright, and Jello Biafra.

Nomeansno formed in a vacuum, in Victoria, British Columbia in 1979 and honing their sounds for years before relocating to Vancouver and releasing eleven albums over an almost forty year career, including a collaborative album with Jello Biafra, and numerous EPs and singles. Originally formed as a two-piece by brothers John and Rob Wright, and later joined by monster guitarist, Andy Kerr. Mixing hardcore punk, dark lyrics, and sophisticated arrangements boarding on prog, Nomeansno was massively influential and widely regarded as the first band to be referred to as “math rock”.

Originally released on Alternative Tentacles in 1989, Wrong stands on its own and is still considered to be a much-loved classic. Allmusic called the album a masterpiece and a definitive jazz core album. In 2021, the album was voted by the public’s to win the Canadian Polaris Heritage Prize to honor classic Canadian albums released before the creation of the award.

In 2015, drummer John Wright described the album as their “most popular album by a country mile” and to the St. Louis Music Press of Wrong’s success to the rise of alternative music and the success of Nirvana:

“That’s where all the buzz about us came from. We were touring throughout the States in the mid-80s, and we’d get a little bit of an audience here and there, but after a couple of years in Europe, we started doing some big shows there, and all of a sudden, people in the States were coming out to our shows. And we went from getting paid $200 to getting paid $1000. It was just like that. You had to have the buzz, and then it all just kind of blew up.”

Getting Nomeansno vinyl into stores is long overdue, so it all starts here with Wrong. Expect all vintage Nomeansno vinyl to systematically return in the days ahead.

The Darts can’t stop, won’t stop! Hot on the heels on last year’s groundbreaking album Snake Oil, The Darts have returned guns blazing with a brand-new album, Boomerang! While on a break from their intense international touring schedule, the band stopped at Station House Studio in Los Angeles to work with producer Mark Rains (Hooveriii, Death Valley Girls, Hunx and His Punx) with the mission of capturing the band’s raw rock spirit.

From the opening chords of “Hang Around,” listeners are launched into an explosive garage party, with the Farfisa organ bringing a carnival and snarky gang vocals adding to the fray. The band doesn’t let up from there. With Nicole Laurenne on vocals and Farfisa, Christina Nunez on bass and backup vocals, Meliza Jackson on guitars, and Mary Rose Gonzales on drums, the tight lineup fuels the album’s themes of resilience and empowerment. Each track on Boomerang packs a punch, drawing the listener into a world of infectious hooks and soaring riffs.

“Boomerang is a reference to the fact that, right after we released Snake Oil, we turned right around and went back into the studio to do a whole new full-length album! I can’t stop writing songs! But ‘boomerang’ also refers to a lyric on the album that describes toxic people and things that keep coming back into your life despite your repeated attempts to fling them as far away as possible. This album is my manifesto about finding strength—the kind of strength it takes to do what you personally need to do to be peaceful and healthy. For me it meant cutting a lot of stuff out of my life, and that was really hard, but it also meant adding a lot of amazing stuff I never thought I’d see. I’m in a better place than I’ve ever been, and I think you can feel that power in this record.” – Nicole Laurenne

The album-length result of Biafra's collaboration with long-time associates D.O.A. for the super soundtrack of Terminal City Ricochet! Both DKs and D.O.A. began playing music in the same week of 1978, so perhaps this project was bound to happen. It sure seems like it...

Alternative Tentacles Records and Crispin Glover Records is proud to present Punch, a new split 7-inch from Patrik Fitzgerald and Motorpsycho featuring Jello Biafra both performing Fitzgerald’s classic song, “Punch.” Patrik Fitzgerald is an English singer-songwriter, known for being one of the originators of the Folk Punk movement. Ranked as one of the most memorable of the so-called “punk poets” he first debuted in 1977 and has become known for his unique combination of punk outrage with a streak of optimism. Originally writing the song “Punch” in 1980, shortly after Margaret Thatcher had been elected Prime Minister of Great Britain, Fitzgerald had this to say about the song; “At the time that the song was written, it seemed like the worst type of person to be in charge of a country would be a right wing monster like Margaret Thatcher or a dangerous ex-actor / reactionary like Ronald Reagan, a bit of a joke figure, but also a gun-toting and gun promoting right wing monster. Nobody might have expected that, by the early 2020s, the world would end up in the hands of actual clowns like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, people written off by their own public as comedy buffoons, people to laugh at but not take too seriously.”

In the twenty or so years since his brainchild, The Dead Kennedys, officially disbanded, Jello Biafra has made a career of spoken word gigs interspersed with musical collaborations with some of the most compelling figures in underground music. Recording projects and touring with the likes of Melvins, NoMeansNo, DOA, Mojo Nixon, and Lard (with Ministry's Al Jorgensen) among others have kept his "punk as political weapon" message sharp, but the lack of his own band made these collaborations usually short-lived and left Biafra with a ton of songs that never saw the light of day. Inspired by The Stooges gig on Iggy Pop's 60th birthday in San Francisco, Biafra laid plans for his own 50th birthday party and finally decided it was time to start a band of his own. After cramming practices for a month, the four-piece dubbed themselves Jello Biafra and the Axis of Merry Evildoers! and featured Biafra, Ralph Spight (Victims Family, Freak Accident, Hellworms), Jon Weiss (Sharkbait, Horsey), and Billy Gould (Faith No More) The band took the stage in a sold-out two-night stand at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. Flush from that exhilarating triumph, nine months of rehearsal and writing followed; they added ace guitarist Kimo Ball (Freak Accident, Carneyball Johnson, Mol Triffid, Griddle), and christened themselves Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. The Audacity of Hype was produced by Biafra and engineered by hip hop producer and longtime co-conspirator Matt Kelley (Hieroglyphics, The Coup, Digital Underground, Victims Family, Tumor Circus) at Prairie Sun Recording in Cotati, CA, and San Francisco's Hyde Street Studios. The band's twin guitar attack retains some of the space-punk overtones and spy-music-on-meth chaos of The Dead Kennedys while adding a healthy dose of Detroit-style proto-punk flavored with Weiss' industrial excursions into metal percussion.

At last! The Darts return from their Bat Cave Covid lair, with Snake Oil—by far their best album to date. The Darts formed in 2016 with the goal of getting some solid female musicians together to make garage punk rock and roll noise, see the world, and basically have a super-fun slumber party every night. They are now hands down one of the best garage bands in the world. This is a much fuller sound than any Darts disc before, courtesy of their longtime collaborator Bob Hoag (FB Rec) and some remote control co-production wizardry from Jello Biafra himself. Featuring the return of Nicole Laurnne on vocals / Farfisa and Hammond organ, Christina Nunez on bass / vocals, and Meliza Jackson on guitars / vocals, Snake Oil is the debut of new drummer Mary Rose Gonzales. The result? It comes out smoking as if the band had been in a pressure cooker throughout the pandemic. Expect the wider sound and sparkle of Laurnne and Nunez’s previous band, The Love Me Nots (which was also recorded by the brilliant Bob Hoag), but with way more raunch—and Laurnne’s voice has never sounded better. Snake Oil is for fans of agile, sultry vocals and beefy, vintage rhythm sections paired with razor-tone guitars. This Snake Oil was concocted to remedy the most unaffected and stiff-legged garage rockers out there!

Nazm sees Jucifer deploy their familiar studio tactic: writing, arranging, producing, engineering, and playing all instruments themselves to create a sprawling concept album. This time, it’s to celebrate their shared love for the Middle East and North Africa (mena) and central / south / west Asian traditional and pop music cultures with fourteen highly textured, intensely personal and passionately delivered original songs. Fans of the band likely know they can expect surprises with each album, as well as recordings which differ drastically at times from their live sound. In this tradition, Nazm strays far from the brutal excess of a Jucifer show (and of their recent releases Futility and District Of Dystopia) but, as with all Jucifer’s recordings, the point is not to imply any static trait of the band but instead to bring to life a story they’re telling.

The infamous, explosive Southern wrecking crew The Legendary Shack Shakers are back with a brand new full-length titled The Southern Surreal. Their first release in five years, the album lands on the band’s 20th anniversary and is their Alternative Tentacles debut. In conjunction with its release, the band will tour across much of the United States and Europe this Fall.

The Legendary Shack Shakers’ incendiary interpretations of the blues, punk, rock and country are all-at-once irreverent, revisionist, dangerous and fun. Built upon a haunting, Southern Gothic theme, The Southern Surreal is a fifteen-track set featuring regular band members Colonel JD Wilkes (vocals, harmonica, banjo), Rod Hamdallah (electric guitar), Mark Robertson (electric and upright bass) and Brett Whitacre (drums), with guest appearances by actor / musician and longtime Shack Shakers fan Billy Bob Thornton, and Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison.

Yet another rockin’ new direction from the label that can’t stop expanding its….well,…Tentacles! Meet Kultur Shock—multinational ‘Gypsy Punk’ pioneers, led by irrepressible ball of energy and good cheer, Gino Yevdjevich. Gino was quite the mainstream pop star in his native Bosnia (and the Balkans), when the shelling of Sarajevo began, trapping him in his family’s apartment for two years. He was finally able to flee, first to New York, then on to Seattle. Instead of reviving his pop career, Gino chose (a full plunge) to reinvent himself, reaching deeper into his heart and Balkan roots, and Kultur Shock was born! They began playing slightly electrified Traditional Folk, to a growing refugee audience, including many a dancing Serb. The fan base quickly widened to Krist Novaselic and Vic Bondi, among others, who then drew in Jello Biafra. - Then something happened - A year or two later, they debuted in San Francisco to a sold-out audience at the Bottom of the Hill, packed with almost all refugees and migrants - and a much louder, heavier Kultur Shock. Lineups hail from all over Eastern Europe, Seattle, and even Japan; with a much wilder, more theatrical Gino as ringmaster of all he surveys. A more punked-out, direct version of their close friends and cousin, Gogol Bordello, Kultur Shock mixes Balkan folk melodies and bizarre meters with face-melting metal and blood-pumping punk rock in a pagan cauldron of lyrical, obnoxious, and politically irreverent music stew since 1996. The band released its first three studio records produced by FNM’s Bill Gould on his KoolArrow Records – Fucc the INS (2001 and 20th-anniversary re-master in 2022), Kultura- Diktatura (2003), and We Came To Take Your Jobs Away (2006). Since 2007, Kultur Shock is self-produced and self-released on its own label, Kultur Shock Records. It released Live in Europe (2007), Integration (2009), Ministry Of Kultur ( 2011), Tales Of Grandpa Guru, vol. 1 EP (2012), IX (2014), Live At Home ( 2016), and D.R.E.A.M. (2019). So here to start is Kultur Shock’s Alternative Tentacles 7” debut. To break the ice and dangle the carrot for our eclectic Tentacle fan base, and reintroduce the now post-Covid Kultur Shock, as they head back across the Atlantic, for their main audience and festival dates, and Stateside down the road. “King” and “Country Mohammed” have been live show favorites for some time, and Alternative Tentacles is pleased to showcase them to our audience. With an all-new album is in the works, with hopefully more vinyl reissues of their past CD-only albums to follow, Kultur Shock is here to stay. We love them so much, it’s the Second band with this name on Alternative Tentacles: Dick Lucas’ Culture Shock is the first!

A glimpse at the hypnotic نظم album (coming soon on 2xLP!) this 7" strays far from the brutal excess Jucifer are best known for, but follows their tradition of resolutely unorthodox studio offerings. Blinding sunlight strikes silver in celebration: worn black cloth casts shadows over infinite dust.

Founded in 1993, Jucifer pioneered the metal two piece. With 29 years of incessant touring the band carved its reputation for literally towering onstage sound, which careens venomously from their walls of speakers in every extreme and tempo of metal and punk. Jucifer's motto "sludge, black, grind, thrash, death, crust, doom, combine" or more briefly "genre=obliterate" is fair warning.

Dame Peligro, the new 7-inch record by Tijuana’s own Dfmk is the definition of punk rock and roll. With driving tempos and raw leads. the high octane vocals will coerce any fan of hardcore punk to seek out more! Walking the line between melodic riffs, and soaring melodies, this is the band at their harnessed best—three songs to two-step to!

Described as a ’60s garage rock band performing as a mini-orchestra stuck within a Tarantino film, Los Angeles-based Spindrift is a cinematically inspired rock band that has also been described as “Heavy Western” or “psychedelic spaghetti-western rocknroll.” Led by songwriter-producer-composer Kirpatrick Thomas on guitar and lead vocals, along with Portland-based guitarist Becca Davidson, bass/baritone guitarist, producer, and vocalist Riley Bray, and aerospace engineer JOE Zabielski on drums and electronics, Spindrift creates a cinematic scope that has been heard on their compilation albums like Classic Soundtracks Vol 1, 2, and The West (released by Xemu Records), HBO’s Eastbound & Down (Seasons 1 & 2), the Quentin Tarantino-produced biker exploitation film Hell Ride, the film Diablo (featuring Scott Eastwood), and “The Ballad of Darrell Lemaire” from Season 1 Episode 9 of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia (Viceland). Classic Soundracks Vol. 3 is their tenth studio soundtrack compilation album, co-produced by Riley Bray and Jello Biafra, it completes a trilogy of themes from various feature films, documentaries, and TV mini-series. This final installment reveals a new level of maturity from the band, opening doors to new genres including espionage-esque Bond themes, upbeat guitar duets, “Italian Polizia” car chase electronica, hard rock from the Middle East, psychedelic disco, and progressive “kung fu” rock.

The 57-member neural necromancers Itchy-O have returned to unleash Sypherlot / Hallowmass 2020, a double-live album recorded during the chaos collective’s groundbreaking 2020 drive-in concert series. It was against this backdrop of isolation and suspended reality that Itchy-O heeded the call for a radical evolution in shared catharsis and new sonic experiments: short-band radio broadcast turned each car interior into a private listening experience for a post-apocalyptic simulation, while roving bands of mysterious beings opened a temporary escape portal with contactless chaos, engulfing each and every vehicle in rite and ritual for the ages. As the blaring car horns attested, these incredible live performances delivered a needed spirit-lift in the absence of concerts as one knew them amidst shuttered music venues, lighting a proverbial—and literal—torch during one of the darkest moments of modern history.

Join those Legendary Shack Shakers as they mark their 25th anniversary as a band on Planet Earth—to celebrate the occasion, they’ve invited former members to help them record an all country & western album! From spaghetti western to bluegrass, western swing to rockabilly, Tex-Mex to country folk, the variety of the genre is on full display. Always ones to respect their history, the Shack Shakers have also included some Kentucky local legends to “pick and grin”. Hotshots such as Stanley Walker (Grand Ole Opry band leader for Jean Shepard and guitarist for Sun Studio’s “Rockin’ ” Ray Smith) and Jack Martin (dobro-player for Lester Flatt) really give those “young ‘uns” a run for their money. And the always-ornery “Hillbilly” Bob Prather (Louisiana Hayride fiddler and running buddy of Opry star Onie Wheeler) pitches in too. Just add The Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, hillbilly royalty Chris Scruggs and an Old Crow Medicine Showman and you’ve got a recipe for what could only be a Legendary Shack Shakers masterpiece. Titling it Cockadoodledeux was done, admittedly, to bookend 2002’s Cockadoodle-Don’t, an album by which many fans were first made aware of the group. However, it also serves to signal the start of another twenty-five years! Just as the plucky, two-headed chick emerges from the egg on the cover, so too begins a fresh start for the band’s creative energies. Once again, generations of fans—both young and old—get to lean in, listen and expect the un-expected.

Hot on the heels of five viral video singles, Tea Party Revenge Porn, the first full album since 2014 by Jello Biafra And The Guantanamo School Of Medicine, is finally here! This is very strong stuff. Hear the inimitable Mr. B skewer the place the country has put itself in like no one else would—or could—as he and The Guantanamo School Of Medicine capture the full power of their live shows on disc as never before. Only so many artists have a track record of lyrics this good, and back it up with music as good or better. It’s usually one of the other, but rarely this fierce, thanks to the wall of sound production of the mysterious Marshall Lawless, with Kurt Schlegel at the board this time. Co-conspirators now feature both string-titans of longtime AT mainstay Victims Family: guitarist Ralph Spight (also Freak Accident) and wonder bassist Larry Boothroyd (also Triclops, Brubaker); plus drummer / metal percussionist Jason Willer (UK Subs, Nik Turner, Charger, The Mob). So as germs and police riots rage, there’s no better primal scream therapy than a long-awaited new Jello Biafra album. From Dead Kennedys to Lard to the now-classic albums with the Melvins, DOA, NoMeansNo, Mojo Nixon; and of course, The Guantanamo School Of Medicine, Tea Party Revenge Porn is right up there with all of it.

The World/Inferno Friendship Society’s long awaited new album dares one to try and decipher its multi-layered, encrypted message, while being dragged kicking and screaming through a succession of flashbacks, alternate realities and drug and alcohol induced delusions. While this ensemble is known for its utter disregard for boundaries of genre, All Borders Are Porous To Cats deliberately pushes the limits of what could possibly be perceived as punk rock. It scores tales of fugitives, arson, larceny, perjury, drug addiction and freedom with elements of soul, funk, latin, polka, and classical music, as well as the band’s signature punk cabaret sound. Three years in the making, five missed release dates, five lost band members, many a bridge burned, and a defamation lawsuit waiting to happen, The World /Inferno Friendship Society invites the listener to enjoy the fruits of their perpetual torment.

This seventh full-length album finds the collective reset and reinvigorated, behind the lyrics of Jack Terricloth, apparent possessor of the punk rock fountain of everlasting style and rage. The album follows Cat In The Hat (no relation), an undocumented refugee who is framed for a crime and requires the assistance of a ragtag gang of miscreants, academics, orchestra-caliber musicians, and radical insurgents—sometimes art does in fact imitate life!

The album’s release comes in tandem with the release of accompanying book One Smashed Window For Every Divided Soul, an illustrated combination tour journal and narrative exploration of Cat and his travails. The book acts as a companion piece to the album’s story, sifting through archival documents and fabulist accounts of the band’s East Coast tour of 2017.

Here it is at last! The long-rumored, sweat-soaked live album from the night Bill Davis (Dash Rip Rock) and Fred Le Blanc (Cowboy Mouth) dared Jello Biafra to join them during Jazzfest and sing all classic New Orleans soul, rhythm and blues, and (at Jello’s request) garage songs! Joining in were piano Wildman Pete “Wet Dawg” Gordon (Mojo Nixon), Pepper Keenan (Down, Corrosion of Conformity) and a wacky horn section from Egg Yolk Jubilee and Morning 40 Federation that even includes a sousaphone! You want loose? We got loose! You want crazy? That’s here, too. Walk on Jindal’s Splinters is one of the all-time great “you are there” high-energy live albums—audience participation galore, plenty of trademark Jello banter, and full-on soul / trash / frat / garage gumbo from eleven of New Orleans’ finest, just playing their asses off and having a good time doing it. The album also showcases a whole ’nother side of Jello Biafra: his deep, pre-punk roots known only to a handful of vinyl junkies and anyone lucky enough to catch his DJ gigs. For all those whose interest in Jello goes beyond the punk persona to Jello Biafra, the singer, this is for you. Maximum trash appeal! Southern roadhouse debauchery at its finest! Calls to mind those sing-along, clap-along frat-rock platters from The Premiers to The Kingsman to Geno Washington’s Hipsters, Flipsters… series, Swingin’ Medallions, or even Slade Alive! You can almost feel the grease and voodoo dripping from the walls!

What do you get when Jello Biafra & 3 of the Zen Guerillas attack 2 songs for a Reverend Horton Heat compilation? You get this aural ass-kicking of a 7-inch!

The A-side is their scathing take on the classic rockabilly tune, "Jezebel," while the B-side is their version of the Rev's awesome tune "Speed Demon!"


The cover art is hand-picked by Jello- and if you think the topless blonde with the dog is striking, wait 'til you see the other side.

Dead Ending is a no-frills, '80s-hardcore-influenced band featuring members of Rise Against, Alkaline Trio, Articles Of Faith and The Bomb. On tour in 2006, Bomb guitarist Jeff Dean met and befriended Vic Bondi, the frontman of legendary Chicago punk heroes Articles of Faith. They bonded over hyper-aggressive '80s bands and discussed the possibility of starting a group themselves. When he got home, Dean got busy and wrote some tunes, then recruited longtime friend and Alkaline Trio drummer Derek Grant to help him lay the tracks down. Bondi liked the songs and signed on. Joe Principe of Rise Against came aboard on bass soon after that, and boom! Dead Ending was born. Dead Ending will make their live debut at Punk Rock Bowling in Vegas this year and will do shows and small touring runs whenever their busy lives all align. They're also in the beginning stages of writing a full-length. First 500 copies on gold vinyl. Included digital download coupon.