Trauma Ray - Carnival (2026)

In 2024, my brother pointed me to an album by shoegaze revival band Trauma Ray. Shortly after his suggestion, guitarist Jonathan Perez was on Jeremy Bohm’s First Ever Podcast and I knew I had to move Chameleon to the top of my pile. From the first track, I knew this band was special. This is a neo-gaze band with actual teeth, reminiscent of the crunchier parts of Smashing Pumpkins. I was eager to see where they would go next. Carnival dropped at the end of February and immediately entered into heavy rotation.
The album opens with “Hannibal", a song that draws you in with an Alice In Chains sounding guitar tone. A home cooked meal for the ears, a warm sonic blanket. Then lead singer Uriel Avila’s voice comes sliding across the distortion. This is not a band in the mood to make a museum piece. By the time the album winds its way to Funhouse, their is a sorrowful menace to the songs. Something like the darkness that elevated Pornography-era Cure into legend. There are hints of Type O negative and other goth rock legends as the songs build, but this is a distinctly unique creation. It feels like this is a band on the edge of becoming something and I only hope I get to see them while they still play small rooms.

Dead Pioneers - Po$t American (2025)

In middle school, my best friend introduced me to a show on the local college station called “Top 40 Deprogramming”. Coupled with the Repo man soundtrack, I found the musical expression for my political outrage. Soon I was ordering Social Distortion cassettes from Columbia Records and coming home from field trips to NYC with Dead Kennedy albums. Baptized in The Clash, Black Flag and U2 (yes, War was definitely a punk rock album), I will always get excited when I find a band that makes politically angry music.

Dead Pioneers is the mid life crisis project of native activist Gregg Deal. What began as a quest for music to accompany his visual art, the first Dead Pioneers album gave birth to one of the best re-imaginings of Dead Kennedy’s Plastic Surgery-era punk. Mixing Deal’s furious spoken and sung lyrics with a tight, three-cords and rage band, Dead Pioneers offer up challenging political takes that demand a mosh pit and a raised fist. I love that I can enjoy the music, soak in the rage of the lyrics and chuckle at the stinging retributions of whiteness. Songs like “The Caucasity” are a perfect encapsulation. One of Deal’s experiences starts as a laugh line, grows into a deep message that pushes the listener to think long after the last note and doesn’t forget that good music needs to make you dance. As a white man who is frequently called out by Deal, this is not an easy listen. I recognize places in my own life where I have succumbed to the myopic views enabled by my skin color, but this isn’t just a kick in the teeth. The album didn’t leave me feeling beaten up, if left me feeling empowered to make changes and confront power. Good punk calls us to change the world, helps us channel our rage into a constructive project. Add Deal to the cannon with Biafra, Strummer, and de la Rocha.

Downard - Downard(2) (2025)

Every once in a while, you hear a song that hammers you so hard that you can’t forget where you were and what you were doing when it first played. I remember listening to a Trauma Ray and Downward split from 2023 when Downward’s song “The Waltz” came up. I was transfixed and immediately began looking for more of the band’s music. Luckily, when I found the split, it was 2 years old and Downward had just released their second album. It quickly became one of my most played albums of the last year.
Over the last couple of years, a music style that is near and dear to the me who spent the early 90’s driving around in a battered old Saab with the radio turned up past its design capabilities, started going through a renaissance. Originally shoegaze was popularized by Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Kitchens of Distinction. On their first album, Downward’s melodically obscure lyrics and soaring guitar noise clearly pulled from shoegaze and its many permutations. Seven years later, for the second album, they began pushing the genre box that tried to contain them.
Downward(2) definitely trips my nostalgia for late 80’s and early 90’s music. The distorted wall of guitar noise soundscape and the slowed down drumming wander in an out of genres like grunge, goth and punk. Lead singer Drew Richardson’s almost mumbled vocals remind me of the first time I heard REM’s Murmur. My stepbrother had passed that gem onto me because his mother’s boyfriend had given it to him and he found it tedious and illogical. Another one of those transfixing music moments, I still remember looking at the underside of the upper bunk bed while Micheal Stipe and company blew my mind.

But nostalgia is just a key to unlock the door to this beautiful piece of art. This is more than zoomergrunge or zoomergaze as the critics deride it. The music accomplishes a unique trick of being both tight and leaving space, guitar noise surfaces and plunges, pulls together a tapestry and then blows it apart. And in the spaces opened up, Richardson swoops in with a joyful melancholy that pulls me into the speakers. Toward’s the end of the album they offer up a version of “The Waltz” that reminds me of that first brilliant moment and subtly improves on the original version. In today’s age of curated playlists, algorithmic suggestions from streaming services, it’s always amazing to stumble across an album that urges you to listen to it repeatedly in the order chosen by the band.

Roman Candle - Can We Watch Something Happy? (EP)

Four-piece screamo band Roman Candle released an amazing EP back in 2022 and I’ve been eagerly waiting for more music. Over the years the band got bogged down in drama and Discount Fireworks (EP-2022) faded from memory. With a new bassist on board, the band ended 2025 with a tremendous 3 song EP and now they are starting 2026 with another one. Lead vocalist Piper Ferrari offers up brilliantly written songs that perfectly balance screaming and spoken word — lines that 15-year-old me scrawled across notebooks and adult me can’t stop screaming along with. Her band mates create a furiously tight, drum driven, crunchy breakdown hardcore that makes every listen a mosh pit. Hoping for a full album soon.