Recently, I’ve written about music and the fetishization of Asian women, about the Dead Kennedys’ debut album Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, and about some of my favorite music from 1995, but it’s been a few months since I’ve written about some of the music I’m currently enjoying. With that in mind, I want to take a moment and highlight some of the artists and songs that areon heavy rotation during my walks or in the car. I can’t cover everything that has been rotating on my playlist from Die Spitz and Kneecap to The Callous Daoboys and Lambarini Girls; instead, I want to point out some songs that really, at this moment, resonate with me, whether that be from a lyrical or a musical perspective.

Every Time I Die “Planet Shit”

Sadly, I came around to Every Time I Die right around the time they disbanded. Listened to “The New Black” and “Ebolorama,” the latter of which has an opening riff that always worms its way into my head, but I never really followed them much. However, a few years back I made my way back to them as they released their final album, Radical. I’m not sure how I meandered my way back to Every Time I Die, but I’m glad I did because going back and listening to New Junk Aesthetic and The Big Dirty makes me realize their brutality, musicality, and insight. Radical came out in 2021, and from the opening feedback and Keith Buckley’s scream to “spare only the ones I love” on “Dark Distance” to the breakneck speed of “A Colossal Wreck,” I was hooked.

From the first time I heard Radical, the album’s third track, “Planet Shit,” stood out. It’s a song that speaks to the moment, and specifically calling out us, as listeners, to choose sides in this historical moment. In many ways, it echoes Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” in the way that it attacks police brutality against African Americans as Keith Buckley sings, “There’s no law when the outlaw wears a badge,” and it calls out the ways that the history of the United States, in its denial of rights to everyone, has led us to this moment. Buckley opens by proclaiming, “No future with a racist past/Oh, but we can’t acknowledge that/So we burn a cross and pray to a flag.” Ultimately, “Planet Shit” is a punk rock/metal anthem that asks us what side we’ll be on in this historical moment.

Better Lovers “Drowning in a Burning World”

While I wasn’t around for Every Time I Die’s heyday, I am around from what arose from its ashes, the supergroup Better Lovers. The band consists of former Every Time I Die members Jordan Buckley, Clayton Holyoak, and Stephen Micciche, former Fit For an Autopsy guitarist Will Putney, and former Dillinger Escape Plan singer Greg Puciato, who left the band at the end of February. Someone, a couple of years ago, told me about Better Lovers, but I didn’t really listen to them at that point. Last year, though, I saw that they were touring and coming close by, so I decided to go to the show because I needed a good metal show for my birthday. In the lead up to the show, I listened to them, trying to familiarize myself with their music. When I saw them live, I totally immersed myself because they put on one of the best club shows I’ve seen in a long time.

I could point to multiple songs off of the band’s 2024 debut album Highly Irresponsible that stand out to me, from “A White Horse Covered in Blood” to “Everything Was Put Here for Me,” but the song that I keep coming back to is “Drowning in a Burning World.” Musically, and for obvious reasons, the song carries on and expands the sounds of Every Time I Die and Dillinger Escape Plan, and Puciato’s machine gun verses and drawn out choruses, create a shifting soundscape that culminates with an epic breakdown near the end of the song. Lyrically, the song deals with similar themes as “Colossal Wreck,” the destruction of the environment and the ways that those in power dangle success in front of us without actually giving anyone a chance to succeed. The chorus drives all of this home when Puciato screams,

Screaming in the loudest room
Mother Earth, a barren womb
Your safe place becomes a tomb
We’re all pigs before the pearls
Drowning in a burning world
Came for nothing

Johnny Booth “Collapse in the Key of Fireworks”

A couple of years ago, my son and I went to see He Is Legend for the second time in a year. At this concert, Johnny Booth opened for them. I hadn’t heard of the band, so I wasn’t even remotely familiar with their music. At the concert, they tore up the stage, Andrew Herman’s stage presence blew me away. I didn’t pick anything up at the show, and I’d put their stuff on occasionally, never really digging to deep. Fast forward to the Better Lovers show, and who is one of the opening acts? Johnny Booth! I knew that the show would be phenomenal, and I had listened to some of their stuff, but I didn’t know it well. This time, though, since I had some money, I picked up their 2023 album Moments Elsewhere. When I put the album on my turntable later that week, as I sat down to do some work, I was blown away.

Johnny Booth hit me in the gut. They’re thick and brutal yet melodic and unexpected, not quite to the shifts found in the Callous Daoboys, but in a manner that keeps you moving between moods over the course of a three to four minute song. As the record played on my turntable, I let the music move in the background, but when I heard the end sludge of “Collapse in the Key of Fireworks,” I stopped working and bobbed my head. It’s so heavy it hurts. It was this song, specifically the musicality, that sucked me into Johnny Booth. The end comes as the lingering music and vocals of the last chorus swell over the speakers, leading to the chug of the breakdown. It’s a moment that causes you to stop and pay attention.

There’s a lot more music I could write about, but I’ll leave it there for now. In a future post, I may write about Converge’s new album Love is Not Enough, the Callous Daoboys, or Die Spitz. Until then, though, what is some the music that you’ve been listening to lately? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.bsky.social‬.