New York, From A Distance
Plus, "Que Bello!" is out and Lamniformes plays TONIGHT
It has been a year and a half, roughly, since I moved back to Chicago. It is a good life. I’m getting married. I share my office with two cats, Ozzy & Dio, and I share the living room couch with ~*My Fiancée’s*~ dog. I work jobs that I enjoy and that leave me with the spare time to play in cool bands and write about music on the side. I have a good social life. I’m friends with my neighbors. Rent is reasonable. It gets cold, sure, but the summers are a blast. Wouldn’t trade Chicago for the world. All that said, god do I wish I were in New York City right now.
I have watched New York City flourish at a distance. In my first month in Chicago I watched the New York Liberty win a thrilling five game series against the Minnesota Lynx in the WNBA Finals. Almost exactly a year later I watched the city elect Zohran Mamdani. Now the Knicks stand at the doorstep of their first championship in 53 years and here I am in Humboldt Park, subsisting vicarious on footage of the streets and breathless texts from friends. Heck, Saint Vitus is apparently coming back too? What am I doing here??
Some readers might have the opposite inclination. Maybe you’ve watched Knicks fans acting like buffoons, starting fights, yelling loudly on the internet. Any reasonable person would find the week long argument about who qualifies as a “real New Yorker” inane. You’re sick of the finance guys. You’re sick of “celebrity row”. You’re sick of the daddy’s money real estate moguls that rule the world. You’re still mad about the whole Geese thing. Whatever the reason, New York has no place in your heart. Though I disagree, I get it. There is much about the city that is revolting and yes it is home to some of the most evil scumbags on Earth. Perhaps the only useful metric to gauge the realness of any given New Yorker is the specificity of their complaints about the city. I have quite a few complaints myself. There is a reason I no longer live in Brooklyn. HOWEVER (Stephan A Smith Voice)….
I cannot help but love New York City. I cannot help that I was born there and grew up there, but I would not change those facts either. Underneath all of the myths and media, beyond the projections the rest of the world casts in its direction, New York City is just a place where people live. Some of those people are my friends and family. Many more of them I regard with friendly sympathy. You don’t go through a few history-scale disasters without building up a sense of camaraderie, even unspoken or unreciprocated. I want to be in New York City so I can see that multitude erupt with joy. I’m not even a Knicks fan, having adopted the Bulls along with the city of Chicago. But Knicks fans are my people, and I want my people to be happy.
Luckily I have had no problem feeling the joy at a distance. The magic of the Knicks has turned our whole apartment building into fans by proxy, though ~*My Fiancée*~ maintains a covert rooting interest in Wemby & The Spurs. I like said at the top, there is plenty to love about living in Chicago. In fact, let me tell you a little about one of those cool bands I mentioned in the first paragraph below in The Promo Zone.
# # # # # The Promo Zone # # # # #
Today is the today. “Que Bello!”, the new double album from Bellows, is available in vinyl, CD, and digital formats. You purchase any and all of those versions of the record on Bandcamp. Or, if you must, you can stream the album on the streaming platform of your choice. This is our first release on Bloody Knuckles, and boy did they come through. This packing looks gorgeous, and for once we had vinyl ready BEFORE we start our tour. Grab a copy now ahead of the merch lines.
Tonight is the night. After, uh, nearly a decade in hibernation the Lamniformes live band returns to Chicago at Lowdown alongside Empty Heaven & Sprite. Doors open at 6:30 PM. Where are those door you may ask? DM me to find out. If you think I’m being overly cautious you might not remember 2016 the way I do! The band sound killer, the vibes will be immaculate, and we’ll have merch for sale!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Listen to this year’s diary on Apple Music.
“Sole Voyage” by Wildhunt (Aletheia, 2026)
A warning up front: it’s all heavy stuff this week. Sorry, or you’re welcome. If you came looking for the Latin jazz plug this week, the closest I have for you is this Austrian metal band’s unexpected, but greatly appreciated, shift into Santana-mode four and a half minutes into this 11 minute big boy. The rest of the track is classic Central European speed metal performed with prog rock ambition. It rules that people are still making albums like this in 2026. If you dug that Exxül record from earlier this year you should check this out too. Don’t throw me in horny jail, I think this album art is exquisite. Great color scheme.
“Closer To The Unknown” by Textures (Genotype, 2026)
This, on the other hand, is the exact kind of metal tune you’d expect to be made in 2026, a year where Nine Inch Nails and Meshuggah could easily be classified as classic rock. I was vaguely aware of Textures among the glut of early djent code-crackers, but without my realizing they’d disappeared for years. This year they returned, and you can tell that their sensibilities are of an older vintage than most modern bands in this field. The fundamental motifs they are toying with are pretty simple and therefore pretty catchy, which to me suggests they aren’t slapping nonsense together in a DAW. Plus, there’s a real deal guitar solo!
“Cyanotype” by Colonial Wound (Easy Laugh, 2022)
The mathcore resurgence has lasted long enough to see an entire Dillinger Escape Plan hiatus-nostalgia reunion-hiatus cycle, plus a Botch reunion tour and a Burnt By The Sun comeback. It’s enough to make you wonder whether the era where mathcore wasn’t popping was the exception to the rule. Love the arpeggiated melodic part at the end of the track. One of the Kylesa drummers played on this, neat!
“Kurogane” by Wombscape (Forced Labour Songs, 2022)
More Botch-likes, but this time from Japan. Blistering fast opening and then a maze of dotted quarter note mosh riffs to close us out. Complicated, but simple. Anytime you see me post a link to a song this short, rest assured that I am recommending the whole album.
“Garland” by MØL (Dreamcrush, 2026)
MØL’s debut album remains one of the better post-Sunbather attempts to ride the Deafheaven tsunami into metal glory. The Danes have had a spotty run of things since, but this is a jam! Love the sleigh bells in the softer verses, the chorus grooves hard, and when they start doing Nobuo Uematsu arpeggios over strobing double bass drums I am powerless to resist head-banging.