Summer Camp ’96 with The Tale Untold
HYPOCRISY
Hypocrisy has over 30-year history with 12 albums, hundreds of gigs all over the world, and thousands of fans. This influential Swedish death metal band started from the will of one person, and this person’s name was (and is) Peter Tägtgren (Hypocrisy, The Abyss, PAIN, ex-Lindemann). Having made the first demos all by himself, after getting an offer from Nuclear Blast, he invited musicians to form an actual band. Since then, Hypocrisy gained success with their records and rocking live performances and evolved musically and conceptually. Heavy and rich sound with catchy melodic riffs, crushing drum fills, obscure lyrics and versatile vocal parts became a signature style of the band. Its discography from debut ‘Penetralia’ to the last for the moment ‘Worship’, through such legendary albums as ‘The Fourth Dimension’, ‘Abducted’, and ‘Virus’, is indeed a thrilling metal journey. A journey that continues. Today, apart from Peter, the band consists of Mikael Hedlund (bass), who joined Hypocrisy back in 1991, guitarist Tomas Eloffson is a session member since 2013. Henrik Axelsson (drums) joined the band as a session member in 2022. Don’t let the name ‘Hypocrisy’ trick you: Peter Tägtgren stays true to himself, to the music and the fans, never stops creating, and never settles for less than perfect.
TJS
Emerging in 2024 from Bellevue Nebraska , United States, TJS blends rock, indie rock, alternative rock, dance pop, synth pop, indie pop, pop and singer songwriter into a genre-defying sound. TJS is a Boston-based artist from Nebraska who blends synth pop energy with the emotion of folk pop. His sound combines electronic textures with an intimate, storytelling approach that captures both nostalgia and modern life. A student at Berklee College of Music, TJS brings a thoughtful sense of musicianship and sincerity to his performances, creating music that resonates with authenticity and heart.
Secret Formula
Cornfields aren’t the only things in Nebraska… Based in Omaha, Secret Formula is a 4-Piece Progressive Groove Rock band that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic. From playing shows in bars and clubs, to their first theatre performance within a year of gigging, they have quickly become a staple in their local scene. With a formula of storytelling lyrics and free-flowing riffs and grooves, the band’s eclectic style and ever-expanding catalog of songs keeps audiences on their toes. After quickly finding their niche, Secret Formula has continued to connect with fans through music and blissful moments in time one can only experience by SEEKING FORM.
Giovannie and the Hired Guns
Since their inception in 2015, Giovannie and The Hired Guns have made a blockbuster career out of wildly defying expectations. With a visceral sound that merges alt-metal, Red Dirt country, Latin pop, Americana, and much more, the Stephenville, Texas-based five piece have ascended from playing local honky-tonks to taking the stage at major festivals and arenas across the country, drawing an ardent crowd ranging from cowboys to metalheads to skate punks. As they continue their colossal rise—a journey that’s included scoring a No. 1 radio hit with their smash single “Ramon Ayala” and winning the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Award for Best New Artist in Alternative & Rock—Giovannie and The Hired Guns now return with their new album Quitter: a body of work that pushes the boundaries with even more intensity, matching its explosive riVs and unforgettable hooks with the band’s most brutally honest songwriting to date. Produced by Johnny K (Megadeth, Sevendust, Plain White T’s), Quitter marks the fourth full length from Giovannie and The Hired Guns (frontman Giovannie Yanez, guitarists Carlos Villa and Jerrod Flusche, bassist/tuba player Alex Trejo, and drummer/pianist Milton Toles) and second LP since signing with Warner Music Nashville through a first-of-its-kind partnership with Warner Music Latina. While the band have always brought a powerful emotionality to their lyrics, the album embodies an unfiltered urgency that has much to do with Yanez’s processing a number of life-altering troubles in real-time, including the death of a close friend and his own relapse into addiction. The follow-up to 2022’s Tejano Punk Boyz, Quitter finds Giovannie and The Hired Guns doubling down on the freewheeling attitude they first embraced in their earliest days as a band, back when Yanez was working the counter at a nearby pawnshop. “From the beginning I told the guys not to worry about sounding too rock or too country on this record,” Yanez recalls. “We just went in there and had fun and didn’t let anything hold us back, and because of that the album shows the full range of what we can do as a band.” Immediately delivering on that promise, Quitter opens on the galvanizing rhythms and throat-shredding vocals of “Cheap Tequila”: a ferocious yet fun-loving track that speaks an unvarnished truth about their shared life experience. “I wrote that song thinking about us in our younger days, when we were all broke and working these mid-paying jobs,” says Yanez. Looking back on the making of Giovannie and The Hired Guns’ most personal album yet, Yanez reveals that Quitter helped to clarify his overall mission and vision for the band. “This record made me want to keep putting out songs that are fun and serious at the same time,” he says. “I want to show everyone that it’s okay to feel sad and out of place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time—it’s all a part of being human. We just want to be real with our fans and let them know we’re all diVerent and a little oV-the-wall too. And when they come out to the shows, I try to make them feel like they’re just as much a part of the band as my guys are. We’re all connected, and without them we’d never be where we are now.”
Jakob Nowell + Codefendants
The new project of Sublime frontman Bradley Nowell’s only son Jakob Nowell, Jakobs Castle is the sound of two worlds colliding in perfect union – the insouciant sounds of California’s past with the fresh mystery of internet underground culture. Recording under Epitaph Records, Jakobs Castle is old meets new. Beach meets the internet. 90’s Underground does Hyperpop. Imagine laying face up on the beach as waves of retro synth melodies wash over you like static, your body slowly dried by the heat of the emerging sun and skank guitars. It’s both pretty and gritty. Active since 2022, Jakobs Castle has toured the country with emerging young artists like Sitting on Stacy, legacy musicians Jason Devore and Slightly Stoopid, as well as G. Love & Special Sauce, Common Kings and Long Beach Allstars. Standout tracks from ENTER: THE CASTLE include “Time Traveler” and “Catch Me”. With the burden of purpose and expectation held proudly, Jakobs Castle and its enigmatic frontman seek to break all convention and usher in a new era of California music.
SLEEZ KANGS
Squid Pisser
SQUID PISSER eviscerates the ego and and all things serene with their own vibrant form of vicious and mucky hardcore. Slamming down dolphin corpses at breakneck speeds, the duo, which is comprised of Tommy Meehan on guitar (Deaf Club, Cancer Christ, Sweatband Records, Cartoon Network) and Seth Carolina (Starcrawler), have constructed a fresh and mucousy new alien craft powered by tightly controlled noise-guitar, savage primal drum work, and gooped up vocal deliveries that might sound like a gaggle of frogs thrown into a garbage disposal (although the Squid boys wouldn’t recommend doing this). Conceptualized and formed in 2022, the band decided to fully utilize planet Earth’s viral slumber in order to gestate, write, and record 2 full length albums worth of material. Throughout the year, SQUID PISSER played a handful of shows in California and Nevada as a 2 piece as they continued the quest for further personnel and collaborators. Tommy Meehan’s tightly controlled noise-onslaught of rainbow vomit (spat out of a guitar amp via manic pedalboard wizardry and sophisticated finger work) paired with the utterly brutal and savage drumming of Seth Carolina, merge to create a collection of tracks that have been forged in a totally fucked and sonically chaotic storm of pus and goo.
Punk Rock BBQ
Radolescents – Original members of legendary OC punk band the Adolescents play the iconic Blue Album — live, fast, and hard! 🦠https://www.facebook.com/RADOLESCENTSBAND/ Mean Jeans – Mean Jeans is a high-energy, party-punk trio originally formed in Portland, Oregon in 2006. Known for their Ramones-inspired melodies, raucous live shows, and irreverent humor. https://meanjeans.bandcamp.com/ Toys That Kill – Toys That Kill is a celebrated San Pedro, California punk rock band formed in 1999 by Todd Congelliere and Sean Cole following the disbanding of their seminal hardcore outfit, F.Y.P https://www.instagram.com/toysthatkill/ Greg Wheeler & the Poly Mall Cops – Manic garage punk slime from Des Noise, IA https://polymallcops.bandcamp.com/ The Shidiots – 90’s Fat Wreck punk rock from Omaha https://theshidiots.bandcamp.com/ Hookshot – skate punk from Iowa https://www.facebook.com/hookshotiowa/ Heatwaves – Punk Rock band from Omaha, Nebraska/ Council Bluffs, Iowa https://heatwavesne.bandcamp.com/ Astro Brat – two-piece “dance punk” band based out of Des Moines, Iowa https://www.instagram.com/astrobratband/ The Sweaty Bettys – Omaha / Lincoln punk band https://www.instagram.com/thesweatybettys402 So It Goes – Omaha punk rock band https://www.instagram.com/so_it_goes_omaha/
El Ten Eleven
We like to believe our lives can be shaped into stories—clean arcs, legible meaning—but life refuses the outline. Instead, it moves bluntly and without apology, indifferent to our sense of order. Events pile up without resolution, momentum divorced from direction, motion confused for progress. Sometimes the only refuge left is the nowhere of our own minds. El Ten Eleven’s Nowhere Faster, the duo’s 16th release, was forged within that unease. Across eight tracks, it considers not just nothingness but velocity—the strange urgency that propels us forward even when the destination remains unclear. We are committed to acceleration, convinced speed itself might save us. The 33-minute album slows just long enough to pose the harder questions: what are we running from, and what do we think we can outrun? That tension appears even in the album’s artwork, once again created with longtime collaborator Rob Fleming. It depicts a classic liminal space: familiar, anonymous, quietly unsettling. A stained glass-colored building and a streetlamp blur at the edges, suggesting motion that feels less like escape than enclosure—the kind that traps rather than transports. Nowhere Faster emerged from Kristian Dunn and Tim Fogarty’s longest break from touring and recording in their 23 years together, though “break” is something of a misnomer. Dunn’s famously restless creative pace never slowed. Instead, he began writing for not one but two drummers, handing Fogarty one of the most demanding challenges of his career. The record also marks a first for the band, weaving real strings and piano throughout, deepening the palette of what is already one of their most layered works. The album’s titles and sounds draw from moments scattered across the band’s 23-year history. Opener “Uncanny Valley Girl” marks the return of long-retired effects like the delay pedal, stacking basslines into a dense, enveloping wall. It’s a clear-eyed take on AI-era paranoia, anchored by Fogarty’s steady rhythm—snare taut, cymbals gently alive—giving the sci-fi unease something solid to lean on. “Bjork’s Alarm Clock,” meanwhile, takes its title from an insult hurled at the band by a guitarist of a punk band on their first tour; you can almost hear Dunn and Fogarty’s quiet laughter beneath the buoyant bass and bow-scratched strings. Still, Nowhere Faster is not a retreat into nostalgia. El Ten Eleven remains invested in risk and reinvention. The record continues to center Fogarty’s propulsive drumming and Dunn’s bass-driven experimentation: the first four tracks (“side A”) feature electric bass, while the latter half (“side B”) shifts to acoustic bass processed through pedals, subtly altering the album’s emotional weight. “Last Night In The Kitchen” reaches for the slick, sleazy bombast of classic Bond themes, opening new corridors for Dunn’s ever-expanding musical ambitions. Ultimately, Nowhere Faster is an album about reckoning—about time, endurance, and the uncertainty of how long a band, or a life, can last. We are all fumbling toward finitude. The question is not whether we’ll arrive, but what we want to hear on the way there. What will we dance to as the ground begins to shift beneath us? If nothing else, it may sound something like Nowhere Faster.