altpress interview

Before there was Amy Lee, Lzzy Hale, Taylor Momsen and Maria Brink, there was Joan Jett, Patti Smith, Poly Styrene and Kathleen Hanna. Generation after generation, these rock stars and others in their position have dreaded receiving what has become an inevitable label of “female-led,” “female-fronted,” “women in rock” or “female rock.” While all of these talented individuals...

Punk has a million precedents—musical, spiritual. The basic sound and attitude can be traced back to the wildest, most primitive rockabilly records of the ’50s and the most fuzzed-out garage bands of the ’60s, plus the racket the New York Dolls and Iggy and the Stooges raised in the early ’70s. You see it in 21-year-...

Since 1978, the Pretenders’ outspoken singer/songwriter/rhythm guitarist Chrissie Hynde and her band have brought sophisticated compositional smarts and instrumental chops to punk rock. They took the music to radio and MTV in the early ’80s, subversively selling it to people who thought they were just listening to exciting rock ’n’ roll. Hynde spoke exclusi...

When Travis Mills and Nick Gross were putting the final touches on their pop-punk project girlfriends’ debut this year, they realized it was missing something. It needed one more uptempo track. And they needed a girl’s name in the title, almost like Forever The Sickest Kids or other bands Mills’ grew up on. That conversa...

Four years on from releasing their seventh album, The Concrete Confessional, Hatebreed were supposed to be returning this year with their follow-up. That all changed when the coronavirus pandemic turned the world upside down.   They postponed their touring plans with Parkway Drive. They del...

The All-American Rejects have found themselves in a similar spot to where they were 15 years ago, minus the “camera phones” and hotel bed bugs.  As guitarist Nickolas Wheeler reflects on the group’s monumental Move Along era, he says it came during a “dark time” after the 2004 election. And as the group prep a return wi...