Be Well announce new record for Revelation (new song & exclusive splatter vinyl pre-order)
Be Well — the new band fronted by former Battery frontman and veteran punk producer Brian McTernan, alongside members of Darkest Hour, Fairweather, and Bane/Converge — released one of 2020’s best punk albums with their debut LP The Weight and the Cost on Equal Vision, and now they’ve signed to Revelation Records for a new six-song release, Hello Sun, due May 20. We’ve teamed with the band on a “white with cyan & mustard” splatter vinyl variant of the record, limited to just 300 copies. Pre-order yours now while they last. That’s a mock-up of the variant above.
Along with the announcement comes lead single/opening track “Treadless,” and Be Well sound even more fired-up on this track than they did on their great debut. It’s a melodic hardcore ripper with an added dose of gang vocal-infused grit, and like the first album, it finds Brian writing some of the most personal music of his career. “I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I ended up this late in life, without ever dealing with issues that have followed me since I was a kid,” he said. “This song is a reflection on how many things I never said and how different I want my life to be moving forward.” Listen and watch the Joseph Pattisall-directed video below.
Be Well have tons of tour dates coming up, including a run with Hot Water Music and Strike Anywhere (both bands Brian has produced, including Hot Water Music’s upcoming album), and that hits Brooklyn’s Elsewhere on March 24 and NJ’s Crossroads on March 25 & 26. They also open New Found Glory‘s Sticks and Stones 20th anniversary tour, including the show at NYC’s Terminal 5 on June 3.
On top of that, Be Well open the Buffalo date of Earth Crisis, Snapcase, and Strife‘s East Coast shows supporting The Return Of The California Takeover, and they have dates overseas with Hot Water Music, Boysetsfire, and Samiam. All dates are listed below.
Pick up a copy of our Be Well variant here.
Tracklist
1. Treadless
2. I Will Leave You With This
3. An Endless Loop
4. Hello Sun
5. Only One Wish
6. In The Shadow Of Who You Thought I Was
Be Well — 2022 Tour Dates
w/ Hot Water Music and Strike Anywhere
3/23 Boston, MA – The Sinclair
3/24 Brooklyn, NY – Elsewhere
3/25 Garwood, NJ – Crossroads
3/26 Garwood, NJ – Crossroads
3/27 Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts
w/ Earth Crisis, Snapcase, and Strife
5/13 Buffalo, NY – Town Ballroom
w/ New Found Glory and Four Year Strong
5/26 Franklin, TN – BreakFest at Liberty Hall
5/27 St. Louis, MO – Red Flag
5/28 Chicago, IL – The Riviera
5/29 Detroit, MI – Royal Oak Music Hall
5/31 Cincinnati, OH – Bogarts
6/1 Pittsburgh, PA – Roxian Theater
6/2 Albany, NY – Empire Live
6/3 New York, NY – Terminal 5
6/4 Worcester, MA – The Palladium
6/5 Atlantic City, NJ – AC Beer Fest
6/7 Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore
6/8 Myrtle Beach, SC – House Of Blues
6/10 Orlando, FL – House Of Blues
6/11 Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade
7/22 Cleveland, OH – House Of Blues
7/23 Milwaukee, WI – The Rave
7/24 Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue
7/26 Denver, CO – The Fillmore
7/27 Salt Lake City, UT – The Union Event Center
7/29 Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo
7/30 Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
8/1 Berkeley, CA – The UC Theater
8/2 San Diego, CA – The Observatory North Park
8/3 Las Vegas, NV – Brooklyn Bowl
8/4 Riverside, CA – Riverside Municipal Auditorium
8/5 Anaheim, CA – The House Of Blues
8/6 Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theater
8/8 Dallas, TX – House Of Blues
8/9 Austin, TX – Emo’s
w/BoySetsFire, Hot Water Music, and Samiam
10/4 London, England – Electric Ballroom
10/5 Antwerp, Belgium – Zappa
10/6 Amsterdam, NL – Melkweg
10/7 Dortmund, Germany – Warsteiner Music Hall
10/8 Hannover, Germany – Swiss Life Music Hall
10/9 Berlin, Germany – Columbiahalle
10/10 Nuremburg, Germany – Lowensaal
10/11 Munich, Germany – Tonhalle
10/12 Vienna, Austria – Gasometer
10/13 Stuttgart, Germany – LKA-Longhorn
10/14 Wiesbaden, Germany – Schlachthof
10/15 Wiesbaden, Germany – Schlachthof
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18 Essential Early 2000s Melodic Punk & Hardcore Albums
Kid Dynamite – Shorter, Faster, Louder (2000)
Alkaline Trio – Maybe I’ll Catch Fire (2000)
Rancid – Rancid (2000)
AFI – The Art of Drowning (2000)
Black Sails is usually the AFI album that's considered "the one that's cool to like," and Sing the Sorrow is usually the one that's considered the biggest musical and cultural achievement. Coming right in between them, The Art of Drowning is loved by longtime fans but might get overlooked by casual listeners or newcomers for not having much of a defining narrative beyond "the one after Black Sails" or "the one with 'The Days of the Phoenix.'" "Days of the Phoenix" is a milestone in AFI's career; it's the song that most predicted the sound of Sing the Sorrow, helped gain the band major label interest, and it's the one Nitro Records era song you're guaranteed to hear at an AFI show today. No matter how many times I hear that song, it never ceases to feel like the first time. It's a true classic, but it shouldn't overshadow the rest of The Art of Drowning, which is a much clearer progression from Black Sails than it sometimes gets credit for being.
"Days of the Phoenix" is also the one song on The Art of Drowning where AFI realize that if they settle into a mid-tempo alternative rock pace, they sound like they could be the biggest band in the world (and they'd do this for most of their career afterwards), but it's far from the only song on the album with masterful songwriting. Much more so than on Black Sails, Davey shows off his singing voice on The Art of Drowning, and the album’s got hooks for days -- not just from Davey but also from all the gang vocals and group whoa-ohs that are just about as perfect here as they would be on Sing the Sorrow. It'd probably be easier to list the songs that don't have cathartic choruses, but here are some of the ones that very much do: "Sacrifice Theory," "The Nephilim," "A Story At Three," "Catch A Hot One," "Wester." All of those are played at Misfits speed, but they come with blissful melodicism that proved AFI were just too good to remain in the punk underground for much longer. It's pop and punk without being "pop punk" -- it's still too dark and heavy for that -- and its combination of darkness, intensity, and remarkable melodies still feels innovative twenty years later. [Read more in our AFI album guide.]
The Movielife – This Time Next Year (2000)
Propagandhi – Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes (2001)
Anti-Flag – Underground Network (2001)
The Bouncing Souls – How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2001)
Strike Anywhere – Change Is A Sound (2001)
The Lawrence Arms – Apathy and Exhaustion (2002)
Against Me! – Reinventing Axl Rose (2002)
Dillinger Four – Situationist Comedy (2002)
Hot Water Music – Caution (2002)
Rise Against – Revolutions Per Minute (2003)
The Distillers – Coral Fang (2003)
Bad Religion – The Empire Strikes First (2004)
Bad Religion never really went anywhere so don't call it a comeback, but after two less-well-received major label albums without original guitarist/songwriter Brett Gurewitz, Brett rejoined the band in 2001, the band re-signed to his label Epitaph Records, they welcomed the insanely hard-hitting new drummer Brooks Wackerman (previously of Suicidal Tendencies, currently of Avenged Sevenfold, among many other projects), and they released the excellent 2002 album The Process of Belief. It rivals their classic late '80s/early '90s run and it's home to songs that are still live staples and fan favorites today. It can't be easy to follow up a big comeback like The Process of Belief, but Bad Religion did it by getting harder and faster than ever on The Empire Strikes First. With the metal chops of Brooks Wackerman behind the kit, Bad Religion could now write menacing songs like "Sinister Rouge," which seems to answer the question: "what if Slayer were a pop punk band?"
Pop punk as we know it wouldn't exist without Bad Religion, whose 1988 LP Suffer was one of the '80s punk albums that shaped the '90s pop punk boom, and when Green Day and The Offspring were bringing punk to the masses with 1994's Dookie and Smash, Bad Religion were right there with 'em with their popular 1994 major label debut Stranger than Fiction. But a decade later, mainstream pop punk was very bubblegummy and Bad Religion went in a more aggressive direction, all while retaining the melodies, harmonies, and whoah-ohs that made people fall in love with Suffer. Like The Process of Belief, The Empire Strikes First is home to some of the band's most classic songs, and that's no small feat for an album released by a punk band who were then 24 years into their career (now 40). Coming at the height of George W. Bush backlash and the Iraq War, The Empire Strikes First tackled the capitalist greed that accompanies war ("Let Them Eat War"), religious conservatives ("God's Love"), California wildfires ("Los Angeles Is Burning"), and other then- (and now-) relevant topics that made The Empire Strikes First rank among the most incisive Bush-era protest music. It sounds lyrically urgent and musically thrilling in the Trump era too, and here's to hoping one day it only sounds the latter.