Red City Radio ask "Why is the world on fire?" on new anthemic punk song "100,000 Candles"
As mentioned, Red City Radio (who formed in Oklahoma City but whose members are now spread across the US and Canada) will release their new album Paradise on December 4 via Pure Noise, their first for the label (pre-order). “We took the album title from the song of the same name,” said vocalist/guitarist Garrett Dale, “which is about finding your own paradise – even if that’s just a hard journey you’re going to take. That’s what paradise means to me – a paradise of the mind, finding truth and peace and love through your honest, horrible realities. It’s all how you look at it, all perception. Paradise can even be a prison if you look at it that way.”
“It’s this internal state that you find within yourself,” guitarist Ryan Donovan adds, “within your own journey, within your own reconciliations with your own demons, or even just finding peace inside in whatever it is that you love in whatever capacity. People find paradise in just sitting at home on the couch with their dog or cat, people find paradise writing music, people find paradise painting or reading – it’s all kind of conceptual and internalized.”
Having recently released three songs from the album, we’re now premiering a fourth, “100,000 Candles.” Red City Radio have been a band for over a decade at this point, but if you’re new to them, they make anthemic, gravelly-voiced punk in the spirit of Hot Water Music and The Lawrence Arms, and this new song finds them doing what they do best. It’s a ripper, and it’s so full of hooks that you’ll be humming along before the first listen even ends. Like the album title, it strikes a balance between struggle and positivity. “The world is a scary and unstable place, right now. It’s literally burning but, fire isn’t simply a destructive force. Fire can also be cleansing,” drummer Dallas Tidwell tells us.
“The image of the burning forrest as candles turns something destructive into an image we associate with hope,” he continues. “It becomes a chance that isn’t too late to change our fate, to choose a new path. To learn from those mistakes we have to ask ourselves: How did we get here? Why is the world on fire?”
Listen and watch the lyric video:
And stream the three previous singles here:
Tracklist
1. Where Does The Time Go?
2. Baby Of The Year
3. Did You Know?
4. Love A Liar
5. Young, Beautiful & Broke
6. 100,000 Candles
7. Paradise
8. Edmond Girls
9. Doin’ It For Love
10. Apocalypse, Please!
11. Fremont Casino
12. Gutterland
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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.