Joe's Big Toe

I’ve always wanted to go to Warped Tour. All those amaz­ing bands for one day only really gets me excited, so when I read about a one day, multi-stage fest­ival called Slam Dunk I knew I had to go. Slam Dunk has been run­ning in Leeds, hold­ing club nights and cham­pi­on­ing unsigned bands. There two pre­vi­ous fest­ivals have been a suc­cess so it was good news when they announced that Slam Dunk fest­ival was guar­an­teed to be run­ning near you. For £25 a ticket you could see an array of …

“This Addic­tion” is the first album that Alkaline Trio have released since they par­ted ways with Epic Records in 2009. Now estab­lished on their own label; Heart and Skull, its clear the band have made a few changes to their sound as well…
Now before we go any fur­ther I have to explain that I approached the idea of review­ing this album the way a stray dog might approach someone offer­ing it food: I wasn’t sure if I could trust it. There was a time when I had plonked myself firmly onto …

Atom Wil­lard has left Social Dis­tor­tion, choos­ing to pri­or­it­ise his work with Angels & Air­waves. He has been replaced by Scott Reeder of Fu Man­chu
Frank Turner has pos­ted the video for Isa­bel, his latest single, and you can watch it here.
You can also check out the video for YouMeAtSix’s Under­dog on Pun­kNews, fol­low­ing this link.
If you want to down­load Street­light Manifesto’s Hell, then we’ve got a link for you. You can also down­load Me & Julio Down By The School­yard (a Paul Simon Cover), their first single from their …

Stray­light Run have announced that they are now on an “indef­in­ite hiatus”. How­ever, Shaun has quit the band for good.
Zoli Teglas (Ignite) is Pennywise’s new vocal­ist. Allegedly, it happened as a res­ult of a mis­di­alled tele­phone num­ber.
As part of the Olympic cel­eb­ra­tions in Van­couver, a pro­ject called “Live­City” was con­ceived, to bring live music to Van­couver for free. Alex­is­on­fire were play­ing one of these free con­certs, and unfor­tu­nately the crowd rushed the stage, and sev­eral people were hurt.
The first batch of bands con­firmed to play Down­load this year are: Rage Against The …

As part of a char­ity fun­draiser for Deftones bassist Chi Cheng (in hos­pital since last year, and still “minimally-conscious” fol­low­ing a coma, Greg Puci­ato of Dillinger Escape Plan took to the stage with Deftones to do the vocal part on “Pas­sen­ger” recor­ded by Tool’s Maynard James Keenan.
Punch­line are releas­ing a B-sides album, called Night Lights. It will be digital only. More info can be found here.
Cash Cash want you to have a part in your bed­room — but only a con­sen­sual one. Accord­ing to their MySpace blog, there were some …

In a follow-up from a pre­vi­ous story, Mae have found their van — empty. They had this to say:
Our van has been loc­ated. That’s the good news. The bad news is that over $100,000 in instru­ments and equip­ment is still gone. Thank you for all of your sup­port and dona­tions. If you would like to donate, you can do so at this link: http://bit.ly/maedonate
Alkaline Trio’s next album will be released by Epi­taph Records and their own label Heart & Skull.
Talk­ing to Spin­ner, Matt Skiba said:
This record is a rock record but …

Racket Magazine have put together a free down­load­able com­pil­a­tion, which you can grab here. It’s called “Killer Sharks”, and the album art­work is pretty cool. On it are: Kin­etic Ste­reokids, Loch Lomond, Eels, The Denoue­ment, Vagina Pan­ther, Owen, The Pass­ports, Entice, The Fas­cin­a­tion Move­ment, Elec­tric Owls, Old Wives Tale, The Neigh­bor­hood Bullys, Penny­wise, The Bronx, Nakatomi Plaza, Only For The Night, Friends of Friends, ArpLine, Jump Clubb, and Malkovich & Sum.
MxPx are releas­ing their new EP today. It’s called Left Coast Punk, and a lim­ited edi­tion will be avail­able on www.mxpx.com. …

Alkaline Trio left their label (Epic) before their con­tract fin­ished, and Matt Skiba’s spoken out about why in an inter­view with Bill­board:
“Every­one who signed us to Epic, all of the people we trus­ted there, were let go. And that’s not to say the people run­ning it now aren’t cool, we just don’t know them and we don’t like to work gen­er­ally with people we don’t know. We had a bunch of mater­ial and wanted to do a record sooner than later, so we called them and asked them if we …

With the Academy the fullest I’ve seen it in a long time, it would have been a shame if Alkaline Trio hadn’t lived up to expect­a­tions. Open­ing with ‘Back to Hell’, they didn’t dis­ap­point. Des­pite their rel­at­ively sub­dued stage pres­ence, they played a great set, with some­thing for every­one. The pit was jump­ing from the first chord, and didn’t stop until the end of the encore, except to clear a path for someone who fain­ted halfway through ‘This Could Be Love’. She was fine, and the show went on, leaving …