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Wednesday, July 29
— Sleepytime Gorilla Museum w/ Wendy Eisenberg. $25-$30. 7 p.m. (doors). 8 p.m. (show). The Earl
— The Edgewood Ensemble (feat. John Arthur Brown – drums, Ben Davis – saxophone, Roger Ruzow – trumpet and Bill Pritchard – bass). $12. 7:30 p.m. Commune
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On Friday, June 24, Void Manes, the Melvins, and Tomahawk played to a sold-out Buckhead Theatre. The night, it seems, was ordained by the gods of volume. Buckhead Theatre has a way of underscoring booming loud bands; its cavernous room naturally amplifies low end, allowing every kick drum, bass note, and down-tuned guitar chord to reach full bloom without dissolving into mud. Within seconds of the Melvins taking the stage, it was clear that this was an ideal setting for an evening built on bombastic riffs and fearless experimentation.
Void Manes took the stage shortly after the doors opened at 6:30 p.m., obscured behind a maze of modular synths that glowed like a distant galaxy suspended in a balance of total darkness on the stage, and a dizzying show of lights from above. The one-man electronic project conjured a world of jagged rhythms, sub-bass swells, and truncated melodies that came into view just long enough to reveal themselves before getting swallowed up by waves of dissonance and a mechanical pulse. A complex blend of electronic noise filled the room with an intensity that pulled the growing crowd toward the stage. With every passing moment, Void Mane’s bold motions and abstract nuances established a deep emotional sonic baseline and a palate cleanser for the onslaught of heavy guitar riffage that was soon to come.
More than four decades into their career, the Melvins persist as a stylishly heavy and uncompromising institution. On stage, guitarist and vocalist Buzz Osborne (King Buzzo), drummers Dale Crover and Coady Willis, and bass player and vocalist Steven McDonald (Redd Kross) locked in with wicked chemistry. Their set bounced between more recent numbers such as the pummeling “Working the Ditch” and “Never Say You’re Sorry,” while longtime staples “Civilized Worm,” “A History of Bad Men,” “Honey Bucket,” and “Night Goat” reminded everyone why the Melvins remain a towering influence on generations of post-punk, metal, and noise rock.
Their positively warped take on the Rolling Stones’ “Sway” proved no song is safe once it passes through the Melvins’ peculiar gravitational pull.
Trevor Dunn joined in on a second bass for “Night Goat.” The Melvins Lite, Mr. Bungle, and Tomahawk MVP made their finale hit even harder—his cowboy hat serving as an unspoken homage to the late great Birthday Party bassist Tracy Pew.
Back on the road after a 13-year touring break, Tomahawk sounded refreshingly sharp. Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fantômas) remains one of the most magnetic vocalists of the 21st century, alternating between deadpan restraint, demonic absurdity, and explosive vocal acrobatics in a single musical phrase. Standing behind a laptop, a Kaoss Pad, and an array of electronic gear, Patton demonstrated that his voice can go anywhere, effortlessly navigating an extraordinary range of sounds that no machine could replicate.
Guitarist Duane Denison’s (the Jesus Lizard) razor-wire riffs cut through Dunn’s muscular bass lines while drummer John Stanier (Battles, ex-Helmet) anchored everything with his unmistakable combination of precision and brute force.
Tomahawk threaded songs like “Business Casual” and “Doomsday Fatigue” from 2021’s Tonic Immobility alongside crowd-pleasers such as “Flashback,” “Capt. Midnight,” and “Point and Click.” Their closing stretch was especially rewarding, with a run through George Jones’ “Just One More” giving way to an encore featuring “God Hates a Coward,” a twangy rendition of Duane Eddy’s “Stalkin,'” and the crushing one-two punch of “Sidewinder” and “Totem.”
By night’s end, the crowd had witnessed three acts approaching heavy music from distinctly different—complimentary—angles, each arriving at a wildly different destination. Void Manes mapped the outer reaches of the imagination through currents of noise and electricity. The Melvins bent gravity around riffs that have only grown heavier with time, while Tomahawk landed with twisted, surgical precision.
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Anne Richmond Boston, the Swimming Pool Q’s singer, possesses a voice that threads sweetness with steel. That balance is preserved with crystalline brilliance on her long-shelved second solo album, I Should Be Happy.
The album’s 15 songs were originally recorded in the early ’90s with producer Rob Gal at Atlanta’s Snack ’n’ Shack Studio, but remained unreleased for decades. In November 2025, the album arrived via DB Recs—the labels first release since 1992—proving that numbers such as I Should Be Happy’s title track, “Torn Apart,” and “Who Cares” are timeless. I Should Be Happy is a quiet and powerful reclamation for Boston, that finds grace in the wreckage of these once-abandoned tunes and turns them into something luminous.
The songs have been reshaped and enhanced by David Barbe and Jason Nesmith of Athens’ Chase Park Transduction, both of whom recast the album with a delicate touch and a clean spotlight on Boston’s supple and searching voice. Here, Boston leans into a warm palette with flashes of jangling pop that nod toward R.E.M., particularly in the crisp sway of “Give In.”
The alchemy that arises between “Carry Me” and “Bottle Of Sleep” is fraught with worry while remaining smart, sophisticated, and smooth, shifting from a troubled ambiance to a confident stride.
Other songs, such as “Torn Apart” and “Gone” carry a lived-in gravity, as their arrangements brush against folk and Americana while maintaining the melodic clarity that defines Boston’s songwriting. Elsewhere, “Dark Room” and “You Planned It” tap into a more electric current, recalling the Swimming Pool Q’s at their most fluid while allowing space for sharper emotional edges. Even the cover songs—“The Wind Cries Mary” and “The Music Weaver” among them—feel like conversations filtered through Boston’s distinct tonal patience.
Tenderness runs underneath it all, perhaps most evident in the spare moments, where piano or acoustic textures give her voice room to hover. It’s here that time becomes the album’s greatest collaborator. What once might have been a promising follow-up to 1990’s The Big House of Time now plays like an album that stands apart—a document of endurance and resolve.
Anne Richmond Boston plays Wax N Facts Records’ 50th anniversary party on Sunday, July 19, with Pylon Reenactment Society, All the Saints, the Swimming Pool Q’s, Uncle Green, Helionaut (w/ Paul Melançon), and Kevin Dunn’s Unresponsive in Malibu. $34.04. 5:30 p.m. (doors). 6:30 p.m. (show). Variety Playhouse.
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For more than four decades, bass player, songwriter, poet, and raconteur David J Haskins has occupied a singularly mystical place in underground music. Whether anchoring the shadowy architecture of Bauhaus, shaping the widescreen dream-pop of Love and Rockets, or pursuing a rich and eclectic solo career, David J has always treated performance as something closer to ritual than mere entertainment. On June 18, he returns to Electron Gardens Studio in Avondale Estates for an intimate Summer Solstice celebration. It’s a seasonal companion to the Winter Solstice-themed performance he brought to Electron Gardens last December.
Poet Lisa King opens the show reading works that are steeped in alchemical symbolism, dreamlike themes of transformation, and imagery drawn from woodland creatures, coastal landscapes, and the unseen currents connecting them all. Her words will be accompanied by atmospheric soundscapes created by Penelope Courtney, creating an immersive prelude to the music.
The Hot Place set the music in motion with a stripped down lineup featuring King performing alongside guitar players Jeff Calder and Mike Lynn, playing a few songs from The Language of Birds and the 2022 self-titled LP.
James Hall of Mary My Hope and Pleasure Club joins the bill performing a solo set.
David J will draw from every corner of his catalog, playing older material alongside selections from his latest release,Tracks from the Attic Revisited—10 songs taken from his sprawling 2024 demo anthology, reworked, rewritten, and reinterpreted.
The Revisited album transforms decades-old home recordings into a fully realized collection shaped by four decades of artistic growth. He’ll reel through a few fan favorites that have followed him across decades and continents.
As the evening reaches its conclusion, guests will join David J on stage for a communal finale: James Hall will join in to collaborate on a handful of songs, as will King and Calder from the Hot Place, culminating in what promises to be one of the summer’s most memorable musical gatherings.
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Like a slowly turning constellation coming into focus, Kepler’s Choice unfolds as a celestial dialogue between Robert Poss and Edward Clark Cornell, where time, tone, and texture align with sublime atmosphere.
Poss and Cornell’s pairing on Kepler’s Choice (No Sides Records) balances a stylistic overlap of their respective musical inflections. Poss is known as the guitar player and composer that led Band of Susans through the New York City rock avant-garde of the late ‘80s and mid-’90s. He has also played with Bruce Gilbert of post-punk luminaries Wire, and alongside minimalist composers Rhys Chatham and Phil Niblock. With the eight songs that make up Kepler’s Choice, Poss distills a lifetime of experiences into broad, glacial sheets of sound, where guitars, pianos, and electronic touches stretch into radiant, sustained worlds of sound.
Cornell is a multimedia artist who co-founded La Ponto Ensemblo with German electronic composer Hans Dieter Schmidt. On Kepler’s Choice, Cornell weaves Poss’ mammoth elements into a more intricate web of tones that flicker to life, bloom, and quietly rearrange themselves from within. This exchange is the central engine that drives Kepler’s Choice, culminating in an album that is as vast and mysterious as the cosmos itself.
It’s tempting to trace a lineage from Poss and Cornell’s work together back to minimalist luminaries Steve Reich, Tony Conrad, La Monte Young, and Terry Riley. However, their bridge reaches a higher plain trodden by composers such as György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Iannis Xenakis. Cornell’s fascination with cluster chords—those dense, slowly shifting tonal masses—gives the music its inner tension. It comes through loud and clear in the album’s title track, where the initial tones accumulate almost imperceptibly. Soon, they grow, forming soft-edged walls of sound that evolve while gaining mass.
Their collaborative sensibilities reframe the album’s use of texture, minimalism and composition. Poss’ playing establishes a horizon line. Within it, Cornell introduces movement—small disruptions, subtle harmonic knots, and tones that hover just beyond the expected scale, creating entire worlds that exist out of time and place.
As immense and expansive as it all may be, there’s a story here about restraint, too. Cornell follows Poss’ emphasis on the “white keys”—a grounding in tonal simplicity—as a kind of sonic anchor, and a way of letting complexity emerge via chance, serendipity, and silence.
Elsewhere, on pieces such as “Russian Tea Room” and “Codified Betrayal,” the dynamic shifts in miniature. Sounds circulate, forming patterns that appear and dissolve while new strains of sonic texture emerge. Sustained, crystaline tones shape the music’s pacing and movements. But what defines Kepler’s Choice is the blending of Poss and Cornell’s approaches: Poss builds the environment while Cornell maps its internal systems. Together, they arrive at music that is conceptual and cosmic while remaining intensely human. By the time the music fades, Kepler’s Choice leaves behind a sense that its structures are still out there, slowly shifting, lingering in the outer regions of perception.
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Multi instrumentalist Che Arthur is a Chicago-based artist touring in support of his fourth and most recently released solo album, Describe This Present Moment (Past/Future Records). Having recently wrapped up a month-long European tour doing live sound and opening for Bob Mould, Arthur brings a modern take on raw hardcore velocity, and intense punk songwriting to Waller’s Coffee on Wednesday, January 28.
For this show, Arthur is joined by Athens indie rock stalwarts Five Eight and Atlanta post-punk statesmen Victory Hands.
Five Eight is still riding high after touring the Southeastern U.S. from Austin to Asheville to Tampa with their critically-acclaimed feature length documentary film, Weirdo: The Story Of Five Eight. The group’s ninth studio album, Help A Sinner, is due out in March via Static Era Records.
Victory Hands is prepping to record their upcoming release, a “watergatefold” double LP titled Cavett. The album builds upon VH’s theme of crafting lyrics using transcripts taken from disgraced former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s nefarious recordings of conversations about his enemies in the media—journalists! The release date for Cavett (as in Dick) remains TBD, as the album is currently being recorded. Come get a sneak peek at the songs.
If you can’t make it out for the the show at Waller’s, you can catch Che Arthur in Athens on Jan. 30 at Normal Bar with David Barbe of Sugar and Mercyland.
Check out Sugar’s latest single, “Long Live Love” below.
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Throughout much of last year, Atlanta’s music scene felt like an S curve, emulating the backstreets, house shows, practice spaces, DIY venues, clubs, and warehouses that punctuated so many late-night excursions. Each turn revealed a different version of all that “Atlanta music” can be. Punk barked and snapped with urgency, hardcore hit with blunt force, indie rock melodies and shoegazing textures ruled, while the city’s secret love affair with drone and experimental sounds churned and hummed in exciting new ways.
What ties these 15 albums together is pure intent. These are records made by artists who are aware of the ground beneath their feet, even while pushing outward. It comes through in their grit, patience, and refusal to sand down the edges. Some of these albums feel like snapshots of specific rooms and nights. Others stretch time, inviting listeners to sit with each note until the music becomes revelatory.
If you don’t see your favorite year-end picks here? Leave a comment with a link for us all to check out.
1. Ultra Lights: Ultra Lights (Chunklet Industries)
Ultra Lights’ self-titled, six-song LP blends wiry guitars, sharp melodies, and a restless beat into a taut, urgent album that demands an instant replay every time the needle comes up. The group features former members of Turf War and Illegal Drugs. As such, songs like “It’s Your Funeral,” “Clockin’ Out,” and “Nostalgia” rank among the finest post-punk and garage-fueled numbers the city has ever produced; each track leaving a lingering echo in the air. There’s a precision to Ultra Lights propulsive sound, a sense that every chord and drum hit is calculated, yet it remains unpredictable, yielding an energy that feels alive and electric.
2. Franks atl: Ode To Lucenay’s Peter
With Ode to Lucenay’s Peter, Franks atl bends Appalachian ghosts and downtown Atlanta drone into something intimate and quietly unhinged, with Brian Frank Halloran’s cello and Frank Schultz’s banjo circling each other like wary old friends. Expanding upon Halloran’s work in Smoke and w8ing4UFOs and Schultz’s past in Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel, the record drifts and gnaws at the edges, lingering in the room like a half-remembered dream.
3. Sword II: Electric Hour (section1 Records)
Sword II’s Electric Hour turns jittery guitars and elastic rhythms into a collection of songs that are both nervy and warm. The album hums with restless momentum, balancing lush atmosphere and sharp musical instincts with a melodic patience that reveals more with each listen.
4. Token Hearts: Token Hearts (Midnight Cruiser Records)
Token Hearts’ self-titled LP hums with lived-in melodies and ragged resolve, stitching together jangly indie rock and bruised Americana in a way that feels both familiar and quietly defiant. With songs such as “Behind These Walls,” “Amateurs,” and “American Lens,” Buffi Aguero (Subsonics) and Patrick O’Conner are the creative nucleus leading a rotating cast of players, finding slow beauty in the fray, turning hard-earned miles and small moments into songs that are warm and resonant.
5. Hubble: 1,000 Heads (Rope Bridge Records)
Hubble’s 1,000 Heads bristles with restless energy and bruised melodies, from the skittering urgency of “Starhead” and the narcotic swirl of “Reviver” to the punk‑tinged skronk of “Chrome,” painting an Atlanta sound that’s both defiant and introspective.
6. Ultisol: Precession of the Equinox
Ultisol’s debut album, Precession of the Equinox was conceived and composed by multi-instrumentalist Daniel Lamb. Each song blends drone and classic guitar sensibilities, as Lamb’s celestial strumming is anchored by a bucolic tangle of acoustic resonance and Southern avant-garde atmosphere. Produced by Dale Eisinger (YVETTE, House of Feelings), Precession expands its reach with contributions from various collaborators weaving together noise, raw textures, and wide-eyed sonic explorations into an immersive abstract wash of sound. Banjo rolls, field recordings, and ambient textures swirl together creating something both grounded and cosmic—an astral Americana for the ages.
7. Blammo / Riboflavin split LP (State Laughter)
Blammo and Riboflavin both called it a day just in time to release a split 12″ that stands as testament to the more adventurous pockets of Atlanta’s post-punk and new wave underground. Here, both bands tangle in jagged minimalism and a shambolic strum. Blammo shines a light on spiky German, Austrian, and Swiss post-punk energy. Riboflavin leans into a loose and hypnotic jangle. Sarah Prewoznik’s voice cuts through with icy shrillness while Graham Tavel sculpts intricate pop melodies. Tyler Roberts Channels the most elusive qualities of new wave’s undefinable inflections. Ian May and Josh Feigert’s guitars revel in a discordant haze. There is tremendous diversity here, as each track veers from smooth to maniacal, humming along with fleeting moments of noisy brilliance, harmony, and anxiety.
8. Insomniac: Om Moksha Ritam (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Insomniac’s debut album, Om Moksha Ritam, comes on quietly at first, like billowing storm clouds scraping across a foreboding sky. The album’s opening number, “Meditation,” bursts with droning rhythms. “Mountain,” “Forest,” “Desert,” and “Sea” invoke the cinematic imagery of Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film scores, steeped in late-night ambiance. Each song sways between delicate intimacy and glacial crescendos of rhythm, distortion, and trance-like vocal mantras that peak in the “Awakening,” gliding with intensity through the subconscious. If the end is nigh, Om Moksha Ritam is an immersive hymn calling down the mystical and forbidden forces that separate a dreaming mind from the waking world. R.I.P. Mike Morris.
9. Archeology: Gains In Perspective
Archeology’s Gains In Perspective thrives on the quiet tension between momentum and reflection, sounding like a band taking stock of where they’ve been without losing the nerve to push forward. It’s a record that rewards close listening, revealing its emotional weight not in grand gestures but in the accumulated force of carefully chosen moments.
10. Dillon & Paten Locke: Rations (Full Plate)
With Rations, Dillon & Paten Locke strip things down to their bare essentials, letting restraint, texture, and booming negative space do the heavy lifting. It’s a glowing and smooth record that commands the listener to lean in, finding power in what it withholds as much as what it reveals.
11. Upchuck: I’m Nice Now (Domino Recording Company)
I’m Nice Now sharpens Upchuck’s already feral brand of punk and indie rock into something leaner, louder, and more self-aware, pairing bile-spitting hooks with a street-level sense of humor that never dulls the blade. It’s an album that sounds like growing up without growing tame—still reckless, communal, and bristling with purpose.
12. CDSM: Convertible Hearse (Mothland & Exag’ Records).
Convertible Hearse barrels forward with CDSM’s serrated blend of noise, industrial-grade beats, and punk belligerence, sounding less like a collection of songs than a sustained act of controlled demolition. It’s confrontational and unpretty by design, but there’s a grim clarity beneath the chaos for those willing to stand close to the blasting zone.
13. Gringo Star: Sweethearts (Dizzybird Records)
Gringo Star’s Sweethearts trades indie-rock grit for a 1950’s pop shimmer, weaving together soft-focus textures that imbue their signature blend of garage rock and psychedelia with a new and introspective depth. The album’s first two singles, “Blood Moon” and “I Sleep to Dream,” highlight a musical evolution in progress, each one floating in reverb, harmonies, and instantly familiar melodies wrapped around love stories. The songs shape shift with dreamlike grace, expanding upon elements of both nostalgia and innovation, carrying the band into new terrain.
14. Jacob Chisenhall: Be Steel, My Heart
With Be Steel, My Heart, Jacob Chisenhall crafts a love letter to the pedal steel guitar. Songs such as “Flowers For Inez,” “Beachfront Bossa” (ft. Rose Hotel), and “One for Mr. Byrd” (ft. Paul Guy Stevens) turn quiet resolve into a weighty pop excursion, stitching heavenly rural melodies to the kinds sparkling atmosphere that would make Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson smile.
15. Various Artists: Friends of G.G. (Scavenger of Death)
Friends of G.G. is a dispatch from the underbelly of Atlanta’s post-punk continuum—noisy, melodic, and creatively off-center. This compilation shines a light on a dozen side players who have passed through G.G. King’s orbit over the last 18 years, paying homage to the city’s kaleidoscopic lo-fi, post-punk, and hardcore roots. Tracks by Wymyns Prysyn, Whiphouse, and Gentleman Jesse blend with cuts from bands that never made it out of the basement. La Serra’s “Horses” reveals some charming indie pop intricacies hiding in G.G.’s avant-garde tapestry of sound. It’s a fever dream of blown-out demos brought together in a pastiche of outsider anthems and flashes of brilliance from Atlanta’s post-punk family tree—less a retrospective more an atlas of living breathing friction and resilience.
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Roddy Bottum has spent much of his life sculpting a soundtrack for cultural upheaval, whether playing keyboards with Faith No More or channeling emotionally resonant pop with Imperial Teen. On Sunday, February 15 at 4 p.m., Bottum brings that same sense of reflection and revelation to Atlanta for a conversation about his new memoir, The Royal We, hosted by Criminal Records and A Cappella Books.
The Royal We is Bottum’s coming-of-age and coming-out story, capturing a city—and a self—on the verge of transformation. Bottum traces his journey from growing up gay in Los Angeles to finding community, purpose, and creative ignition when he moved to the Bay Area. There he co-founded Faith No More, and cranked out era-defining numbers such as “We Care A Lot,” “Epic,” and “Midlife Crisis.”
Bottum’s memoir is far from a standard rock tell-all. While there are brushes with celebrity status—encounters with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, the chaos of playing arena-sized shows, and stacks of gold records piling up—the gravity comes from his unflinching accounts of addiction, loss, and survival amid the AIDS crisis. Written with clarity and honesty, The Royal We is a personal reckoning and a cultural document, mapping how resilience is built from within.
Bottum is joined in conversation by yours truly, Atlanta music writer Chad Radford (Atlanta Record Stores: An Oral History). Our talk will be followed by a book signing. It’s ok to bring CDs, LPs, or whatever personal items you’d like to have signed, but definitely pick up the book. Copies will be for sale at the event. It’s the reason he’s here, and it’s a must-read for fans of Faith No More, students of queer cultural history, or anyone drawn to stories of survival and self-invention. The conversation promises an intimate look at an artist—and an era—that reshaped all that alternative rock music could be.
Free to attend. Sunday, February 15 at 4 p.m. Criminal Records, 1154 Euclid Ave NE A, in Little 5 Points.
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Pylon Reenactment Society’s “Christmas Daze” captures that peculiar mix of frantic motion and quiet clarity that settles in around the holidays. The song was born on instinct during a late-2021 rehearsal: bass player Kay Stanton dropped a riff that snapped the room into sharp focus. Within minutes the group had a new song on their hands. They carried that momentum straight into Chase Park Transduction, tracking the tune on December 29, 2021, while the season’s energy still hung in the air. The song was initially released via Bandcamp on December 1, 2023.
“Christmas Daze” follows a lone traveler who runs out of gas on the way to and from a family gathering. But the breakdown serves as a reset. Instead of leaning into frustration, the song’s narrator reconnects with the small charms that make the holidays worthwhile. Tiny flashes of warmth are found in roadside stillness, the glow of passing decorations, and the quiet pause between obligations.
PRS delivers it all with their signature taut and wiry pulse. Vanessa Briscoe Hay’s voice cuts through like a cold wind, carrying equal parts wry humor and wonder. Jason NeSmith’s guitar sparks and coils around Gregory Sanders’ crisp drumming, and Stanton’s riffs propel the music forward. ‘Christmas Daze’ hums with the notion that life moves better when you stay present enough to catch the beauty flickering in every passing second.
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After Words and Gardens Of… play Independent Distilling Company on Sat., Sept. 6. Free. All Ages. 7-10 p.m. 547 E College Ave, Decatur.
Atlanta’s mid-’80s hardcore staple Neon Christ played its final show in February of 1986. One day later, drummer Jimmy Demer, bass player Danny Lankford, and vocalist Randy DuTeau reconvened as Gardens Of… It was a new and ineffable post-punk outfit that thrived in the outer limits of punk and metal’s diffuse influence on underground and popular culture—well before the term “alternative” entered the canon.
“We never called it that,” Demer says. “We listened to a lot of Stooges and Black Sabbath at the time.”
Demer moved to guitar while Lankford remained on bass. Drummers and vocalists came and went. “We had lots of lineup changes and were never that great, but we played with the intensity of people who were sure they were great,” Demer adds.
Gardens Of… recorded one demo tape, but nothing was properly released. The group called it quits in ’89. Still, their presence on the local scene resonated—channeling punk and hardcore’s scorched earth ethos inward, transforming a confrontational sound into equal parts menace, groove, and rock ‘n’ roll. Their jagged, hypnotic sound peeled away the last layers of hardcore orthodoxy.
Now, 36 years later, Gardens Of… is back with a new lineup, new songs, and a more refined disposition.
During their original run, they shared stages with the Rollins Band, Social Distortion, Die Kreuzen, Bl’ast, Suicidal Tendencies, and like minded locals including Sabotortoise (who later became Melts), funk punk band Follow For Now, Mr. Crowes Garden (early Black Crowes), and No Walls featuring their former Neon Christ bandmate William Duvall, later of Alice In Chains. They also played with another DuVall band called the Final Offering, which featured Mike Dean of Corrosion of Conformity.
Gardens Of… also opened for Washington D.C. stalwarts Fugazi’s first Atlanta show at the First Existentialist Congregation in Candler Park, on June 4, 1988, along with After Words. After Words’ self-titled LP was released by Amanda MacKaye and Eli Janney’s Sammich Records in 1989. At the time, After Words were the only band from outside of Washington D.C. to receive distribution through Dischord Records.
“There were a couple dozen people there,” Demer says. “We had no idea what to expect from Fugazi. It was before they had released any music, and of course our minds were blown.”
Fast forward to the COVID era, and Demer was at home writing songs inspired by his early heroes. “It was time to get Gardens Of… together again to play this punk-metal stuff,” Demer says.
Lankford was in, and Brent Addison returned to drums. “He was the best of the four-five drummers we had back in the day,” Demer says. “We brazenly poached him from After Words.”
Vocalist Emily Lawson joined under unusual circumstances. At a karaoke party, Lankford and his wife Shelley heard her singing songs by Nine Inch Nails, Blondie, Prince, Beastie Boys, M.I.A., and the likes. “She sounded good and projected confidence,” Lankford says. “I invited her to sing in my basement—more informal, maybe less intimidating.”
Lawson had never played in a band, but revealed a powerhouse voice in new Gardens Of… numbers such as “Do It For the Kids,” featuring the lyrics: “Do it for believers squatting in abandoned factories / Do it for the cold case / Do it for its own majesty / For DRI and MDC / Do it for the ceremony / Do it for the summer sun / Do it, do it, do it for free.”
It’s a hard reset for a veteran act from a bygone era with nothing to prove. “We’re all better players now,” Demer says. “I had time during the pandemic to broaden my abilities as a guitar player and writer. The songs don’t sound like Dio or Black Flag, but they stand on their own nevertheless.”
A version of this story appeared in the July issue of Record Plug Magazine.
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