Palette Knife – Keyframe Walkthrough

/

Palette Knife are a band who recognize that the real world isn't actually too far removed from the fantasy one. The Ohio-based trio have an inherent understanding of the way our chosen form of escapism reflects the conditions and struggles we face.

Across three full-length records, the band has honed an energetic blend of pop-punk, math rock, and emo, sprinkling their lyrics with ultra-nerdy pop culture references that point to something much more profound. Soaring guitar riffs, delicious bass slides, and cascading drumming firmly root their discography as a catchy, melodic, and infectious extremity of the genre.

On their latest album, Keyframe, Palette Knife further expand into all of these territories, this time showcasing their knack for magical realism and worldbuilding. Through different anime, gaming, and techno-fantasy landscapes, the band conveys moments of longing, excitement, danger, anger, suffering, delusion, insecurity, and feeling absolutely lost in an ever-expanding world that seems to be constantly shifting.

To navigate the frantic pace and technical wizardry of Keyframe, we've created this walkthrough to help you advance through each level with ease. We've even got some tips and tricks from one of Keyframe's creators, Alec Licata, who sings and plays guitar throughout the record. For more help, get tips from the pros by calling 1-900-288-0707. Rates of $1.50 per minute apply. Help line not guaranteed to improve your gameplay, solve your problems, or make you happier. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        
---- STAGE 1: PHOENIX DOWN ----
        
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Ok, so the first thing you want to do is crank your sound system as high as it will go, then do some light stretching so you can air-guitar effectively. It can feel a bit challenging at first, but once vocalist Alec Licata begins singing his incantations, you'll want to spam dodge rolls as the rapid-fire riffs start hitting you hard and fast.

SWIM INTO THE SOUND: The RPG imagery is rife throughout your entire discography, and there are more than a few references to different classic series found on the album, my favorite being this opening track. Who is your favorite Final Fantasy character, and how closely do you feel you resemble them?

PALETTE KNIFE: This is so hard. I have a soft spot for Lightning because FFXIII was the first one in the series I played. I also love Noctis because telekinetic crystal swords are all I really want, but I don't think I'm emo enough. Honestly, I feel a little similar to Cloud in Crisis Core: in that game, he has a lot more spark and optimism before the horrors of war turn him into the stoic husk we see in Final Fantasy VII. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        
---- STAGE 2: FAULTSIPHON ----
        
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Figuring out a proper setup is crucial to navigating the world of Keyframe, especially around the time you start hearing debuff / stagger / weakness /shatter. Learning how to avoid each of these status effects is key to assuring your ultimate victory.

SWIM: I've always liked the idea of instruments being reflective of character classes in TTRPG worlds. Which character class feels suited to guitar, vocals, bass, and drums, respectively?

KNIFE: Oh gosh, I might be biased because I love wizards, but I'm going wizard for guitar. Drums definitely tank: like either a paladin or something heavily armored with good damage. Bass is probably a barbarian or berserker. And vocals might be healer or bard; the lyrics are inspiring or buffing the audience. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        
---- STAGE 3: PROTOTYPE V.2 ----
        
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Nothing can prepare you for the iterative, emotional, psychic damage of this level. Crossing the Rubicon is no simple feat, but our next hint reveals the upgrades, armor, and stats you'll need to successfully configure your armored core to peak fighting form.

SWIM: If someone made a game out of Keyframe, what studio or director would you want to make it?

KNIFE: Ooooh, I would KILL for a FromSoftware game that's mech-themed like Armored Core but plays like a Dark Souls game. I realize that's sorta been done already with The Surge, but man, FromSoftware just does everything so right! 

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
        
---- SECRET LEVEL ----
        
✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦

Blink and you may miss it, an easter egg left for the savvy player to find, a marriage of Gundam, Zoids, and Robotech, this secret monument to a forgotten war is a special nugget of lore that most players wind up missing.

SWIM: The cover feels halfway between Zoids and Gundam. How did you wind up with this imagery?

KNIFE: I basically told Aaron [Queener, Palette Knife's drummer] I had a vision of the mech that we all pilot together, The Keyframe, embedded in the side of a studio, a thinking mountain, all post-apocalyptic and overgrown. We both got very into Gundam kits over the past few years and knew we wanted the record to be mech-themed. After many hours and revisions, this is the digital painting I made in Photoshop, and we thought it was mature and powerful enough to display without typography. 

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
        
---- STAGE 5: LIMIT BREAK ----
        
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

By now, jamming out to the multiverse of tasty licks, massive drums, and ricocheting bass lines should have your Limit gauge completely maxed out. For that you just gotta hit ↘ + → + X and you'll be tearing through to the final stage with ease.

SWIM: The album title is actually referenced only once on the entire record on “Limit Break,” where you sing: “It always takes so long for me to reframe / The mannequin I pose behind the keyframe.” Could you expand on this line and the meaning behind the album title?

KNIFE: Totally! I find myself caught in these paradigms and frameworks of thought where I base my whole world on a job, relationship, identity, or interest. So there's inevitable trouble in what happens when one of these paradigms is uprooted, and I'm forced to reframe my view of how I thought my life was going versus how it is. I'm basically saying it can take a while to heal from big changes—both good and bad ones—and, to an extent, I'm often frustrated by how long it can take me to adjust to change. 

✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦
        
---- FINAL LEVEL ----
        
✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦✧✦

You've done it! Everything you've learned, the band, the songs, the moves, has prepared you for the wandering expanse of “ISS.” As the final cutscene plays and your fighter drifts off in their damaged Veritech, swallowed by the infinite dark glow of space, the gentle glow of the Keyframe title card is the last thing we see before the end credits roll.

Through healing, through struggle, through glory and through hope, Keyframe builds its loose narrative web into a multiverse of very real themes. It can be a difficult world to make your way through these days, and the band has a firm understanding of this. From the barreling opening of “Phoenix Down” to the calm and serene acoustic closer “ISS,” Palette Knife has built entire realms to explore and exist in, ones that we hope this walkthrough made more navigable for you, weary traveler.

Elias can often be found at the local gig or online advocating for some forgotten band from who knows how long ago. They currently live in the greatest city in the world Los Angeles, California and can be found online on Instagram and Twitter @listentohyakkei.

Elephant Jake – ‘98 / Swiss Army Wife – Emergency Contact | Double Single Review

/

Three years ago, Swim Into The Sound shook the music blog industrial complex to its core when we introduced the world's first-ever Double Single Review. That’s right; two bands, two songs, one post. While some cautioned that this invention would be too innovative, disruptive, or even dangerous, we proceeded anyway. Now that the dust has cleared from that initial fanfare, enough time has passed that it seems safe to revisit the format, and today is the perfect excuse, cause we’ve got another pair of bangers to talk about from emo bands Elephant Jake and Swiss Army Wife.

One weird side effect of COVID is that some bands feel fake. I don’t mean fake in an AI way, quite the opposite. I mean a band that feels so up my alley that it’s hard to believe that they actually walk among us. Their instrumentals are too tight, their smoke too tough, their press photos too swaggy. Until I see these types of bands with my own two eyes, they might as well be a figment of my caffeine-addled imagination.

Elephant Jake is one such group. I’ve been aware of the Philly emo band peripherally for years, even interacted with them online on multiple occasions, but was never able to catch them live due to a combination of small potatoes touring logistics and bad timing. Here was a group I’d listened to and enjoyed, but never laid eyes upon until they materialized on a random Friday night at Ortlieb's opening for the y'allternative emo band Innerlove. I showed up a couple of songs into their set, but by the time I walked in, the band was already tearing shit up, jumping, shouting, and sweating as they cranked out a 30-some-minute set of raucous emo music. 

Today, the group released “'98,” the latest in a line of singles they’ve been dropping throughout the year. The song kicks off with a funky-as-fuck bassline and reserved guitar jangle. Lead vocalist Sal Fratto sashays in with a gentle croon that gradually builds to an anthemic passage as he sings, “While I was fucking it up, you were holding it down / I’m never feeling alive, I’m only losing you now.” Soon, the instrumental bursts into a forward stride as the lyrics continue to wax poetic about the passage of time, eventually leading to a jazzy outro that’s more jam band than Midwest emo. This track, combined with singles “Give Flight” and “Sustain,” seems to indicate that a banger of a full-length is on the way soon. 

Another example of this fake-until-proven-otherwise phenomenon is Swiss Army Wife. I discovered Portland’s tallest emo band sometime in the early days of 2023 with the release of their knockout debut, Medium Gnarly. I’ll admit I was simply excited to have some honest-to-god DIY emo emerging from my hometown, but the group’s live show affirmed that this was, in fact, a real band. I’ve caught the group almost every time I ventured back home to visit my family, including three times in the space of a month this past fall. 

Each time I saw the band, they ran through the hits off their album, their split with Kerosene Heights, and The Ultimate Emo Album, but what excited me most were the songs that hadn’t been released yet. One of them, it turns out, was “Emergency Contact,” also releasing today and arriving courtesy of We’re Trying Records. The track bears the group’s usual jagged and lanky emo instrumentals, prompting fist-balling frustration and offering an outlet to let it out. Things peak about 40 seconds in when the group drops into the chorus with a four-count beat as they shout, “Let’s get married!!!” then proceed to spill their guts in an embarrassing, relatable, and public display of affection. 

Every time the band drops into this chorus, I’m elated. I’ve found it’s the perfect tempo to jump up and down to, already having seen a handful of hometown shows where the crowd shouts each word back, erupting into a jubilant dance floor of carefree emo groves. I’m so glad I can hear this song whenever I want now, and it appears there’s more Swissy to come, which is always a good thing. Portland emo is real, and it’s Swiss Army Wife. 

Friko – Something Worth Waiting For | Album Review

/

ATO Records

I sometimes fear that I’m nothing but a prisoner of suggestion. With so much stimuli out there, am I actually parsing things, or am I just letting them steer me?

Let’s take, for example, the band Friko. I was really into the group’s debut, Where We've Been, Where We Go from Here, when it was released back in the early days of 2024. While listening to it, I’d often find myself thinking of Radiohead, but I couldn’t fully put my finger on why. Then I realized that one of my intros to Friko was a video on Youtube of them covering “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” at their record release show. Was that it? Was watching one video enough to put them into my brain’s Radiohead cabinet? Am I even driving this car? 

A few weeks after having this realization, I put the record on while hanging out with some friends, and one of them remarked that it reminded him of Radiohead. It was an interesting development, as I was positive that this guy knew nothing about the aforementioned cover. Then, months and months later, another friend turned to me during a Friko show at The Empty Bottle and said, “I’m going to tell my kids this is Radiohead!” He didn’t know they covered them either. The wheels began to turn again. Maybe my initial feeling was sound. Maybe I do have autonomy. 

I bring all of this up because, as I listened to Friko’s new record, Something Worth Waiting For, I often found myself thinking about the Flaming Lips, and that old paranoia returned. I began to wonder, did this connection form because the band toured with the Flaming Lips not so long ago? Is my brain just making haphazard connections of convenience? 

After some more thought, I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. Sure, maybe the connection first came to my mind because of that tour, but if we go a level deeper, isn’t it likely that creative threads linking the two bands are part of what led to Friko getting that support slot in the first place? Both groups certainly have an appreciation for the grander side of pop songwriting, something Friko really lean into on Something Worth Waiting For. 

This record is Friko’s first as a four-piece after the addition of bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb (side note: be sure to check out Robb’s other band, the courts), and though “sparing” is never a word that I would have used to describe Friko in the past, you can really feel them working on a bigger scale here. This first really struck me on “Choo Choo,” where the background harmonies throughout the chorus and outro have a really satisfying added depth. I felt the same thing one song later on “Alice,” where things get almost choral as the track drives to a close.

The song that I’d say most bowls me over here, though, is “Hot Air Balloon.” I can’t get enough of it. The song’s arrangement is absolutely killer, featuring some of the best bass lines that I’ve heard this year, and the way the lead guitar follows the main melody during the song’s chorus massages your brain in a way that’s just divine. It’s also maybe the best synthesis we get of the old Friko and the new, with the first verse giving us dual harmonies between Niko Kapetan and Bailey Minzenberger before things grow and grow to a triumphant finale that reminds you this is a capital-B Band that we’re dealing with here. I’ve seen Friko several times, and my favorite parts of their shows have always been when all four members are going all out singing together. Having that replicated in the closing minutes of this track and other songs like “Alice” and “Seven Degrees” really elevates the record. 

Speaking of Friko live, I’ve been dying to get my ears on the studio version of “Guess” since I first heard it performed a year ago when the band opened for BC,NR at the Salt Shed. It’s such a perfect show-opening song, and I was curious to see if that would fully carry over on record. Well, in a perhaps unsurprising turn of events, it also works incredibly well as an album opener. I kind of don’t want to say much more about it because there are elements to it that shouldn’t be spoiled, but damn, what another great song. 

One thing that I came to appreciate more about Something Worth Waiting For through multiple listens was the interplay between themes of travel and stasis. On the one hand, you have all these songs about different modes of transportation — “Choo Choo,” “Hot Air Balloon,” and “Dear Bicycle” — then you have lines like “In the background I'll be there / Because some things never leave there” on “Certainty” and “Someday we'll lay statues on this dirt beneath our feet / we'll be running circles round it just you wait and see” on the title track. Sometimes these themes are in direct contrast, particularly with “Hot Air Balloon” and “Choo Choo,” which are about escape, but as the album closes on “Dear Bicycle,” there’s a convergence that brings everything home. 

Early on, the album’s closing track presents travel not as a means of getting away but as a means to explore, with Kapetan singing “Bicycle I'm waiting for you outside we've got things to do / there's alleys streets and avenues and gas stations we've yet to cruise / so stick around.” It’s a beautiful and relatable sentiment, this realization that exploration need not take you too far from home. As the track continues, we get a more bittersweet set of lines: “Bicycle your rust is showing, what has happened to your bones / You’re rusty now but have a drink, there’s kids around that want to play and you can’t let them down.” This is where I really came to understand how those themes of travel and stasis connect; the person who got so much from exploring is ready to move on. The bicycle and those gas station rides are not for them anymore, but the narrator still understands the power those moments held and recognizes that others might follow a similar path. 

At the same time, there’s this sadness that comes with watching places and things grow old around you, whether that’s realized through rust on a bicycle or the dilapidation of the town around it. At some point, you just want to move on, but in doing so, you don’t want to forget the good ways those experiences shaped you. Maybe you leave, but those moments tied to that place sustain. That’s where track two’s “Wish I took the train today / Wish I took it almost every day / I’ll take it far away” connects with track five’s “In the background I'll be there / Because some things never leave there.” It’s the perfect place to end. 

There’s something about the way Friko’s sound has changed from the first album to this one that’s tied up in this, too. They’ve definitely evolved and progressed, but through that, there are still these echoes and threads—in Niko’s yelps, in little piano passages, in the way that harmonies come together—reflecting who they were before. And not to be the Friko-Readiohead or Friko-Flaming Lips guy again, but I think that’s just another way that I see Friko fitting into the same lineage as those two bands. Radiohead somehow always sound like Radiohead, even when they put out an album that’s not in any way like the one that came before it. The Flaming Lips moved from noise rock to psych-pop while still maintaining a sense of theatrics that was core to their identity. The reason I think these types of bands are able to maintain a continuity is that their shifts are born of an organic desire to explore new things rather than a methodical “let’s change things up on the next one” approach. I’m not saying Friko LP1 to LP2 is The Bends to Kid A, but that’s the kind of range that seems to be building here. Who knows, maybe their next release will have me questioning my motivations for likening them to Unwound or Depeche Mode. Ultimately, all that really matters is that they sound like Friko. If they do, I’m always going to love it.    

Josh Ejnes is a writer and musician living in Chicago. He has a blog about cassette tapes called Tape Study that you can find here, and he also makes music under the name Cutaway Car.

Prince Daddy & the Hyena – Hotwire Trip Switch | Album Review

/

Counter Intuitive Records

Is there anything more dreadful than waking up in the aftermath of a party you threw? Bottles everywhere, trash can overflowing, the social hum of your friends long gone. All that’s left is exhausted air and a pile of miscellaneous stuff that friends and acquaintances will have to stop by to pick up at some point. You’re probably hungover, your mouth is dry, and the last thing you want to do is trudge out to your living room to see what carnage awaits you. Then the panic sets in: Was the party fun? Why did that guy leave early? Do my friends hate me? But then you check your phone and look back at some IG Stories. Maybe it wasn’t all so bad… Well, except the puke in your kitchen sink. 

Prince Daddy & the Hyena are back with Hotwire Trip Switch. This album has been framed as a collection of singles, all mapping out years of feeling good and feeling bad in the raucous way only this band can capture. These rockers are rapidly approaching the tenth anniversary of their debut album, I Thought You Didn’t Even Like Leaving, and a decade later, maybe they're not forgetting to take their meds anymore, but they still seem to find themselves asking what’s the point.

It's been a while since Prince Daddy & the Hyena last released an album — their 2022 self-titled album on Pure Noise Records — quite a gap for the notorious road dogs. It’s not that they disappeared or anything. During this gap between albums, they embarked on multiple tours and contributed to several projects, like their double release God Complex / La Da Da, their cover of “You Get What You Give” on Pure Noise’s Dead Formats series, their cover of Foxing’s “Rory,” and their 2025 one-off “Mr. Transistor” to mark their return to Counter Intuitive Records. But it’s been a hot minute since we heard a full-length project from Albany’s rowdiest, so I think it’s fair to do a bit of a retrospective here.

I was first introduced to Kory Gregory’s iconic voice with his apology on a 2017 split with Mom Jeans and Pictures of Vernon called Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 420, specifically on a duet called “Thrashville 2/3” with Kississippi. His scratchy yelp melded with Kississippi’s croon as they yelled “Sorry in advance, I’m sorta bad at this,” before devolving into a song about feeling like a piece of shit and smoking too much weed. That’s a good example of a lot of Prince Daddy & the Hyena’s early songs: but there’s nuance to feeling like shit, and over multiple albums and EPs, they grappled with every angle of it — the hilarity, the misery, the apologies. 

From there, they took an intergalactic dive with Cosmic Thrill Seekers, a 2019 concept album crafted in the aftermath of a devastating acid trip. Their songs, once short and acerbic (as on their 2015 EP Adult Summers), suddenly enveloped listeners with longer studies on feelings of being trapped and frustrated. The band seemed to long for the friction they struggled against for years. Their barbs were no longer pointed outwards, but inwards too. They continued this thread into their 2022 self-titled LP, by far their most desperate and darkest work yet, but also their sunniest. That description is not meant to be taken literally, even though the opener is a harmonious song called “Adore the Sun.” Prince Daddy bounced between these two feelings throughout the album: believing in some kind of tangible hope after a horrific van accident while also coating their lyrics in an infestation of bugs, rats, and mold. This brings us to Hotwire Trip Switch, kind of an album, kind of a collection of songs, but definitely not like anything else they’ve released yet.

The album starts with a kick drum on “24-03-04_Birthday_B4,” immediately charting us on a synth-y sail, full speed ahead. They pick up even more velocity with the following song, “Big-Box Store Heart,” which has been stuck in my head since the second I heard it. Initially, this was a surprise. Prince Daddy’s last full release was moody, even grim at times, so to return with a refreshed, bouncing, pop-punk single was unexpected. But this is Prince Daddy & the Hyena, and by now I should have learned to expect the unexpected. One thing you can count on, however, is a hit, and "Big-Box Store Heart" is a crowd-pleaser just begging to be danced to, and by God, it will be.

Daniel Gorham’s drums surge through the band on “NQA,” but the heartbeat of the Hotwire Trip Switch thumps in “Crash Taylor,” somewhere in the center of the project, but more like the close of the first half. This is a quote-unquote “singles record,” and I definitely get what Prince Daddy means by that; it’s about the individual stories within songs themselves rather than the larger landscapes they create, but there is still a clear throughline connecting these songs. There are insurmountable feelings of frustration, constraint, and the glimpses of joy you get despite that. When Kory jokingly sings, “what goes up / must come down / and boy it comes down whenever I’m underneath,” it is clear that this sentiment is the crux of the album and maybe even Prince Daddy's discography as a whole.

Hotwire Trip Switch picks back up with “30days30days30days,” a blistering plea for help cutting through the most materialistic aspects of society. Over a Scooby Doo chase scene-esque melody, Gregory mutters to himself about trying to medicate with alcohol and pills before picturing a sedentary, unactualized dream of isolation. The song revs into overdrive, Kory’s voice becoming supersonic as he lists a kind of unattainable cottagecore fantasy: “move to the mountains / cancel the subscriptions / maybe start a juice cleanse.” While Kory states that this is done to “repair what’s malfunctioning,” it's clear, even as he says it, that this isn't happening. It almost seems to mock punk songs, encouraging the opposite: instead of learning guitar, getting in the van, and playing shows, Gregory humors himself with the suggestion that maybe the cure for all his problems is escape.

The debaucherous pleas riddled through “30days30days30days” leads into “SHITSHOW or Boulevard of Soaking Dreams,” which is also probably the best song title on the album — it’s between that and “Sure Could (A Random Exercise In Life-Altering Party Fouls).” Prince Daddy & the Hyena has always been funny, not haha funny, more like funny because if I don’t make a joke out of [whatever thing] I’ll cry. While they may have changed several aspects of their sound — Joe Reinhart, producer of artists like Hop Along and Joyce Manor, cleared up Cameron Handford’s guitar tones, focused on Kory’s more reserved vocals, and cranked Jordan Chmielowski’s bass to eleven — they have never lost their humor. This is a revelation I made after Gregory closes the song with “The water's running out / I don't know why it turns me on / But it turns me on.”

If “Crash Taylor” was the heart of Hotwire Trip Switch, then the penultimate track “Something’s Gotta Give” is the brain. Unexpectedly chuggy compared to the pop-punk fury Prince Daddy deliver throughout the rest of the album. It’s not quite a self-titled B-side; “Something’s Gotta Give” is introspective and earthy like that record, sure, but it’s a fresh wound. Rather, it’s a wound that keeps getting reinfected. The song seems to come from a place of internalized doubt; it’s been over ten years of Prince Daddy, and what do they have to show for it? Gregory takes a morose, lamenting tone at the end, singing “five albums of this / everyone is concerned / something’s gotta give/ you’re scaring off the kids / they’ll probably turn it off before the end.”

Over a decade of music can’t end there, so distraught, so regretful. So, ever the mighty party band they are, Prince Daddy & the Hyena rally one last time to close the album out with “Pinch Me.” While the lyrical content doesn't change significantly (things suck, you don’t think you deserve all this, and you plead that one day you’ll feel like you do), the song is ultimately jovial. Prince Daddy messes around with chiptune in a cartoon-like vortex of sound; their songs always seem to sound on the verge of collapse, and here they finally do collapse. It’s the perfect place for the party to end. That moment when you crash into your bed in the early hours of the morning, only to wake up when the sun peeks through the blinds or the neighbor starts vacuuming. 

Caro Alt (she/her) is from New Orleans, Louisiana, and if she could be anyone in The Simpsons, she would be Milhouse.

Pro Wrestling The Band – Weanling | EP Review

/

Thick Freakness

Coming down the aisle, hailing from London, Ontario, is Pro Wrestling The Band. Like any wrestling superstar, the group has a flair for the dramatic; they know how to play to the back of the room with over-the-top rock that’s fast, loud, and pumped-up. The four-man stable is led by frontman Danny Kidd, whose voice is so deadly that it can wrestle any crowd into submission. Behind him, you have Nitro Nathan Stock, known for his explosive drumming behind the sticks. Of course, we can’t forget the intercontinental champion of the bass, Bobby “Don’t Call Me” Calwell, and the most electrifying man in all of indie rock, Craig Gignac, giving the people what they want with magnetic guitar solos. In the words of WWE Hall of Fame wrestling announcer Jim Ross, “Bah Gawd, that’s Pro Wrestling the Band music.” 

The group’s new EP, Weanling, is a continuation of their jaw-droppingly fun Falling In Love With Pro Wrestling The Band, which bound together their first two EPs into one full-length. While Falling In Love With has some power pop tucked in, it’s impressively diverse, with a lot of punk influence, especially in the vocals, plus some twangy elements throughout for good measure. Weanling finds the four-piece fully leaning into their power pop ethos with contagious choruses and guitar chords struck to the max, all executed with sharp-shooter precision.

Opening track “Irish Goodbyes” is one of those songs that would melt the summer radio airwaves in the mid-90s. The track has everything people would want, laced with revving high-energy guitars, thudding drums, and an infectious stadium-level chorus. Kidd’s vocals on the chorus fly above the guitars like a Macho Man Randy Savage elbow drop. When he sings at the top of his lungs, “Was looking for something painless / But Irish goodbyes got so weighted / Left me breathless,” it’s one of those moments that feels mega.

I could have seen “Tarps” on the soundtrack for the Brendan Fraser-starring rom-com Blast from the Past, nestled right in between R.E.M.’s classic “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” and Squirrel Nut Zippers’ “Trou Macacq.” The chorus is sentimental, yet also feels like it was meant to be yelled from a rooftop. Pro Wrestling The Band is firing on all cylinders with these two lead singles, proving that their ear for pop-centric hooks is up there with the best of them going today.

This EP is only five songs, but the music flies free and fast at a suitably explosive breakneck speed. “Replacements” has the shortest runtime, but it’s just pure muscular intensity between the drums and guitars from the word go. There’s a real swagger with Kidd’s vocals on “Space,” giving the kind of flair and edginess that reminds me of Liam Gallagher in his heyday. Really enjoyable to hear that level of confidence being brought out in a song. I need more of that. 

At the tail end of the release, “Don’t Mind Me” kicks off with a triumphant classic rock guitar solo which soon gives way to soaring vocals that are nothing short of world-conquering. With a slower tempo that feels like last call at the bar, “Don’t Mind Me” feels like the bright, blaring lights were just turned on and it’s time for everyone to find their jackets and stumble on home.

Weanling is the best 1996 album made in 2026. The boys from up north seem to go about their music in an old-school wrestling kind of way, with vivid storytelling, technical proficiency, and respect for the artists who came before them. While the songs themselves aren’t strictly wrestling-themed, the four-man stable has a knack for memorable, anthem-level choruses that would fit pouring out of stadium speakers. Pro Wrestling the Band’s songs are filled with steel chair shots to the head, full of guitar solos, flying off the top rope power pop, and crowd-pleasing choruses that can beat any opponent for the 1, 2, 3 count. 

David is a content mercenary based in Chicago. He’s also a freelance writer specializing in music, movies, and culture. His hidden talents are his mid-range jump shot and the ability to always be able to tell when someone is uncomfortable at a party. You can find him scrolling away on Instagram@davidmwill89, Twitter@Cobretti24, or Medium@davidmwms.