photo by Nicole Miller

I came up with the name for the band when I first moved to New York about a decade ago. I'd see the thousand ways to die on every street corner; garbage truck, scaffolding collapsing, etc. and would think "Certain death" every time. Before the pandemic I decided to change the name of my band from my name (Henry Black) to Certain Death. They my dog died and the lockdown started a day later. I wrote the song "Certain Death" both about my dog Brook passing, and also the impending doom of it all in the face of a modern day plague. Fortuitous timing in a dark and horrible way.

 It’s pretty perverse when you think about it. The only certainty in life is the certainty of death. Self-awareness comes only with the awareness that one day the self will no longer be aware…

LISTEN TO CERTAIN DEATH's "CERTAIN DEATH" (STUDIO VERSION)

…which is exactly why songs like “Certain Death” by Certain Death need to exist—the band’s debut single—and if it re-appears later as the opening track to their debut album also assumedly titled Certain Death the band will surely be a shoe in for the 2023 Black Sabbath Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Triple Identical Band/Song/Album Titles on a Doom Metal Debut Record award…

…a song which at 5 minutes and 51 seconds is only 26 second shorter than "Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath and which likewise addresses death directly, not merely as an abstract idea/concept but rather as a manifested presence ever-present in daily existence as a matter of psychopomp and circumstance…

…and if you’re gonna look the Grim Reaper (an invention of plague-afflicted late Middle Ages Europe, a figure who reaps souls like a farmer harvesting souls with his scythe) directly in the eye under a musical guise, you’d better have some sick tritone-laden riffage at the ready—sick as the state of the world itself—and some blazing fretwork pyrotechnics with which to counter Death in the manifested rotting flesh…

…and “Certain Death” has got all of this to the n’th degree oscillating between passages of brooding wraith-like menace and outbursts of unbridled instrumental sound ‘n’ fury shredage—a death rattle more euphoric than morose like a Dia de los Muertos celebration—with vocalist/guitarist Henry Black leading the charge into the metal meltdown all guns blazing but "Certain Death" works equally well in it's scaled-down, moody acoustic demo version as seen/heard above which should satisfy fans of Mark Kozelek's covers of AC/DC tunes even if the demo version actually came first...

...and to experience more of Henry's songwriting/arranging acumen just check out the playlist below which is more in the vein of Gordon Lightfoot or Harry Nilsson than Pagan Altar or Witchfinder General and we especially recommend "YGS" which flows fluidly from the intro's pensive lyrics and strummed guitar into a rollicking rocker complete with barrelhouse piano and massed cumulous-cloud harmonies before passing over to another realm in a brief psychedelic/psychopompy outro... (Jason Lee)

 Flyer designed by Jewlee Trudden
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The former swampland known as Tompkins Square Park (TSP) first opened to the public in 1850 where less than a decade later a gathering of destitute LES-dwelling immigrants, devastated by the economic collapse of 1857, were violently attacked by coppers for protesting scarcity of jobs and food…

…then in 1863 TSP served as one of the staging grounds for the infamous Draft Riots, and in 1874 it witnessed the largest demonstration in NYC up to that point with 7,000+ workers protesting another devastating downturn, chased down and beaten like dogs by mounted police in what one observer called “an orgy of brutality”…

…then in 1877 there was yet another not-so-civil disturbance in TSP with thousands of city residents gathered for a Communist rally calling for revolution with the National Guard sent in to crack heads...

…and then over a century later there was the legendary 1988 Tompkins Square Park Riot where homeless squatters, many pushed into poverty by drastic social cuts and gentrification, protested a new 1AM curfew…


 
…and then just the following year the fittingly named “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” decapitated his live-in lover, boiled her head and supposedly fed it to park denizens as (unknown to them) yummy brain soup…

…and heck just last weekend a ruckus was caused in the park by a woman who went on a random “hair pulling rampage” amongst unsuspecting parkgoers before causing some further destruction in the neighborhood…

…so far be it for us to attempt to claim TSP has never seen anything like what it’s about to witness tomorrow at the punk rock/generally heavy AF showcase (Sat. 6.9) in a teamup between the Deli Mag and the fittingly named ShowBrain Booking...



…but it *is* gonna be a wholly appropriate “orgy of brutality” in musical terms more likely to induce slam dancing and headbanging than hair-pulling or skull-crushing tho’ hey it’s TSP so you never know and don’t even ask about the soup’s secret ingrediant…

…cuz all that we’re legally responsible for is the super tasty bill featuring Joudy, InCircles, Tits Dick Ass, Slashers, and the super mysterious Cult of Chuck this Saturday afternoon (today!) from 1:30 to 6pm cuz you truly couldn't find five better entities to pay appropriate tribute to Tompkins Square Park's radical legacy as the true "People’s Park" than these five badass bands... (Jason Lee) 

Pictured: Shego is a Madrid-based dulce punk band

It’s a sad-but-true fact that by far most Americans are monolingual pendejos—and I hasten to add this applies to yours truly too cuz those two years of college Fraunch stuck about as well as frog legs to a Mack truck's tires—and this in a country where almost 20% of the population is Hispanic and/or Latin American (almost 30% in NYC!) but lucky for all us gringos you don't need to know Spanish to groove to all the great Spanish-language music on offer in our fair city with various organizations and events serving as both a guide to cultural outsiders and a haven for Latina/o indie music lovers...

…with indie music broadly defined not only as genres typically covered by this publication, ranging from shoegaze and punk rock to techno and jangle pop and hip hop, but also the many indigenous Hispanic genres that likewise exist in the independent and underground realms of musical culture ranging from psychedelic cumbia to charango music like for instance the Brooklyn-based pan-Latino band Eclectic Charango Beats who take the plucky Andean lute and spike it with heavy doses of psychedelic headiness and Chicano roots music as on their latest single  "Amigo" (feat. Miles Solay), a song that "moves with cumbia and rock and talks about mental health through a metaphor about the violence left by the armed conflict in Colombia"...

…and then there’s the recent U Street Festival held at Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick this past April, hosted by the lovely and talented Ximena Zuluaga, with bands running the gamut from merengue punk (Hecho En Brooklyn) to Latin-Venezuelan fusion (La SaZound) to queer-identified operatic electroclash (Chico Raro) to "new wave meets No Wave" punk rock (Spite Fuxxx) plus many other styles besides with the stated goal of the all-day fest being “to create a crossroad for the spectrum of the people that live in Bushwick today” in response to rapid change and gentrification in the neighborhood (quoting from festival co-organizer Diana Hernandez working alongside Lucho Parra) by bringing together various otherwise Balkanized alternative music scenes in a locale where they already oft-unknowing co-exist...

…with the aforementioned gentrification vividly portrayed by Ridgewood's own (a Queens neighborhood adjacent to Bushwick) Maria Lina a.k.a. Maria Machete, one of several vocalist/multi-instrumentalists in local punk rock combo Frida Kill, in "Mujeres Con Mangos" from 2022's EP 1, a song inspired by reports of undocumented workers being arrested for selling churros in NYC and a memory I have of passing by an old family friend Margerita, who sells mangos year round on Knickerbocker Ave., getting ticketed by cops in the bitter freezing cold for selling mangos as described by Maria to Kate Hoos in the music blog Full Time Aesthetic...

…who are but one of the players on in the vibrant Latinx punk scene as witnessed both at the recent annual Latin Punk Fest held at the Windjammer last month in Ridgewood, Queens featuring Sebastian Ortiz, Mau, Wakala, Microprismas, Depression Tropical, and Mal De Ojo, and also at the Abort the System showcase and fundraiser (“fund abortion, not police”) held at Bushwick’s May Day Community Center in March 2023... 

...which featured a panoply of international and immigrant punks such as NYC hardcore badasses Kārtël, a band comprised of immigrants from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, and let's not overlook the local Latin-American metalhead contingent either as represented by Non Residents (“no flags or race / divide our way / no shit to obey / we don’t discriminate”) nor the experimental electronica (Slic), alternative pop (Valley Latini), and hard rockin' rawk (Joudy) artists relocated to NYC from South America as previously profiled on this blog and of course we're leaving out many, many others...

…and when it comes to the broad spectrum of indie pop/rock/electronica from the Latin/Hispanic diaspora in New York City there’s a new player in town known as SON Estrella Galicia who made a memorable entrance with their kickoff event at Baby’s All Right a couple weeks back featuring a beer tasting paired with live sets by Brooklyn-by-way-of-Madrid-and-Galicia songstress Marem Ladson (Deli profile coming soon!) and local hypnotic-motorik-psych-rockers GIFT and in case you were wondering son means sound in Spanish and serves as a prefix for various Latin American genres such as son cubano as famously brought to the masses by Buena Vista Social Club back in the late ‘90s...

…while Estrella Galicia refers to a brand of beer from the Galician region of Spain brewed since 1906 by five continuous generations of the Rivera Family with funding from 100% Spanish and independent capital in accordance with the ten principles of the UN Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals but best known to hopheads for their lager made from a mix of blended malts and bittering hops but if you’re looking for something to pair with wild boar or roe deer cooked over deep coals with spices and aromatic herbs garnished with chocolate then allow us to recommend the 1906 Black Coupage which received a gold medal at the World Beer Awards a little while back...

…and yeah you caught us quoting/paraphrasing from the Estrella Galicia press kit but rest assured this ain’t no paid endorsement and when we say the beer is quite good and does the job it's meant to do it's not because the Riveras paid for our staff to take a Harlan Crow-style luxury vacation via megayacht across the South Seas tho' it'd admittedly be hard to turn down such an offer especially with the air in NYC being unsuitable for breathing at the moment (thanks a lot, Canada!) but for now we’re mere unpaid shills and mostly proud of the fact given how most of our staff are Bernie-lovin’ card-carryin' commie bloggers who regard all forms of mercantile exchange as a filthy sin except for when it comes to drink tickets (they always accept drink tickets) and complimentary finger foods too…

…but I digress from the main point of how SON Estrella Galicia is dedicated to bringing independent music and emerging artists from the Spanish-speaking world and beyond to receptive audiences the world over and thank goodness they’ve made their way to these orange-hued shores cuz it’s high time someone endorsed the pairing of music and beer and introduced us to a bunch of cool new music from the Hispanosphere cuz we're always up for cool new music, monolinguism be damned, and for expanding the DeliCorp brand in the process...

…which you already know if you've been listening to our “Deli Delivers” monthly playlists which routinely feature rock en español from Mexico, South America, and yes even Spain especially in the realms of shoegaze, noise punk, psychedelia, garage rock, grunge, and dreampop that so many Spanish-speaking/bilingual bands seem to have mastered and carried into compelling new directions...



...like for instance artists like Margaritas Podridas (Hermosillo, México), Lorelle Meets The Obsolete (Baja California, México), Sonic Emerson (Ciudad de México), Generacion Suicida (SoCal), The Slashes (SoCal), shego (Madrid), Soleá Morente (Madrid), Sexores (Ciudad de México via Ecuador), El Shirota (Chiluca, México), Silvana Estrada (Veracruz, México),  Melenas (Pamplona, Spain) and Cala Vento (alt Empordá) to name but a handful...

...and hey here's a "Rock En Español” playlist which is a work in progress being unveiled here for the first time for your listening pleasure and personal betterment and hey we haven't even touched upon many of the many, many other artists of Latinx ancestry that are prominent on the NYC indie scene including Alexandra Blair (The Silk War), Katie Ortiz (Debbie Dopamine, batsbatsbats ghostghostghost), and Sofia Zarzuela who wowed the crowd at the recent Great American Mud Wrestling Show in Bed-Stuy but that'll have to wait for another time...



…so check it all out if so inclined cuz it's good for ya to get outside your own hermetically sealed bubble once in a while (if not your hermetically sealed apartment) and there's a good chance at least some of this music will speak to your heart and soul no matter your native tongue... (Jason Lee)