The new album is out now, and it might be the most genre-hopping record the band has made. There is hardcore-tinged punk, ska punk, reggae, and plenty of stroll. That variety is by design. Big D is not a one-songwriter band, and McWane actively pushes everyone to contribute, the weirder the demo the better. "We can fix it up, like remaking a car or fixing a house," he said of the band's approach to wild song ideas.

He credits the Beastie Boys for permission to roam between styles, and he has a reframe for the restless creativity that drives it. Rather than call it a disorder, he calls it ATC, Attention to Creativity. "What if we had the audacity to label people who like spreadsheets and call it a disorder?" he joked.

Forty-plus years into one of punk's most unpredictable careers, Blag Dahlia sounds relaxed. Not retired, not nostalgic, just relaxed. The Dwarves, the band he has steered through Chicago, Seattle, Southern California, and seemingly every corner of the underground since the mid-eighties, have a new record coming out, shows booked, and a front man who has made peace with the fact that the music industry never really knew what to do with them.

The best punk bands don’t age gracefully.

They either calcify into nostalgia acts, trapped inside the ghosts of their own records, or they disappear entirely under the weight of survival, burnout, and adulthood.

The Flatliners chose a different path.

For more than two decades, the Flatliners have grown alongside their audience instead of chasing the ghosts of their earlier records. And on Cold World, released May 8 through Dine Alone Records in Canada and Equal Vision Records in the U.S., that trajectory feels sharper than ever.

his week’s Song of the Week is “Tomorrow Is All a Blur” by Mike Chick, now in heavy rotation on Radio Garden State. The track is a preview of his upcoming album “Congarts”, dropping April 17, 2026 via Mint 400 Records. Tune in all week and give it a spin.

This week’s Song of the Week is “Live and Die For You” by Lodi, NJ punk legends Mourning Noise, featuring Steve Zing (Samhain/Danzig). Packed with crushing riffs and dark energy, the track is part of their venomous new release and is spinning in heavy rotation all week on Radio Garden State. Turn it up and keep NJ loud.

“Funhouse” brings the raw, loud energy Best Dressed Ghost is known for right to the forefront. It’s gritty, punchy, and built to hit hard — a blend of garage rock, punk attitude, and surf-punk salt that hits you in the gut while grinning. This is a track meant to be blasted live, fist in the air, because subtleness isn’t part of the vocabulary here.

Big week for our RGS family—Mike Ham, the unmistakable voice behind Greetings from the Garden State and a pillar of the RGS team, was just profiled by NJ Radar. Get a closer look at the leap Mike took and the legacy he's building.