BEARINGS
ANNOUNCE NEW ALBUM
THE BEST PART ABOUT BEING HUMAN
OUT AUGUST 18
RELEASE NEW TRACK
GONE SO GONE
Ontario, Canada – Bearings have announced their third album The Best Part About Being Human, due for release on August 18 via Pure Noise Records.
Produced by Sam Guaiana (Silverstein, Between You & Me), the new album features the most tightly honed songwriting of Bearings’ near-decade career, instantly nostalgic for sweaty summer festivals and finger-pointed singalongs while serving as a clear indication of where the pop-punk genre is headed.
“The Best Part About Being Human is being alive and the second best part is writing an upbeat and exciting record with your brothers in a small house in North Hollywood,” says the band. “This record was us figuring out what we really wanted to play live, what got us excited, and I think we found that.”
Alongside the announcement, Bearings have shared their newest single Gone So Gone. On the track, the band explains, “’Gone So Gone’ is about making fun of yourself and your situation. The song really is about heartbreak but by sort of creating it yourself. Sad but sort of funny, as with anything in life I think it’s good to laugh at yourself about it. Why else would I use the word fuss?”
By the time Bearings got the chance to properly tour their sophomore album, 2020’s Hello, It’s You, 16 months had passed due to, well, you know the story. But despite the false starts getting back onto the road, in a roundabout way the delayed gratification might have been the very best thing for the Ottawa-based pop-punk quintet and their passionate fans alike.
“I thought not being able to tour the record would be a death sentence, but it allowed people to sit with the album and connect to it in deeper ways,” says vocalist Dougie Cousins. “When we finally went and did our headline tour in 2022, crowds really knew the songs.”
In the end, Hello, It’s You solidified Bearings’ place as genre mainstays, elevating a tried-and-true pop-punk sound Alternative Press hailed as “dangerously catchy” that “could bring down a summer barbecue, if not a festival,” while their home and native land’s Exclaim! said Bearings had “entered the pop-punk big leagues.”
But as Cousins, guitarists Ryan Culligan and Ryan Fitz, bassist Collin Hanes and drummer Mike McKerracher began work on LP3 (their Pure Noise debut, Blue In The Dark, dropped in 2018) with producer Sam Guaiana (Silverstein, Between You & Me), they channeled their triumphant return to the stage in sweaty U.S. and Canadian clubs, opting for a more minimalistic approach to the songwriting process.
Centering the most elemental, essential qualities of their musicianship without falling into the kid-in-a-candy-store trappings that bog down so many artists, Bearings’ third album for Pure Noise, The Best Part About Being Human, is the sort of record that begs to be played loudly, the sounds of sunny SoCal filtered through the lens of the Great White North.
“We just wanted to make a fun record,” Cousins espouses. “Sometimes when an album is so thought out, it’s got to be as good as American Idiot or it comes off as trying too hard. I think we did new things without sending it into outer space. To me, this record sounds like how I felt when I was in grade 10 listening to blink-182: not too serious, just a good time and able to open up a little circle pit. I think we succeeded in writing songs we can play in a basement or in front of 2,000 people.”
Bearings will be hitting the road in North America with Just Friends, Young Culture and Youth Fountain throughout September and October.

01. Scenery
02. Don’t Wanna Forget About It
03. Gone So Gone
04. Go Long
05. Ocean Dream
06. Howie, You’re A Freak
07. Slip
08. Live Forever Never Die
09. I Want To Heal
10. Human
Long Island upstarts Koyo recently
The fittingly titled Anthem follows lead single You’re On The List (Minus One) (which garnered praise from the likes of Stereogum, BrooklynVegan, Uproxx, Revolver, and more) and provides another jolt of heavyweight guitars and earworm melodies–perfect for stage dives and singalongs at the band’s shows this summer.
Vocalist Joey Chiaramonte discussed the new song, saying: “I feel like so many of the bands we love had songs that celebrate the world they come from. Songs about finding music, hardcore, being inspired to create, those tangible moments that change your life when you’re young and just create an obsession with playing and going to shows. Anthem is our stab at adding to that greater catalog. Specifically, Anthem is more than just addressing personal nostalgia, or coming of age show going experiences. It’s an open letter to everyone out there right now, listening, understanding what I mean and say in that song without having to be walked through it. If you understand it immediately, the song is written about you.”
Emerging from the Long Island underground with members of Typecaste, Hangman, and Rain of Salvation, Koyo hit the ground running with a sonic style that fully embraces the sound of their legendary scene. Drawing on elements like the widescreen melodies of Taking Back Sunday or the tuneful grit of Silent Majority, the band have managed to wear their influences proudly while cultivating songwriting chops that speak for themselves. Would You Miss Is? was recorded by Markson (Drug Church, Taking Meds, One Step Closer) and his deft production sounds gigantic without sacrificing the basement show rawness of Koyo‘s sound. It’s an album that figuratively and literally brings together the past and present of East Coast punk, with appearances from Glassjaw‘s Daryl Palumbo, The Movielife‘s Vinnie Caruana, and Vein.FM‘s Anthony DiDio.
Koyo will be touring heavily in support of Would You Miss It?, with the band currently on the road for an extensive UK and European tour.

01. 51st State
02. You’re On The List (Minus One)
03. Life’s A Pill
04. I Might Not
05. Flatline Afternoon (feat. Anthony DiDio)
06. Anthem
07. Sayonara Motel
08. Message Like A Bomb (feat. Daryl Palumbo)
09. What’s Left To Say (feat. Vinnie Caruana)
10. Postcards
11. Crushed

Since forming in 2020, every single second of music recorded by Koyo has been completely and utterly genuine. Formed in Long Island, New York by five childhood friends who grew up together — vocalist Joseph Chiaramonte, guitarists Harold Griffin and TJ Rotolico, bassist Stephen Spanos, and drummer Salvatore Argento — Koyo’s music is the sound of Stony Brook summers flipping between Taking Back Sunday and Silent Majority while driving to the beach, living in songs that feel just like home. Three years after their formation — and hot on the heels of a slew of acclaimed EPs — Koyo is now taking their next step in the hallowed halls of Long Island hardcore with Would You Miss It?, the band’s debut album. Following in the footsteps of the giants of hardcore, pop-punk, and emo that came before them, Koyo are aware of the weight a debut album carries, and they’ve been slowly crafting it since the band’s earliest days. “We really slow-cooked this record,” says Chiaramonte. “There are songs on it that go back as far as being written just after Painting Words Into Lines came out. Even as we were writing for Drives Out East, we knew certain songs had to be allocated for certain things. We’d just keep them in the bank and develop them over time.”Despite all the planning and tinkering, there’s nothing contrived about Would You Miss It?, because there’s nothing remotely manufactured about Koyo. Every element is a genuine representation of the people creating it, and the album was concocted in the most authentic way possible: with five friends, all together, writing songs. “We have great chemistry as a band and as songwriters,” says Griffin. “That’s the beautiful thing about Koyo, that we can sort of fit into everything. We never try to box ourselves in, because no matter what we do, it will still be us.”
To fully immerse themselves in the recording process, Koyo decamped to a barn in rural New Jersey with producer Jon Markson (Drug Church, Regulate, One Step Closer) and spent six weeks digging into every detail of the record. The product is songs like You’re On The List (Minus One), Message Like A Bomb (ft. Daryl Palumbo), and Anthem, tracks that build upon Koyo’s established foundation, but feel sharper, stronger, and even more singalong ready. “This record was a labor of love,” says Chiaramonte. “Not just because of the work that went into it, but because of all the life experiences that shaped it. The record was a life-fulfilling, life-affirming thing to make, but it hurt a little bit to make, too.”
That’s no metaphor. Nearly every day working with Markson was a marathon 10-hour session with the band poring over every single detail to ensure their debut album met their expectations. Meanwhile, Griffin was learning how to walk again after an onstage accident precipitated a major ankle surgery. “The first week we were at the studio, I was in a wheelchair with my foot up and could not do anything,” says Griffin. “Three of the songs on the album were written from that wheelchair. I had a physical therapist a mile away from the studio, so I learned how to walk while living at this farm for six weeks.”
For Chiaramonte’s part, the lyric writing process forced him to dig deep into himself. Musically, Koyo’s songs flow out of Griffin and Rotolico as naturally as a conversation at an all-night diner but, for Chiaramonte, writing lyrics proved to be a deeply introspective experience. He’d drive somewhere remote and sit for hours with a notepad until what filled the page was an honest, open-hearted sentiment. Life’s A Pill is a prime example, and a perfect encapsulation of the range of emotion Koyo captures throughout each of the tracks on Would You Miss It?.
“That song is about a family member of mine passing away from a drug overdose when I was on my first full U.S. tour,” says Chiaramonte about Life’s A Pill. “Ultimately, I chose to stay on that tour. I didn’t want to grieve. I didn’t want to think about it. It was all so overwhelming that I just opted to shoulder how I was feeling, finish the tour, and deal with it another day. I found that I started to do that with a lot of things because I started to tour full time that year. There were so many interpersonal problems that I was just smothering. That song dives into that. The loss, the avoidance, and what I was doing mirrored what some people turn to drugs for. It’s a giant song about loss and escapism.”
Would You Miss It? is the kind of album that could only be made by a group of self-proclaimed genre-obsessives. It’s why Koyo can seamlessly transition from playing the This Is Hardcore festival to opening for Bayside, because they make perfect sense no matter what bill they’re on. That natural musical dexterity is what fostered collaborations with Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo (Message Like A Bomb), Vinnie Caruana of The Movielife (What’s Left To Say), and Vein.FM’s Anthony DiDio (Flatline Afternoon) on songs where each part was written specifically with the guest vocalist in mind. Each person fits right into Koyo’s musical language, and expresses the range of sounds and feelings the band can express at any given time.
Taken in full, Would You Miss It? is the coming-of-age tale of five friends joining together to take on the world. Fueled by a love for music, and a shared creative bond, Koyo sets the bar for the new wave of Long Island bands. As Chiaramonte notes on Anthem, a lyrical love letter to Long Island scenes of the past, present, and future, “the best is yet to come.” Pay attention, because you won’t want to miss it.
Critically lauded California funk rock band Just Friends has just revealed their highly anticipated fourth full-length album, Gusher, will be released on September 1st with Pure Noise Records. The band’s follow-up to last year’s acclaimed record Hella is the summer jam you’ve been waiting for.
Melding elements of power-pop, punk, funk and hip-hop, Gusher is a confectious party record bursting memorable anthems that are made for singing along. The band has also debuted the album’s first single, Life I’m Living In.
Life I’m Living In is an explosive and heartfelt anthem that celebrates life in all its chaotic stages. The narrative transmutes contending with the growing pains of life into finding liberation and love in the journey. A sobering reflection that develops into peace within the storm.
During lockdown, vocalist Sammy found himself forced to wrestle with the life changes that had, up until then, been left behind without much time to process. Aches and pains from his own actions, as well as actions against him, became an inescapable echo chamber during the mandatory isolation of the pandemic. The only way out was through, and over time, Sammy began to feel relief. What changed? His perspective. His time of reflection taught him that life is messy and it hurts, but the best we can do is offer ourselves and others grace. To move forward with integrity and share joy and Sprite with the people who stick around.
For vocalist Brond, the only constant has been change. An international immigrant, daughter of a single mom, she became accustomed to starting over. In Life I’m Living In, she reflects on the stark contrast between her life before Just Friends, and after. For her, this song is a celebration of just how bright the heart can shine with the right people around. How the most valuable victories in her life are simple-not giving up on herself and recognizing that the love and community around her are enough.
Just Friends will join Bearings, Youth Fountain and Young Culture in September and October this year for an extensive North American run.

01. Zaza In The Sun 🙂
02. Life I’m Living In
03. Brain Hurt Bad
04. Better 2 Be Around
05. Love Bug
06. 5th Dimension
07. Circle Pit of Love
08. Clown on You
09. Cream & Sugar
10. 1-800-Sexy
11. Jump
12. I Miss You, Bitch
13. U & Me

Just Friends, JF Crew, or simply JF is a supersonic music group made up of marching band freaks from the Bay Area. From DIY shows at the Dublin, CA laser tag in 2013 to Chicago’s Riot Fest and beyond, JF has been in it for a minute. Touring, dancing, and writing funky-tasty jams that you, your mama, and your little cousin can groove to. With 4 genre-defiant albums and a spectacular live show, these sweethearts are on a mission to spread love, friendship, and the power to be yourself, worldwide.
Photographer and Editor/Founder of AllMusicMagazine.com. My love of live music has taken me to incredible experiences with the top bands of all time in stadium shows to the smallest venues with equally inspiring musicians. Using the medium of photography and my publication, these memories will last forever.