Welcome to Janky Fresh Friday- the busiest day of the week for artists and labels to drop newly released music. Check in every Friday for a fresh squeeze.
As part of Janky Smooth’s Janky Fresh Friday series, we’ve been comparing two albums that come out on the same day and seemingly have nothing in common- for the sole purpose of discovering the wealth of similarities between two disparate things.
In some respects, it’s an exercise in empathy, learning how to appreciate differences, placing yourself in the shoes of a different subculture, and putting forth an effort to celebrate music as a whole.
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Today’s albums for Friday, October 17th, 2025, are two highly anticipated bangers, one from arguably the most vibrant and prevalent scene in Los Angeles and the other from one of the most iconic artists in psychedelic rock, the former pillar genre of LA’s underground music.
First though, let’s define fresh or freshness. Before the term was ever appropriated for music, culture, or fashion, it was once a descriptor for food, something that replenishes us, quenches our hunger and thirst, and ultimately connects our bodies to the Earth through the newness we experience in that first bite or sip.
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An Ojai pixie orange can be fresh in the summer season. But a band can be fresh too, delivering a similar feeling, that flood of sensory goodness. Only, instead of taste buds, music floods the ears, and with that flavor delivers messages, illustrations, moods, emotions, stories, and abstractions beyond all those things.
Militarie Gun: God Save The Gun (released October 17, 2025): Loma Vista Recordings
Grabbing at the ambitious and abstract, Militarie Gun’s “God Save The Gun” is titled to ensure its iconic status. A band wouldn’t go out on a limb and reference the most important punk band of all time without meaning business.
Coming in at 14 songs, the album encapsulates the rapture of hitting that first day of spring or falling in summer love but packages it for the time of year those vibes are most needed, winter. Winter in Los Angeles isn’t winter anywhere else in the world though. We don’t want coziness out of a winter album; we want reverie, lamenting loss, and jumping into new possibilities. The sounds on “God Save The Gun” give you all that and so much more.
Don’t miss Militarie Gun live this October
10/25 –Hotel Zoso Palm Springs
Blasting out the gate with B.A.D. I.D.E.A., a title meant to be spelled out by a crowd, the band continues its tradition of making celebratory hardcore that communities can chant together, even if you’re just hearing it in your head while alone. The album takes on a kinetic feel, perfect for skating, with songs like Fill Me With Paint, which features tones you might recognize via a Mandela Effect from early 2000s music.
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The album then turns sonically and lyrically self-reflective with Throw Me Away, a song about not wanting change. There’s probably no better snapshot of youth than wishing someone or something would stay the same or believing it could. It’s only with age that we learn everything changes. So, if you ever find someone under the impression that things don’t need to, you’ve found someone eternally young.
One of the singles released ahead of Friday, God Owes Me Money, stands apart as the perfect landmark between hardcore’s future and present. With so much inspiration now coming from ambient, electronica, and lo-fi hip hop sounds, hardcore has evolved so far from its original incarnation that someday it might sound nothing like the New York hardcore associated with tattoos, baseball bats, slam dancing, or gang vocals. Like Turnstile’s more recent sonic expressions, this song soaks up so much Los Angeles sunshine and inspiration that it both embodies and deepens the city’s vibe.
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The Los Angeles hardcore-meets-Oasis worship gets laid on thick with Daydream, recalling post-hardcore ballads like Fugazi’s “I’m So Tired,” but for a new generation of emotional fans of tough music. When the string section enters the chat, you become nostalgic for a time when rock music was this ambitious, trying to feed the soul rather than just give people something catchy to headbang or sing to.
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Militarie Gun’s brand of hardcore feels like a swell of light, a positive vibration that overwhelms the senses with waves of goodness. While caught in their flow, it’s impossible not to bounce between emotions and memories, both good and bad. Their sound has an uncanny ability to make looking back at sour moments feel somehow pleasant and positive in retrospect. It’s the most detaching, beautiful process, listening to “God Save The Gun”.
Tame Impala: Deadbeat (released October 17, 2025): Columbia Records
Meanwhile, attempting to find a connection to an artist from a different generation, creating music across an ocean and from a totally different scene, Tame Impala’s “Deadbeat” captures self-reflection from a more mature standpoint. Now a parent, Kevin Parker features his child on the album cover, centering the most meaningful thing in his life for all who enter his album to see.
Don’t miss Tame Impala live this November
11/9 – Pechanga Arena SD
11/11 – Kia Forum
11/12 – Kia Forum
Still beloved for his early deep-psych efforts, Parker’s music retains its psychedelic vibration while evolving into more electronic, disco-infused territory. Perhaps the most crucial connection between Tame Impala and Militarie Gun is that Tame Impala is the Steely Dan of psych rock, just as Militarie Gun is the Steely Dan of hardcore.
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Opening “Deadbeat” with My Old Ways, Tame Impala makes working through trauma sound incredibly danceable. That same theme of self-reflection runs through numerous songs, giving listeners the sense of being a fly on the wall in a studio therapy session. On No Reply, Parker apologizes for leaving someone on read, then describes the internal anxiety he feels whenever they reach out to him. It’s funny how describing a phone interaction can come across as personal, tender, and honest as it does here.
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Some songs, like Not My World, lose any need for deep lyrics and put all the emphasis on vibe. This track, for instance, sheds much of the psychedelic flavor underground heads expect from Tame Impala in favor of a more techno sound that a world full of know-nothings could dance to in the club.
Piece of Heaven is Parker’s most confessional song on the album. The reason his music may feel less connected to the scene that carried him early in his career is that he’s moved on, focusing on the pleasures of personal life, namely fatherhood.
“Now there is a whole world
Going on out there
Whatever I’m missing out on
In here, I don’t care”
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Young artists always feel a need to deliver something their fans and communities will love. But someone in Kevin Parker’s position, who has nothing left to prove, can simply sit back, chill, and create music that may not be as revelatory as his previous work but still hits in the most meaningful places because it’s about the people he loves most.
The most interesting conversation between these two albums lies in how we self-reflect when we’re young versus when we’re older. When there are more years behind us than ahead, we look back differently, almost apathetically, accepting that nothing can change. But when we’re young, we’re still deeply affected by everything we’ve been through, desperate to rewrite moments we wish had gone another way.
Militarie Gun is in the throes of growing pains, experiencing an evolution before our eyes and carrying an entire scene on their backs as they change. My guess is this will be a touchstone in the history of modern hardcore, informing how the genre sounds for years to come. Meanwhile, no artist is more familiar with evolution and dragging entire subcultures along for the ride than Tame Impala. Perhaps the boys in Militarie Gun can listen to Kevin Parker’s new album and glimpse their own future through his music.
“God Save The Gun” is Militarie Gun’s “Currents”, and hardcore should strap in and prepare to ride with the band to the highest peaks of musical accomplishment.
Words by Rob Shepyer
Photos by David Evanko, Taylor Wong, Albert Licano
