Photo Credit: Peter Rasmussen
New EP Rotten In The Brain Releases July 22, 2026
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Public Stream EP July 22, 2026
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Astoria, Oregon’s The Something Ain’t Rights release their debut EP Rotten In The Brain on July 22 via Hovercraft Records. Across nine tracks of punk, post-punk, country twang, and high-energy rock and roll, the band draws a crooked line from early hardcore matinees at CBGB to the current state of America. The result is a record that feels restless, sharp-eyed, and earned. Equal parts barroom philosophy, protest soundtrack, and backroad punk rock, Rotten In The Brain arrives from musicians whose roots stretch through decades of underground scenes in New York, Washington DC, Austin, New Orleans, Eugene, Portland, and now the Oregon coast. At the center of the band is vocalist and guitarist Mike Vasquez, longtime owner and engineer of Austin’s legendary Sweatbox Studio. Over the years, Vasquez recorded hundreds of independent artists, working with names like Mark Arm, Paul Leary, Alejandro Escovedo, Tim Kerr, Mooney Suzuki, Toys That Kill, and Lungfish while building a reputation throughout the punk and garage rock underground. After relocating to Astoria and assembling a lineup that includes drummer Carrie Beveridge, bassist Alpha Rasmussen, and guitarist Dan McClure, The Something Ain’t Rights emerged as an outlet for the band’s shared love of punk’s more adventurous corners. The quartet also performs together as Astoria punk outfit Beta Voids, swapping instruments here to explore a broader palette of influences. While the group pulls inspiration from icons like X, The Minutemen, Pere Ubu, The Gun Club, and Wire, Rotten In The Brain refuses to sit comfortably in any one genre. Country influences drift through angular post-punk rhythms. Hardcore urgency collides with roots rock grit. The songs feel less like nostalgia and more like a conversation between past and present.
That tension runs throughout the EP. Tracks like “Rotten In The Brain” and “Plymouth of Fury” channel frustration, urgency, and dark humor into wiry, high-energy punk, while “Gas Station Angel” and “Rainbow Alley” reveal a broader palette shaped as much by American roadways and small-town characters as underground clubs and DIY venues. The band’s chemistry comes from wildly different musical paths converging in the same room. Vasquez’s rhythmic guitar work carries traces of Texas punk and post-punk minimalism, while McClure’s playing brings the raw force of the West Coast hardcore scene that shaped him in the early 1980s. Rasmussen’s punchy bass lines and Beveridge’s swinging, unpredictable drumming give the songs a constant sense of motion.
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Recorded and mixed by Vasquez at Cannon Deck Recording in Astoria during the winter of 2025-26, the project was originally intended to become a sprawling 29-song LP. Those plans changed abruptly when Vasquez was seriously injured in a highway accident midway through the process. During recovery, the band shifted course, deciding that the first nine completed songs would stand on their own as a debut release. The circumstances surrounding the recording left the band with a leaner, more focused statement than originally planned, one that captures the immediacy of the moment it was made.
The EP’s cover image provides another glimpse into the band’s origins. The photograph was taken by Vasquez across the street from CBGB during his first hardcore show in 1983, a formative moment that helped shape his lifelong connection to punk music and underground culture. That spirit still runs through The Something Ain’t Rights today. Their songs wrestle with frustration, uncertainty, and cultural decay, but they do so with wit, humanity, and the stubborn belief that music still matters. Rotten In The Brain is not the work of musicians revisiting old glories. It’s the sound of punk lifers continuing the conversation. Fueled by decades of experience, a deep connection to underground culture, and an unwillingness to look away from the world around them, The Something Ain’t Rights have delivered a debut that feels timely, unpredictable, and entirely their own.
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