THE ALBUM'S DONE. THE YEAR'S JUST BEGINNING.
A FIRST POST.
I’m sort of dumbfounded. I’m done writing and recording the debut Negative Agent album. That’s… wild. Wild enough to get me to finally start a band newsletter, in fact.
A PRELUDE.
A year ago, when right-wing America shat their leader into the White House for a second time, I was struck with a mix of despair, disbelief, horror, and, more than anything else, anger. Without any coherent plan for how I’d handle the next four years, I grabbed my guitar, turned on all my synths, and for the first time in a really, really long time, began to write music. It was the only way I could deal with the rage. My nerves were raw and screaming, and I needed to somehow capture that, shape it, and spit it back out.
Now it’s the first day of 2026. The last year of dystopian hell was brought to us by a shit-heel president and his administration of psychotic sycophants (psycho-phants?); an out-of-control tech industry with a kinky AI fetish; billionaires who buy power and invulnerability; science- and medical-denying zombies who’re convinced that some dude making TikTok videos in his monster truck knows more than the experts; war and genocide; and the usual collection of racists, transphobes, homophobes, sexists, religious fanatics, and straight-up goddamn neo-nazis. I mean, what the absolute fuck?
Through it all, working on this music helped me, as Columbia sings in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, “stay sane inside insanity.” It was a way to focus. And now, with the year finished, I find myself with an honest-to-goodness album.
WHAT THE FUCK DID I MAKE?
I guess it’s an angry album, but it’s also kind of a funny one, too. Well, I think it’s kind of funny. (I’ve got a song called “Fascist Beatdown,” and punching fascists is good, clean comedy, right?) I hope that it’s also a record people have fun with. That’s weird to say, but aggressive music helps us work through darker emotions, whether we’re writing it or performing it or dancing to it or just blasting it at dangerous volumes from our car stereo. A bunch of these songs are meant for the club dance floors, and I hope they find a home there so people can stomp and sweat and feel some sort of explosion of energy that’ll help them get through the night.
I don’t want to say too much more about the album yet. I still have a couple steps before it’s ready to release, and I want to save some thoughts for when it drops (in early in 2026). In the meantime, all the song demos are still available to stream for free on Ampwall and Bandcamp. (At least until the album comes out.)
I’M NOT DEAD YET.
As rough as it’s been, 2025 wasn’t all bad. Making music in Negative Agent introduced me to a whole community of local musicians and gave me a scene I haven’t been part of since… I don’t know. Longer than I care to admit, for sure. It’s helped me get better at making my music, and many of the people in it have become friends. And thinking about it now, it occurs to me that this kind of community is exactly the thing fascists and tech bros and billionaires and all the horrible people hate. It’s built on kindness, mutual respect, creativity, empathy, humility, support, curiosity, inclusion, and artistic vitality. It’s everything they’re not, and it’s made me very happy. Okay, not happy enough to start writing ska love songs, but still pretty damn happy.
We’ve survived 2025. And I might be a little battered, a little bruised, but I’m looking forward to roaring into 2026. Because I know we’re ready to fight whatever those motherfuckers throw at us.
-Brian
Negative Agent