Dead Best Second
Dead Best takes the raw pandemic expressions of two punk veterans and refines them into a ripping 13 tracks. Exhuming deep anxieties through pummeling guitars and frantic, distorted vocals, the LP is a brief but clear profile of Goren and Sokel’s combined creative voice. Long time friends Adam Goren and Brian Sokel followed interwoven paths through the Philadelphia punk scene in the late 90’s and early 2000s. While Sokel brought riffs to the dub and hardcore blending Franklin and was the primary songwriter and multi-instrumentalist for AM/FM, releasing a number of albums on Polyvinyl Records, Goren was playing in punk bands Fracture and Armalite, and exploring the use of sequencers in his eccentric solo project Atom and His Package. In their respective projects the two toured the US and Canada together, released each other’s music on self-run labels, and Goren would even pay tribute to Sokel’s band on the Atom and His Package track “For Franklin”. Second is the follow up to their 2021 self titled debut LP.