A lot’s changed for Mike Sosinski in the past four years, and none of it has been normal.
Mike’s long-running ska-punk band Kill Lincoln were recording their 2020 album Can’t Complain–which was their first full-length album in seven years–the day the world shut down due to COVID lockdown, and when it came out August of that year, the expectation was that it would be embraced by the small-yet-tight-knit ska community and probably no one else. Instead, a widespread discussion about the renewed interest in ska took off as we were all in lockdown, and Kill Lincoln and Mike’s then-relatively new label Bad Time Records found themselves at the center of it.
Kill Lincoln came up during the ska dark ages of the late 2000s and 2010s, when ska was usually mocked or ignored, and it was a huge struggle to get people to pay attention to new ska bands. After forming strong bonds with some of the best DIY ska bands in the US and even around the world, he started Bad Time in 2018 as a way to help his friends put out records, and the label quickly became home to We Are The Union, Catbite, Bad Operation, Omnigone, The Best of the Worst, Joystick, and a handful of other great ska bands who got started long after the genre’s American mainstream boom had died down. When curiosity about ska rose in the 2020s, Bad Time’s roster became the place that so many music fans agreed was the best place to start. Bad Time spent the next few years releasing crossover successes like We Are The Union’s Ordinary Life, Catbite’s Nice One, and JER’s Bothered / Unbothered, and in 2023, the label put together the Bad Time Records Tour, a package tour co-headlined by Kill Lincoln, We Are The Union, and Catbite–with support from other bands on the label varying by date–and proved that this new generation of ska bands could come together to sell out thousand-capacity venues on their own, without one of the big ’90s bands headlining. It’s a feat that’s even more impressive when you consider that, just four years earlier, the same lineup of Kill Lincoln, WATU, and Catbite toured together to crowds that were less than a quarter of the size.
The Bad Time Records team also took a camera crew out on that 2023 tour, and the tour became the setting for This Is New Tone, a documentary-meets-concert film about this new generation of ska bands named after a play on the words “Two Tone” that D-Ray from Bad Operation came up with to describe his own band’s music. D-Ray didn’t intend for the word to become the name of a greater movement, and it’s clear from watching This Is New Tone that some of the bands involved just see it as yet another label, but the interviews with audience members at the gigs show that “New Tone” has come to really mean something to them. A lot of the people interviewed said they were seeing their first ska show that night, and, when asked about their favorite ska bands of all time, a lot of people named Bad Time bands. Plenty of ska lifers were in attendance and interviewed too, but you really see in the film that there’s a new, diverse, inclusive community of music fans who are falling in love with ska because of what these bands are doing right now.
The time between Can’t Complain‘s release and The Bad Time Records Tour was a whirlwind for Mike Sosinski, and, throughout it all, he never had the time or energy to write Kill Lincoln songs. It wasn’t until Kill Lincoln and Catbite went over to Japan in the fall of 2023 to tour with two of Japan’s best ska bands, Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra and HEY-SMITH, that the fire was lit under Mike’s ass to finally write a new Kill Lincoln record. “I know it’s cliché to say it was a life-changing experience but it really was,” Mike says of the tour. “To be treated with so much respect, and to see those crowds, to know that it could be possible to play this aggressive ska-punk music and there could be all these people that not just appreciate it but just fucking like, going wild over it… all I kept thinking about was like, ‘Wow, we need new music that reflects who we are now.'”
Kill Lincoln got back home in November, spent the next couple months writing, and they returned to San Jose’s District Recording in March–exactly four years after Can’t Complain was recorded in the same location–to bang out their new album No Normal. It finds Kill Lincoln sounding even faster and more fired-up than they did on their last LP; you can just feel how it was inspired by the energy of a great tour and the urge to get back out there as quickly as possible and play this new batch of songs. The album title is a cheeky pun about “every stupid pundit” that declared post-COVID life as “the new normal,” and it doubled as a description of everything Kill Lincoln, Bad Time Records, the ska scene, and Mike as an individual went through in the past four years.
“[‘New normal’ is] such a dumb fucking phrase,” Mike says. “First of all, nothing feels normal, and what’s new about it? There’s no new normal; it wasn’t normal before, it’s not normal now. So, I kept saying to myself ‘No Normal,’ and I was like, Oh! That sounds like a Kill Lincoln song! It stuck in my head and it really kind of summed up this whole theme of the past four years–that’s that’s really what the record’s about. None of this is normal.”
Mike says that he looked to some of Kill Lincoln’s earlier records while writing this one to reconnect with what made this band special in the first place, and they reworked some ideas that they’d abandoned over a decade ago. But it was also a core goal to make sure that this album reflected the band that Kill Lincoln is today. Their current lineup debuted on Can’t Complain, and they’ve got even more chemistry now after touring for three straight years. Saxophonist/vocalist Matt “Food” Ellis sings more, Yasutaka “Ume” Umemoto sings lead on a song written for the band by Mike Park (“Coming or Going”), and bassist CJ Uy–who was a guitar player before joining Kill Lincoln–began finding himself as a bass player. Even Drew Skibitsky, the band’s hypeman, can be heard dancing on the record (more about that below).
The first single from No Normal is opening track “I’m Fine (I Lied),” which is the perfect way to kick this album off and also an instant-classic Kill Lincoln song. It’s a high-speed, super-catchy ska-punk ripper that channels Kill Lincoln’s usual influences (Less Than Jake, Suicide Machines, Catch 22, etc) and sounds as fresh and powerful today as those bands did back then.
“The lyrics to the chorus and the melody is one of those things that like, I couldn’t tell you where it came from; one day it was just there and I was just singing it,” Mike says. “I sang it to the band once and they were like, ‘Oh wow, that’s the single.’ Everyone was excited to just sing that chorus when we play it live, and we’ve started playing it live a couple of times. That song kind of sums up the internal struggle of like, you don’t want to burden people with your problems–or at least I don’t–and I feel bad putting my real stuff on people when they ask, ‘How are you doing?’ It’s just easy to be like, ‘I’m fine, it’s all good, everything’s fine.’ And usually for most of us, it’s not. There’s gonna be something that’s fucked up in your life. But for me, trying to explain it, especially to a bigger group of people if we’re at a show or something, it just causes more anxiety to explain what’s going on than to just act like nothing’s wrong.”
“I feel like it was the easiest Kill Lincoln song I ever wrote,” he adds. “It just all kind of popped in there one day. There’s nothing crazy about it, it’s pretty simple, but it’s really fun to play live and I think it kind of sums up the vibe we’re going for for the rest of the record.”
Check out the Rae Mystic-directed video for “I’m Fine (I Lied)” below, and catch Kill Lincoln on tour this summer and fall. They’ll link back up with Japan’s HEY-SMITH in September on what will be a rare US tour for the latter, and that’s in support of The Suicide Machines with additional support from Bad Operation. That tour hits NYC on September 12 at Brooklyn Made with Canadian ska vets The Planet Smashers also on the bill, and Kill Lincoln also play NJ’s Salty’s Beach Bar on September 14 with The Upfux. All dates are listed below.
This Is New Tone also has screenings coming up in Chicago, Dallas, Arlington, and Baltimore this month, with more TBA.
Read on for more of my chat with Mike about the new Kill Lincoln album and This Is New Tone…
Being that you’re putting this record out at the same time as the This Is New Tone film that documents pretty much everything that’s happened in the ska scene since your last record, how do you reflect on these last four years for the ska community, Kill Lincoln as a band, Bad Time Records as a label, and/or you personally?
It’s such an overwhelming question because so many things have changed, and that’s sort of the theme of the record. The movie was trying to capture that moment, right? Like, last year felt so important–the fact that we had Catbite and Kill Lincoln and We Are The Union, all together on whatever trajectories they’re on. Like I joke that Catbite’s on this trajectory [signals upwards motion] and WATU’s on this trajectory [ditto] and Kill Lincoln’s like Oh, whatever… [laughs]. We caught us all at the same moment, so I wanted to document that. But then the record is sort of like reflecting on all that. Like, so much has changed, but balancing all that good stuff with all the fucking horrible stuff that has also happened. So it’s like how to be content with all of the progress that we made as a scene, and a community, and a band, and as a group of friends, with all of the not-so-great changes and the terrible things that have happened in the world–it’s not even enough to call it a fucked-up political climate anymore, it’s just off the deep end as far as I’m concerned. A lot of people come to me and are like, “Wow, like, aren’t you so proud? Congratulations on the movie, and on going to Japan, and on the bunch of sold-out shows on your tour,’ and I’m like, ‘Thanks, but it’s hard to just be happy about it,’ you know? It’s been such a mix of good and bad, and even the good stuff feels bad sometimes and even the bad stuff is like, ‘Oh well, a lot of good things happened during it.’
With Can’t Complain being a breakthrough to some extent, did you feel any level of new pressure writing a follow-up?
A fuck ton, yeah. And the pressure wasn’t even… I wasn’t thinking about Can’t Complain so much; the pressure I felt was from wanting to reflect the band as it is. I was like painting a picture of who we are now. But then also the pressure is like, I’ve been listening to these fucking awesome albums for the past four years, like since we did Can’t Complain, and between Catbite and Omingone and Bad Operation and everybody–everyone’s been putting out such good music and I’ve just been listening to them. And I know other band members from other bands on the label have told me that has inspired them. Like, ‘Oh, I heard We Are The Union come out with [Ordinary Life], I was inspired by that. That made me wanna write more.’ It inspires me but it also just makes me nervous. I feel like people are like, ‘Oh well, what qualifies you in the first place to put out all of these amazing people’s music?’ And I don’t feel qualified [laughs], so that has kept me from writing too.
The song “Coming or Going,” Ume sings it and Mike Park wrote it. What’s the story behind that?
So, [Mike Park] was asking, ‘Oh, when’s Kill Lincoln doing their next record?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna try to do something at the end of the year.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, you should record at District,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I do wanna record at District,’ which is right by Mike’s house. And he just hit me up out of the blue because he knew we were working on it and he was like, ‘Can I write a song for you guys?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! Of course you can!’ You know, because he’s done that for a bunch of bands, he did that for Catbite recently, he’s done it for Link 80 and Slapstick, he’s written songs for everybody, so it was a huge honor to have him even consider that.
So anyway, he sent this amazingly low-quality phone demo of him just playing it on an out-of-tune guitar and we just kind of transformed it. I knew I didn’t want to sing it, because it didn’t feel like it was necessarily in my voice, so the thought at first was to have Food sing it because he sings a couple of tracks on the album. But then we were talking, and it dawned on us that Ume should give it a shot. Ume writes a ton of his own music–at some point he’s gonna have a solo project come out, ’cause he writes great stuff and he’s a great singer–and we were like, ‘Ume, why don’t you just sing it?’ He idolizes Mike Park, he was really excited, so he was like, ‘Yeah!’ And of course when we went to record it, we were at District Recording for a week, and Mike kept saying ‘I’ll stop by the studio at some point’ and we were like ‘Yeah, cool.’ And the moment he stopped by was right as we were about to record the vocals for that song. So Ume’s in the booth as Mike Park walks in, and he’s just like, ‘FUCK! Like, you really want me to do this now? While he’s here?’ And we’re like, ‘Yeah dude! You gotta do it!’ And to make it even worse, Ume has this really intense fear of frogs, and we told Mike ’cause there was a big frog statue in the studio. So Mike Park’s like holding up the frog statue in the window of the booth as Ume’s trying to sing the song, and he’s just singing it and shielding his eyes. It was just a totally bizarre thing, but awesome for Ume.
What do you most hope people take away from this record?
I hope they have fun listening to it! I hope it gets them fucking fired up, I hope it’s a good running record–I always think about that ’cause I run a lot and I want something to get me pumped up. I hope it makes people excited to come experience our live show. I hope it teaches people a little bit about who’s in this band, like I feel like you can really feel the band members’ presence so much more. CJ… like on Can’t Complain, he was like, ‘Yeah, I can be a bass player, sure.’ ‘Cause he’s a fucking incredible guitar player, but now he’s like really leaning into what he can contribute to ska bass, and I feel like he blends so many things together, so many styles. There’s funk, and he was trying to introduce dub elements to some of his line, and a lot of 2 Tone, like walking bass stuff. He’s throwing it all in there.
And I feel like you really hear Food in there, he sings more, he gets more of his mind into his vocals. And Ume of course. Tyler’s drum parts are like the best fucking like drums he’s ever… I don’t know, he just really fucking nailed it on this record. We even had Drew in there–on the track “All Worries,” there’s a little break at the end of it and we recorded Drew like dancing in the studio, so it’s like his shoes squeaking and then him jumping. That was a goal, we were like, ‘We gotta get Drew on the record somehow.’ And he sings a lot of the backup vocals too. So I just hope people get that we’re a unit.
So because This Is New Tone documents the last five years of the US ska scene, where do you think the scene goes from here?
I wonder that all the fucking time. I wish I knew.
I don’t know, I feel like a lot of people have this idea from Bad Time, or even from the movie, that we’ve all made it, you know? It’s like, ‘Oh we’re good! Ska’s back, baby!’ But it’s still a fucking struggle in so many ways. The film was documenting the biggest success collectively we’ve ever had, and it worked because we literally all united, like Catbite, WATU, Kill Lincoln, all the opening bands, we all worked together 100% to make that happen. But individually, it’s still really hard. So I just hope that people get excited by the movie, and get excited by this music and continue to get excited to support the scene. I felt like we had a little bit of underdog energy a couple of years ago that really helped, and now people don’t see us as the “underdog,” you know? They’re like, ‘Oh… that’s a Bad Time band or whatever.’ Yeah but like… it’s still the bottom of the food chain when it comes to DIY or punk music or whatever [laughs]. Which is fine, we’ve always been there, we’re comfortable there, we’re getting opportunities that we’ve never gotten before and it’s amazing and I’m grateful, but it’s hard. So I just want it to keep going and keep growing. I’ve always wanted it to just be sustainable for some of these bands. I wanted it to be possible for some of the bands to just be bands, and exist off of their music.
And we’re so close, with a band like Catbite, and a musician who works so hard like JER. But all of us are still hustling. Like me especially, I’ve taken more part-time jobs this year than I’ve ever had to. I had to go back to doing a lot of freelance work, because it’s tough. It’s hard to make ends meet right now with music. So, we’ve made a lot of progress but there’s a long way to go, and I just want it to keep moving forward. I don’t want things to crawl to a halt or move backwards. I’d like in the next five years for Bad Time to still exist, and I would love for more bands in this scene to be able to sustain themselves with their music.
What surprised you most while making the film, and/or what surprised you most about the way that ska has changed in the past five years?
The thing that surprised me most about making the film was how hard it is to make a film [laughs]. I’ve worked in video for a long time–that was my full-time job before Bad Time–so I’ve done a lot of short-form video, and I’ve worked on documentary and film stuff, but I’ve never just done it all. And yeah, it’s a lot. It’s hard just to be on a tour, you know? It’s hard to be a person on a tour in a van with a crazy schedule, but then to also be constantly filming, constantly dealing with logistics and production–all this stuff. So shout out to Rae Mystic, G Leonardo, Alec Pugliese, Becca Prucha, Brandon Benson, Rick Johnson–[everyone] who worked so hard.
And the second part of your question, if 2019 me saw the shows we were playing in this film, I’d be like, ‘Well who’s the headliner?’ That was like the big running joke, like every night we were asking each other, ‘Who’s headlining tonight? Like is Suicide Machines showing up? Is Less Than Jake here?’ And it’s like, ‘Nope! It’s WATU tonight! Nope! It’s Catbite tonight!’ You watch that footage of We Are The Union at Saint Andrew’s Hall and it would be fair to be like, ‘Oh cool, well who’s headlining? Who’s up next?’ It’s like, no, that video of them doing “Morbid Obessions” was the last song at Saint Andrew’s. Like that was it, that was them, that was their show. That’s fucking crazy, Saint Andrew’s is huge! The other thing that’s crazy is, every other band that wasn’t Kill Lincoln, Catbite, or WATU–like [J. Navarro &] the Traitors, The Pomps, Thirsty Guys, Joystick–you look at the crowds for them, they were all the opening bands on this tour, usually first of four and sometimes first of five, and the rooms were full. I wouldn’t have believed that we could do a tour with five ska bands some nights–usually four–and from doors, in a city like Atlanta where I have played to zero people twice, that the room would be full from the first band. I would not have believed that at all.
I liked that the film not only put a spotlight on ska but also showed what DIY is all about in general, like with [Bad Time’s booking agent Brent Friedman] talking in the beginning of the film about how he got his start booking shows through DIY.
Yeah, it was super, super, super important to me to start the movie with Brent, because of that line where he says like, ‘Here’s why we do this the way we do it, it’s because no one helped us, we didn’t know what to do, and we really cared about this stuff, so we figured it out.’ And it’s like, that’s the whole story of Bad Time and our ska scene. No one wanted to help us, that’s fine, we fucking figured it out. And that’s DIY, that’s the whole thing. Like that’s why DIY labels and bands exist, and I hope that specifically inspires some people, ’cause it inspired the fuck out of me. And that’s why I wanted to have like someone like Mike Park in the movie, because he is truly one of these people that has turned DIY into a success story, and he talks about how fucking crazy that is, and how it doesn’t make any sense, and how it’s like he won the lottery, and how hard it is. And yeah, like, DIY is not a path to riches and success, it’s a path to fulfillment. Like, if Bad Time fails, if I go bankrupt or whatever, at least I know that I fucking did this myself. I gave it my all, I gave it my best effort, and I just tried to figure it out. So I’ll always know that, and I’ll always feel good about that no matter what happens.
Who are one or two newer ska bands, especially if they’re maybe not on Bad Time, that you think people should be listening to?
I don’t think they’re super new, but I just saw Sorry Sweetheart in Denver, and they were fucking great. Pop punk with cookie monster vocals and ska parts, it was truly excellent. I wanna shout out Kayleigh Malloy, [who makes music as] Kmoy. I think what Kayleigh is doing is really fucking brilliant, and she adds such an interesting element to Catbite’s live show [as a touring keyboardist]. The first Kmoy record is fantastic, and I think Kayleigh is super fucking talented.
In your opinion, most underrated ska-punk album of all time?
I think it’s Good Luck by Big D and the Kids Table, because I think Big D is one of the most underrated ska-punk bands of all time, like just period. They’re that band who was always opening for the Less Than Jakes and the Reel Big Fishes and getting on the tours, but they didn’t get that sweet spot of that big ’90s fame. And Good Luck was just a pivotal, like… when I think about the albums that really inspired me, it’s Let’s Face It, Keasbey Nights, and Good Luck was an album I listened to over and over and over again. When I talk about capturing energy, when I listen to Good Luck, I feel like I’m at Skate and Surf Fest in 2003, and I’m in the hall watching Big D and just dancing my ass off. I can’t help but feel that way, and when they play those old songs, to this day, I’m in the pit. When they’re playing “5 Kids Down,” I’m there, I can’t help it. Those songs just make me wanna dance. That album epitomizes just funneling your live energy into the record.
Anything else to add about the Kill Lincoln record or This Is New Tone that we haven’t touched on?
They probably won’t, but all the people who like talk shit about “New Tone” or whatever, like, if you watch the movie and you really watch it with with an open mind, and you listen to what the people are saying–not the people in the bands, but the people in the crowd, like listen to what they’re saying about this scene, and this term–and if you come away from that shitting on the idea of New Tone, I think you need to check yourself. It’s important to people in a way that I didn’t expect, and that was the most powerful thing about the movie to me. We didn’t tell these people what New Tone was, we didn’t explain it to them, and everybody had a different idea about it and they made it up themselves. They all had different ideas about it, and all of them were valid, and all of them were cool, and all of them were inspiring. So like, I was less interested in what the bands thought New Tone was than what the audience thought it was, and the audience had a very clear picture–a lot of them did–and I think that’s special. D-Ray came up with a cool word and we were like, ‘Cool, we’re gonna use that,’ and people have grasped onto it. And that says to me that people were looking for something to help them sum this up and, if that helps them sum this up, then I think that’s great.
Tracklist
1. I’m Fine (I Lied)
2. Stinkbug
3. All Worries
4. Planted
5. Little Ghosts
6. Roll Me Away
7. Buried Alive
8. Coming Or Going
9. Never Getting Better
10. Simple Answer
11. No Normal
Kill Lincoln — 2024 Tour Dates
Aug 8th — Dallas TX @ Trees^
Aug 9th — San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger^*
Aug 10th — Austin, TX @ Empire Garage^*
Sep 5th — Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line^*
Sep 6th — Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge^
Sep 7th — Detroit, MI @ St Andrew’s Hall^
Sep 8th — Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop^
Sep 10th — Buffalo, NY @ Buffalo Iron Works^
Sep 11th — Pittsburgh, PA @ Spirit Hall^
Sep 12th — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Made^#
Sep 13th — Philadelphia, PA @ TLA^*#
Sep 14th – Lake Como, NJ @ Salty’s Beach Bar~
Oct 11th — Tacoma, WA @ Elks Temple%
Oct 12th — Eugene, OR @ McDonald Theatre%
Oct 14th — Sacramento, CA @ Ace Of Spades%
Oct 15th — Santa Cruz, CA @ The Catalyst%
Oct 16th — Ventura, CA @ Ventura Theater%
Oct 17th — San Diego, CA @ The Observatory North Park%
Oct 18th — Las Vegas, NV @ Fremont Country Club%
Oct 19th — Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole%
Oct 26th — Gainesville, FL @ FEST
Oct 27th — Gainesville, FL @ FEST
* = supporting Big D and the Kids Table
^ = supporting The Suicide Machines (with Hey-Smith and Bad Operation)
# = supporting The Planet Smashers
% = supporting Less Than Jake
~ = with The Upfux
This Is New Tone Screenings (more TBA)
8/6 Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village (early and late shows)
8/7 Dallas, TX @ Three Links
8/22 Arlington, MA @ Capitol Theater
8/29 Baltimore, MD @ Charles Theater