Vic Bondi & His Issues

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The title of Vic Bondi’s 27th release, Vic Bondi And His Issues (May 25th, Alternative Tentacles) might come off as self-deprecation but in reality, it’s closer to diagnosis. Nearl y four decades after helping define politically literate American hardcore, Bondi is less interested in nostalgia than in accountability: personal, historical, and national. Asked what keeps him making music, Bondi kicks it straight: “A beating heart, a tin ear, and raw stubbornness.” That might sound like a joke, but there’s a truth to it. Stubbornness, in Bondi’s case, has always meant refusing to let power go unexamined. Written in Seattle and recorded over two days at Soundhouse Recording Studio, both the sound and the lineup are lean and deliberate. Immediate, enthralling, and crafted with razor precision, its name (bestowed by Jello Biafra) winks at confession while pointing squarely at the culture. Bondi’s political lens was formed early. The son of a U.S. Navy captain, he moved twenty-two times before turning eighteen. “When you grow up military, you move every two years or so, whether you want to or not,” he says. “So, no matter how formidable your father might seem, someone else is actually calling the shots in a way that affects you directly, especially if you're a kid.” That instability, he explains, “predisposes you to a healthy skepticism about authority figures.” Bondi has been mining that skepticism for decades, emerging as a founding force behind Chicago’s early-’80s hardcore movement with Articles of Faith. Formed in 1981 (initially as Direct Drive), the band pivoted toward thrash after Bondi witnessed the incendiary force of Bad Brains. Articles of Faith fused breakneck velocity, dub inflection, and sheets of noise with lyrics that rejected nihilism in favor of structural critique. Their two EPs (What We Want Is Free and Wait) and two LPs (Give Thanks and In This Life – both produced by Bob Mould), helped codify a strain of hardcore that was both intellectually engaged and sonically confrontational. Following the 1985 breakup of Articles of Faith, Bondi spent time in Jones Very and Alloy, and later fronted both Report Suspicious Activity (feat. J Robbins of Jawbox), Dead Ending (with Derek Grant of Alkaline Trio and Joe Principe of Rise Against), and Tom Morello’s Weatherman project. In 2019 Bondi formed "surf band for the apocalypse" Redshift, who’s most recent release, Chaos As Planned, came out 2025. At the same time, Bondi was pursuing an academic path that paralleled (and sharpened) his artistic one. He graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago in 1985 and later earned a PhD in history from Boston University in 1992, teaching at Boston University, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the University of New Hampshire. If skepticism once fueled inquiry, Bondi suggests the present moment demands escalation. “The current leadership in this country is well past skepticism and is making its way rapidly to grotesque calamity (at best),” he says. “So, it seemed like another record was due.” That sense of necessity pulses through Vic Bondi And His Issues. The record doesn’t posture as protest music in the nostalgic sense; it is very much of the moment. After 27 releases, Bondi is not revisiting old battlegrounds; he’s responding to new emergencies. When asked what he hopes listeners take away from the album, he points to the bridge of a song titled “Sun God”: This is a momentFor firmness of purposeManifest kindnessAnd absolute justice. Turns out, Bondi’s “issues” are neither neuroses nor indulgences. In an era that often mistakes outrage for action and irony for critique, Vic Bondi And His Issues argues for something rarer: the stubborn belief that music can still intervene in history, rather than merely providing the soundtrack. Sun God Strata Demolition Days P-I-G When I'm Sixty Four Show more