Astoria, Oregon punk lifers The Something Ain’t Rights pull from hardcore, post-punk, cowpunk and American roots music on their scrappy debut EP, Rotten In The Brain.
The Something Ain’t Rights bring decades of underground history into the present on Rotten In The Brain, their nine-track debut EP, out now via Hovercraft Records.
Based in Astoria, Oregon, the quartet of Mike Vasquez, Carrie Beveridge, Alpha Rasmussen and Dan McClure arrive from musical histories stretching through scenes in New York, Washington DC, Austin, New Orleans and the Pacific Northwest. Rather than simply recreating the sounds that shaped them, the band throws those influences together, allowing wiry post-punk, hardcore velocity, country twang and ragged rock and roll to collide.
Vasquez brings particularly deep roots to the project. The vocalist and guitarist previously operated Austin’s Sweatbox Studio, recording hundreds of independent artists including Mark Arm, Alejandro Escovedo and Tim Kerr. His bandmates supply their own distinct musical fingerprints, from McClure’s West Coast hardcore-informed guitar attack to Rasmussen’s muscular bass and Beveridge’s loose, unpredictable rhythmic feel.
That chemistry gives Rotten In The Brain its crooked personality. The title track and “Plymouth of Fury” lean into agitation and dark humor, while “Gas Station Angel” and “Rainbow Alley” evoke roadside characters and a broader strain of weather-beaten Americana. The EP feels equally informed by cramped punk rooms and long stretches of American highway.
Its compact form was partly shaped by circumstance. Recorded and mixed by Vasquez at Cannon Deck Recording during the winter of 2025-26, the sessions were originally intended to produce a 29-song album. A serious highway accident involving Vasquez interrupted the project, leading the group to release the first nine completed recordings as a standalone EP.
Even the artwork reaches into punk history, using a photograph Vasquez took across from CBGB during his first hardcore show in 1983. Four decades later, Rotten In The Brain makes the connection feel less like nostalgia than unfinished business.