Open City Shares New Single 'Blitz Kids Stay Sick'

Philadelphia hard-hitting punk and hardcore band Open City offers their newest single, "Blitz Kids Stay Sick," from the forthcoming LP Hands In The Honey Jar, out October 6, 2023, via queer, indie record label Get Better Records. 

It’s a fist-pumping d-beat rager with a lyrical analysis of how individual choices both reflect and mutate into societal failure.

Guitarist and song lyricist Dan Yemin asserts, "It started as a gut reaction to seeing bands double down on posing hard style in promotional photos, trying to look intimidating in a way that feels, to me at least, tiresome and forced. Hardcore punk as a performance of male hostility is limited, tedious, and boring. [The song is] also a response to lyrics that squander opportunities to talk about serious s."

This all is explored over the first half of the song before switching into the classic two-step, where Yemin lists notable sites for political action.

There is no illusion that Open City doesn't have easily searchable names. It’s, as bassist Andy Nelson says, "impossible to avoid" that Google will reveal myriad projects and connections that span the past 30 years of punk and range from New Jersey to California.

Simply, Open City are four experienced rockers who have worked and lived through many eras of punk and hardcore. Their influences reflect that and their combined understanding of themselves as artists. There’s no pretense with all their interests in the world of music and with what Open City achieved with their upcoming LP, Hands In The Honey Jar.

To produce the record, Open City relied on Arthur Rizk (Power Trip, Show Me The Body, Glitterer). Though drums were recorded in a studio, bass, guitar, and vocals were recorded in a wood shop.