By It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, highlighting two excellent 2025 alt rock records in Die Spitz’s SOMETHING TO CONSUME and The Velveteers’ A MILLION KNIVES!
Die Spitz – SOMETHING TO CONSUME
Genre: Punk, Grunge
Favorite Tracks: “Voir Dire” and “Punishers”
Calling Die Spitz an “industry plant” seems a bit ridiculous. But let’s take Choice_Ad_8262’s uncertainty at face value. Because when comparing 2023’s TEETH with their 2025 debut, SOMETHING TO CONSUME, it’s quite a contrast. Whether its age, context or even releasing via Jack White’s Third Man Records, Die Spitz are less “music as shiv” and more deliberate. Where there was once unbridled fury now is something altogether deeper and more primal.
Yes, Die Spitz can achieve the might of 1,000 Incredible Hulks. “Throw Yourself to the Sword” is Essence of the band—chugging speed metal carrying the weight of four lifetimes of angst. “Red40,” meanwhile, manages to rattle with a perfect D-beat intensity while sounding heaps more complicated. “RIDING WITH MY GIRLS” disarms listeners with fury both sensual and spiky. These are hugely “fun” tracks, as few bands can confront and prod listeners with this consistency, passion, and tasty wickedness. This is organic and effective in its lashing out, growling with a theatrical bent and something heaps more worrisome.
But if you start your album with “Pop Punk Anthem (Sorry for the Delay),” it seems that there is at least an awareness of a change cresting. I’d call the track flirty, something lithe and rollicking that feels like a significant emotional turn. From there, “Voir Dire” splits the difference between Evanescence and Kittie, and there’s so much subtext throughout. Meanwhile, “Go Get Dressed” is so earnest and serene that I assumed I’d missed the gnarly bits simply from blacking out. Admittedly, the band’s “response” feels counterintuitive: In a world where the news obliterates our sensibilities every .03 seconds, less refined rage seems more appropriate. Die Spitz haven’t so much “evolved” from these feelings but rather found themselves more open to other moods and vehicles of expression. They’ve pushed themselves hoarse with maximum bloodshed; now’s the perfect time to see what they can discover as more complicated, demanding people.
And so I keep coming back to this idea of opening up over growing up. Their brand of rage takes great skill and power; your fury can’t be this all-consuming if you haven’t felt the world’s many stings. So, again, it’s not so much a change but a revelation; they’ve not softened, but instead allowed themselves not just be that one thing. Maybe that’s maturity, but it feels like these parts were always there, humming underneath it all. It’s why “Punishers” feels so robust as varying ideas and sentiments interplay like black metal figure skaters. Or, why album closer “a strange moon/selenophilia” is a career high—they’ve dropped the weight of spite and distance for something so much more beguiling and singularly effective.
Change is hard—it often feels like an invalidation of the primordial magic that came before. But at their core, Die Spitz maintain those same dark magics; only now they’re tools to use and not something that constricts the band. Because of that courage to accept what you can change, embrace what you can’t, yadda yadda, SOMETHING doesn’t just spit blood in your face but finds other, sometimes gentler, more disarming ways to poke at your weak points and bring you in like never before. Die Spitz haven’t changed, they’ve just gotten better at being one of the most talented and confrontational rock bands going today. Everyone (except maybe Choice_Ad_8262) can listen to it now over on Bandcamp. 
The Velveteers – A MILLION KNIVES
Genre: Alternative Rock
Favorite Tracks: “Suck The Cherry” and “Sweet Little Hearts”
Here’s a fact: More instruments = a better band. King Crimson rocks two bassists; Diarrhea Planet had four guitarists (!); and bluesman Jesse Fuller simultaneously played the guitar, cymbal, and kazoo. Now, Colorado’s The Velveteers aren’t exactly novel for having two drummers, but that little lineup decision has maximum significance across the trio’s sophomore album, A MILLION KNIVES.
At the most basic level, you can feel the percussion and rhythm like a mighty wave as Baby Pottersmith and Johnny Fig work together akin to one four-armed drummer. On “Suck The Cherry,” their interplay creates force and texture galore, lending some intricacy to what’s otherwise a pretty good, uber sexy jam. Or, “Bound In Leather,” where a more steady/consistent march imbues both a ’60s-tinged oomph and something altogether timeless. Even when the duo aren’t as apparent (see “On and On”), it’s what they don’t play that shapes and informs the song’s angular jaunt.
And you might be saying, “Duh, Chris, it’s easy to make noise with double drummers.” And to you I’d say, “Don’t interrupt me,” but also it’s not just about bass and bravado. The Velveteers will inevitably land comparisons to garage rock bands a la The Black Keys. (Especially when folks learn that Dan Auerbach produced.) Double drummers, then, is both a gimmick to distract from those frankly half-cocked comparisons and a statement of intent: The Velveteers stand above their “competition.” And so be it those other tracks, the infectious heft of “Take it From The Top,” or the back-and-forth tease across “Fix Me,” The Velveteers are heaps more romantic, potent, anxious, and accomplished, and they have the chutzpah to carry 1,000 drummers.
Yet the band’s effectiveness comes not just from its rhythm section, but the magic of singer/guitarist Demi Demitro. It’d be easy for Demitro to get lost amid her bandmates—heck, she nearly does in “All These Little Things.” But she’s not sinking into the sludge; instead, Demitro knows when to yield and acquiesce to the onslaught. Then, mere moments later, she stomps around like a seven foot tall guitar god on “Sweet Little Hearts.” A true front-person is not just about charm and high kicks; they need to dip and weave in a way to tell a story, stoke emotions, smack folks in the face, and generally prove triumphant.
But the best band dynamics are a give and take, and there’s a few tracks here that shift the feel to fully emphasize Demitro’s strange charms. It would be easy to say that “Moonchild” is a sexy, swampy spin on early Stevie Nicks, or that “Go Fly Away” is janglier, more robust girl-group-pop. But as they typify on “Heaven,” The Velveteers manage to, in real-time, tweak the formula to rally against further cries of garage rock derivativeness and let Demitro shine in a way that’s refreshing. These tracks almost feel like a different album, and that imbues a certain conceptual depth but mostly added layers.
And that’s what it all boils down to: There’s just so much to this band’s dynamic beyond their “gimmick.” They move and groove in such a way that they both celebrate and dismantle their garage rock origins with gusto. They engage with one another in a way that everyone gets to shine, but mostly what glimmers is the music. They recognize that a little showboating can draw folks in, but what keeps them is something that feels personable and meaningful above all else. Be it two drummers or a veritable menagerie, A MILLION KNIVES’ true sustaining rhythm is that devotion, humanity, and desire to make the best kind of noise. Or, put it this way: The Velveteers + your time = super fun! Listen to it now over on Bandcamp.
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