The Punk Vault

Cold Waves XI Day Three – 9/24/23 at Metro

Sunday night was the third and final night of the Cold Waves Festival at Metro. It was bittersweet that this was going to be the last show for the fest until next year, but they sure closed it on a high note! Rabbit Junk may be the only opening/mid...

Cold Waves XI Day Two – 9/23/23 at Metro

Saturday was the second night of Cold Waves at Metro and they had a couple of big names headlining this evening, including one that hasn’t played in Chicago in ages! Just like the previous night, some more recent acts rounded out the rest of...

Cold Waves XI Day One – 9/22/23 at Metro

The first weekend of fall means two things, winter depression is coming soon and the Cold Waves Festival returns to Metro! The fest definitely is the highlight of fall and they had a pretty solid lineup for this year, including a couple of bigger...

Riot Fest 2023 Day Three – 9/17/23 at Douglass Park

Well it was a good streak of avoiding the wrath of Mother Nature, but that streak came to a wet halt on Sunday. morning when the city woke up to it pouring rain. This forced Riot Fest to have a rain delay that lasted a few hours. Thankfully it...

Riot Fest 2023 Day Two – 9/16/23 at Douglass Park

Saturday was the second day of Riot Fest 2023, and while the weather wasn’t as nice, the brief light rain didn’t slow things down at all and caused no issues so the show went on uninterrupted. The weather cleared up by the afternoon and...

Cheap Trick – 7/16/23 at Metro

Last night the Metro brought out the big guns to close out its year long celebration of its 40th anniversary by having Cheap Trick play there! Talk about saving the best for last! The band has played at Metro a few...

The Bollweevils – 5/27/23 at Chop Shop

Saturday night was a pretty special one as The Bollweevils, one of Chicago’s most beloved and longest running punk rock bands, was headlining a show at the Chop Shop to celebrate the release of their first new...

Riot Fest announces 2023 lineup!

It’s always an exciting day when Riot Fest announces its lineup and that day has arrived! In keeping with tradition, it is an excellent and very diverse selection of bands that should have something for just about...

Placebo – 4/21/23 at The Salt Shed

On Friday night, Placebo made their long awaited return to Chicago to headline a show at The Salt Shed. This new venue is amazing and you couldn’t have asked for a better venue to pack in a few thousand eager...

New Lilys colored vinyl reissues

Frontier Records didn’t just put out some of the most iconic punk rock albums of all time, but the label has also released and reissued some pretty stellar indie rock stuff too. In recent times, the label really...

F.U.’s – Death Squad Nostalgia

F.U.’s – Death Squad Nostalgia EP Yankee Vandal Records F.U.’s are a legendary hardcore band from Boston, MA. In the early 1980s, Boston had a really great hardcore punk scene back when that genre was...

New Adolescents vinyl colors

As we continue to catch up with the recent runs of colored vinyl punk classics on Frontier Records, we now get to the first Adolescents album, affectionately known as the “blue album”. Is there any readers...

New Christian Death vinyl colors

Continuing on catching up with recent colored vinyl editions of classic Frontier Records releases, we now look at Christian Death. Only Theatre Of Pain was the album that pretty much set the blueprint for death rock...