Mike Krol is well-aware that music once screwed him over. Sporting a shiner and bloody knuckles on the album art of his new record Power Chords, the Los Angeles punk still wears the trauma and turmoil of his album Turkey, which left him in a rather destitute position at the start of his 30s.
“Touring for my previous album, Turkey, ended in December of 2015, and by February of 2016, I found myself without an apartment, without any money, and had just ended a three-year relationship,” Krol wrote on Facebook. “I put all my belongings in a storage unit in Glassell Park, and got a one-way ticket to Wisconsin to move back in with my parents. I was 31. Completely disillusioned and frustrated with ‘music as a career,’ I began searching for the spark of what made me excited about songs in the first place.”
In hindsight, Turkey was just his overture: Power Chords possesses straight-outta-the-garage grit from the title track to the literal “the end.” Krol rolls into Great Scott tonight (March 4), weather pending, to crank up the noise with Savak and Boston’s earthquake party! That’s something to yell about.