Toro Bravo and Socpro have known each other for thirty years. By the time they decided to record together, the first conversation barely needed to happen. They met in the Socpro studio with a vision already in place, ran through it five times, and went straight to tape.
“If you’re recording after five rehearsals, it means things went smooth as butter,” Toro Bravo’s Čiubas says. “No drama, no fights. Just grown men doing their thing.”
The result is “Mūsų Balsai” (“Our Voices”), out now via Pasidaryk Pats records, the Lithuanian nonprofit label, distro, and booking outfit that exists to push local punk into the wider world. The track sits in Oi! punk territory but pulls toward something more reflective than the style typically makes room for. It’s a song about what survives a generation. Voices, values, the songs your kids will sing in their own way.
Toro Bravo is one of the oldest still-active punk bands in Lithuania. Socpro is a year old, still finishing its debut album and concert program. The pairing isn’t a clean baton pass between old and new. Both are made of people who’ve been around the same scene for decades, meeting at a corner they’ve each walked past a thousand times.
“We didn’t really start over,” Socpro’s Slava explains. “We all stayed in our other projects. Socpro is something we created in addition. It’s an open project where any musician or creator can join if everyone agrees. A clean start made sense because we wanted total creative freedom, without any expectations tied to old names.”
What they brought, he says, was experience. What they left behind were templates. “The idea that something has to fit a certain format. Humor and freedom are the most important things here.” He sees Socpro as both starting something and continuing it. “The Lithuanian alternative scene is small, and everyone has been connected at some point through bands, songs, albums, whatever. Socpro is a continuation of those connections, but in a new form.”
The song itself came together fast because the idea was clear. “Mūsų Balsai” places children, both literal and metaphorical, at its center. Čiubas spells it out plainly: “Children are a symbol of what remains after us. It’s about continuity, about voices and values that keep moving forward even when we’re no longer on stage.”
He means it broadly. “It’s all of it. Our kids, your kids, the scene that comes after us. The present and the future. Anyone who decides to carry the same flag forward.”
Two lines in the song hit harder than the rest for him. The first is “In the 2000s punk rock saved us.” Čiubas doesn’t dress it up. “Back then it was easy to get lost. A lot of people around me chose paths that led to prison or the grave. Punk rock gave me an alternative. A direction, a community, a reason to choose differently.”
The second is “We’ll leave a mark like a shard in the eye.” That one, he says, speaks for itself. “If we’re doing something, we want it to leave a mark. Something sharp enough to be felt.”
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Asked what passing something forward means now, this far in, Čiubas is honest about how the answer has shifted. “When we started, we weren’t thinking about passing anything forward. We were just burning with excitement for the music and the subculture. None of us knew how far it would go or whether anything we did would matter later. But time shows you that maybe something does stay behind. Maybe not for everyone, but for the people who feel the same spirit and live by the same values. Now passing something forward means leaving a direction someone else can pick up and carry further.”
He doesn’t miss any specific old band. He misses the feeling. “Back then it wasn’t about recognition. It was about believing in what you were doing. Now so much of life has moved into social media, where people compete with likes instead of ideas. That old sense of authenticity is something I really miss.”
What he wants to outlast Toro Bravo itself is sharpness. “That feeling like you’re holding a loaded weapon that could go off at any moment. No compromises, no adjusting yourself to trends. Just belief in what you do and the courage to stay who you are.”
Slava is more matter-of-fact about Socpro’s job on the track. “This song is very much Toro Bravo, musically and lyrically. Our role was to play it the way it was meant to be played and give it the best possible sound in the studio.” How well they pulled that off, he leaves to the listener. “Our goal was simple. Play the song the way it was conceived and make it sound as good as possible. Whether we succeeded, that’s for the fans to decide.”
“Mūsų Balsai” is out now on Pasidaryk Pats records.
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