The opening line attached to Monk’s new single is frank enough to function as a mission statement: no one is coming to save you. Act accordingly. It lands somewhere between challenge and reminder, which fits a band that has always treated hardcore less like a fixed identity and more like a place to test ideas.
“No Gods” arrives through Dine Alone Records with guest vocals from George Pettit of Alexisonfire, paired against an unlikely second half — a cover of Blur’s “Song 2.” On paper, the pairing looks mismatched. One track leans into tension, responsibility, and refusal. The other grew out of a joke on tour in Mexico. Together they make more sense than expected.
For Monk’s Frank Bach, the Pettit collaboration reaches back further than a feature request sent through a DM. Alexisonfire were part of his teenage years in Sudbury, discovered through Kazaa and the kind of obsessive listening that shapes how someone understands heavy music in the first place.
He had known Pettit since around 2008, when Pettit contributed vocals to Bach’s former band Vicious Cycle on the “Pale Blue Dot” LP through Deranged Records.
For a long time, Bach viewed larger post-hardcore bands and DIY hardcore as separate worlds. That changed while spending time around Toronto and realizing musicians from bands like Alexisonfire still turned up at small shows, supporting acts like Career Suicide and Fucked Up. The separation felt less rigid than it once did.
Pettit later helped connect Monk to Dine Alone for the project’s first EP. When Bach started writing “No Gods,” he knew it needed another voice — not for polish, but for friction.
“Part of Monk since the inception was to collab with people I admire, especially when it pushes the music somewhere unexpected,” he says.
The track itself is sparse in construction but heavy in intent. Tribal drumming, sharp-edged guitars, and a call-and-response between Pettit’s scream and Bach’s bark push it toward something closer to confrontation than anthem. Bach describes the song as a refusal to hand power over to fear, authority, systems, or passive belief.
“‘No Gods’ is about owning your life,” he says. “It’s a rejection of giving your power to systems, fear, leaders, or anyone else. The video reflects that — war, protest, false idols — all showing what happens when people stop thinking for themselves and just follow. It’s not anti-spiritual, it’s anti-passive. Decide who you are, take responsibility, and act on it. That’s where the freedom is.”
The collaboration came together naturally. “Being able to DM George and have him jump on the track feels like a full-circle moment,” Bach says.
The recording process stretched across geography. Instruments were tracked at Camera Varda in Welland. Bach recorded vocals in Los Angeles. Pettit cut his parts at Deadquarters in Hamilton. The song moves between places without sounding pieced together, which mirrors Monk itself — a project that has never stayed confined to one lane.
Bach traces part of the track’s spirit back to The Monks’ 1966 piece “Monk Chant,” not in sound but in attitude. There is repetition, confrontation, and a sense of ritual underneath the aggression.
The video, directed by Born In The North, follows the same instinct. War imagery, protest footage, and collapsing icons sit beside direct performance shots. Bach approached visual direction closely, something tied to his work outside music as a designer.
There is another layer running beneath Monk’s recent output: a growing discomfort with hardcore becoming trapped inside its own nostalgia. Bach admits that age changes the relationship.
“I’m not an angry kid anymore,” he says. “I have a stable, full life with a thriving career, family, all of that. What initially drew me to hardcore wasn’t anger but inclusivity, energy, the sense that everyone was invited.”
That tension feeds into Monk as both concept and character. The name itself has become partially performative in his mind — half sincere extension of self, half exaggerated version of it.
“With the whole caricature of Monk I sometimes feel like I’m cosplaying too, which is kind of funny and meta in itself,” he says. “It’s half me, half a bit.”
Southern California’s current hardcore climate sits in the background of that thinking. Bach describes a scene tilted toward beatdown and spin-kick-heavy aggression, something he respects without fully identifying with.
Monk still leans toward older hardcore traditions, closer to Dead Kennedys, Negative Approach, and newer bands like Puffer and Skinhead, but filtered through spirituality and self-examination. Ram Dass and Thích Nhất Hạnh exist in the same conversation as breakdowns and feedback.
The second half of the release shifts tone without breaking continuity. Monk’s version of Blur’s “Song 2” started as a running joke while touring Mexico.
“We started playing ‘Song 2’ as a joke while touring Mexico, and it ended up being one of the songs people popped off the hardest to,” Bach says. “The lyrics are universal and the track is pure energy.”
He ties it back to hockey arenas, Jock Jams compilations, and the strange history behind Blur’s biggest hit.
“I love that Blur were poking fun at the grunge movement when they wrote it. The fact that their biggest song was basically a middle finger to a genre is hilarious. The universe has a way of laughing when you take yourself too seriously.”
Refusing self-seriousness without abandoning intensity sits at the center of Monk right now. Bach believes hardcore can carry joy without losing credibility.
“The world feels intense right now and we figured a little playfulness might help. Woohoo!”
The single also marks the beginning of a longer structure Monk are calling the “Starseed Series.” Instead of building toward another EP or full-length, the project will unfold gradually: two or three singles per year, each pairing one original track featuring a guest with one cover song. Around ten tracks in, the pieces may eventually be gathered into something larger.
Bach has little interest in forcing a traditional album cycle. Monk already released the “Rock” and “Dark Side of the Mind” EPs, each balancing hardcore tracks on one side with guided meditations on the other. He sees that split as part experiment, part refusal to settle into expected forms.
“I’m not super into the idea of a full length at this moment, especially with how people’s music consumption habits seem to be changing,” he says. “We already did two EPs. I don’t really want to make a third one.”
“No Gods” and “Song 2” are out now through Dine Alone Records, with a limited pre-order shipping in June 2026. The artwork accompanies the first entry in the “Starseed Series,” a project likely to keep expanding in pieces rather than chapters.
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