The day after Trouble Bound’s 25th anniversary show in July 2024, Johnny No-Keys woke up with a fast riff already moving around his head. The previous night had been one of those good ones, full of old friends and music, and he’d spent much of that year getting out to see punk and hardcore bands he’d grown up with whenever he had the chance.
Mike Ness’ cancer diagnosis had given that habit some extra urgency.
“After Mike Ness’ cancer news, it made me realize none of us are immortal. See them again while you can,” Johnny says. “I woke up with this fast-paced riff in my head and some words swirling over top of them in the background.”
That riff became “Step To The Line“, the title track of Trouble Bound’s new full-length, released July 31 through Mild Chaos Records. Eleven songs, 33 minutes, and not much interest in pretending the problems that fed this band years ago have gone anywhere.
Trouble Bound are Johnny No-Keys on vocals and guitar, Dan Szeli on bass and vocals, and Brian Labuda on drums and backing vocals. They come from New York’s Hudson Valley and have now spent 27 years moving through dive bars, basements, VFW halls and the old Chance Theater complex. “Step To The Line” follows Mild Chaos Records’ 20th anniversary reissue of “Here to the End”, which gave that record its first vinyl pressing.
The new record sounds like a band still carrying the same punk rock instincts that got them started, with the street-level melodicism of Rancid and Social Distortion rubbing up against the bigger singalong pull of Cock Sparrer. There is plenty of Hudson Valley and New York hardcore in there too, especially when the songs speed up and the gang vocals come in. It is direct, unfussy stuff, written by people who have spent years playing small rooms, working regular jobs and watching the same frustrations keep coming back in slightly different forms.
Johnny has a much shorter explanation.
“We’ve always just written what we know.”
He is talking specifically about the working-class thread running through “Step To The Line“, although it could cover most of Trouble Bound’s output.
“This band has always been comprised of working class, blue collar folks that have come from families of that same makeup. We’ve always been down there in the grit, fighting for a living and a livable wage. That is often times the place that the songs come from.”
There was no meeting where they decided to make another record about working-class unity. Johnny says those concerns are simply hard to separate from the people making it.
“The government, regardless of red or blue has never tried to take care of the working class. They take from us and give us more burden to bear. They squeeze us because they they know we’ll find a way to make it through and if we don’t, they don’t care either way.”
For him, the records and shows also give that frustration somewhere useful to go.
“So the anger and the frustrations only fuel our outlets because you need somewhere to put that angst before it explodes in places and on people that you don’t want it to. Our way of keeping that at bay somewhat, is here in these records and the live shows. It’s what keeps us balanced, what’s keeps us relatively sane. Keeps us alive.”
The title track makes that position pretty plain. It is short, fast and rooted in New York hardcore, then suddenly yanks itself into a ska section.
Johnny heard that change before the song existed on a recording.
“The ska breakdown is just how I heard it in my head. Gotta be the Op Ivy influence peering it’s head through the door after the battering ram of NYHC busted this one open.”
Operation Ivy had apparently been sitting somewhere in the back of his brain. Trouble Bound had already tried some ska on their previous record through a Rancid cover, so Johnny suspects that experience opened the door a little further.
“I usually don’t sit down with the intention to write something, I just try to listen to what’s swirling around in my head at the moment of inspiration and try to get it out on the guitar and the ink to the paper.”
“Step To The Line” itself is about solidarity and strength in numbers. The record keeps returning to related questions from different directions, although it is hardly eleven versions of the same song.
“Set The Record Straight” sits at mid-tempo, built around hooks and the feeling of being blamed, sandbagged or misrepresented, then having to work your way back while waiting for the truth to catch up.
“Cup Full of Cyanide” goes faster and deals with a friend who has crossed over into enemy territory. Betrayal happens, the knife comes out, and forgiveness is not automatically part of what follows.
Then “The Creeping of the Night” takes a stranger route. Echoing guitars and backing vocals carry a story about night coming in and the uncertainty of whether the thing worrying you is real, imagined or something else entirely.
“The Only Way I Know” brings the story much closer to Johnny’s own youth.
Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, he says there were no punks around his neighbourhood. There were a few sk8 punx who had found this music, and they would get on the train into the city to chase down shows, record shops, CDs and whatever else they could discover.
In the neat surroundings they came from, their appearance made them obvious targets.
“Because it was a total culture shock to the people in our neighborhood seeing mohawked and colored-haired ‘weirdos’ in this squeaky-clean environmentโฆ we got blamed and misjudged constantly.”
He doesn’t romanticise what being the outsider did to them.
“As much as you don’t want to admit it to anyone or yourself- this can be a very lonely feeling at times. But through this music and this culture is where we found our family and homies that made us realize that you’re never truly alone if you have this music, this scene.”
That is why the gang vocals matter in “The Only Way I Know“. They are not there just because gang vocals belong on punk records.
“We’ve all been there, we’ve all gone through the same bullshit. The same trials and tribulations. The same struggles. We’re all one in our experiences and united by the acceptance of our differences as the thing that makes us our own. That’s the only way we have ever known.”
Musically, the song moves quickly and keeps changing pace, with plenty of that early Rancid snap in it. “Maximum Security” follows with a heavier rock push and a much simpler problem: being trapped somewhere every instruction comes with an implied “or else”, until the need to get out takes over.
“Disbelief” is about watching someone close give up on something without even trying to save it. The subject is heavier than the arrangement initially lets on. Harmonies and an easy chorus sit over a song about the shock of watching somebody stop fighting for what is theirs.
“Red Light” stays around the middle of the record’s speed range. Palm-muted guitar carries the feeling of obstruction after obstruction, hitting another block every time you think you have finally found a way through.
Then comes the title track and its call for working people to stand together.
The other major thread running through the album is harder to separate from the news Johnny and Dan were watching while they wrote it.
“Callous and Cold” deals with reaching the point where bad news, the internet and the state of things leave you numb and angry enough that you almost don’t want to hear any more. The system wears people down until shutting off starts to look easier than staying engaged.
“Paranoia” takes that anxiety further. Bass moves prominently through a nervous punk arrangement with a Dead Kennedys touch, while the lyrics deal with media hysteria, propaganda, conspiracy and everyday political fear.
For Dan, there was no single headline behind it.
“It’s hard to narrow it down to one specific thing nowโฆ Just everyday in the news with this corrupt administration and this embarrassing excuse for a president. You wake up to find out something new and awful happening to people.”
His answer gets more specific from there.
“Innocent people being killed, snatched up in the street from their families, turning people against each other, starting wars. Our government is always hurting us and ripping us off, getting rich while the majority of us just take it and the worst part is – they don’t even try to cover it up anymore.”
Dan sees attacks on rights, disregard for the Constitution and money repeatedly winning over people’s welfare.
“They move to take away our rights and spit on the Constitution while trying to convince you that their hypocrisy isn’t exactly how it appears to your open eyes with common sense. They put people’s well being aside for profit.”
He continues: “They know what causes cancer and disease and they don’t care because they line their pockets on both ends. The list goes on and on. It’s infuriating.”
After that, Trouble Bound shut the amplifiers down.
“Unanswered Questions” closes the record acoustically. A number of these songs first took shape that way, and Johnny sometimes writes on acoustic guitar from the start. This one always seemed to belong there.
“I talked it over with Brian and Dan and they felt the same about it.”
It was recorded last, and captured live. Most of “Step To The Line”, incidentally, runs in almost exactly the same sequence in which Trouble Bound recorded it, much like “Broken Ribs & Blood Clots”.
Johnny wanted the closer to sit in the aftermath of the previous ten songs.
“We felt it belonged in the aftermath of the loud and intense fury of the previous 10 bombs going off. A stripped down and stark message, with no distractions. A somber warning, a pondering of the current state of things. A rustling through the rubble. Questions yet still remain unanswered.”
It works as the calm after the previous ten songs, stripping everything back to one last question about where all of this is heading. Johnny sees it as a direct conversation with whoever has made it to the end.
“A one-on-one ‘talk’ with the listener as a closing statement to be ready for the fight of your life because it feels like it’s coming. No way around it. If they try to take us down, we’re taking them out with us.”
Putting it after “Paranoia” was intentional.
“Seemed to be the perfect spot for it after arguably the most intense songs on the album – ‘Paranoia.'”
A lot of that talk about solidarity also comes straight from Trouble Bound’s own Hudson Valley scene. Johnny remembers the rooms, the bands and the years when punk and hardcore shows around there were packed.
“I’d say, the late 90’s to the mid-2000s was peak times around here for the punk and hardcore shows.”
He remembers packed basements in New Paltz, The Loft, The Chance and Club Crannell, with The Casualties, The Unseen, The Virus, Murphy’s Law, Sick Of It All and The Bouncing Souls coming through. Trouble Bound opened some of those shows. When they didn’t, friends’ bands did, and they turned up anyway.
“Those were killer times.”
Things quietened down for a while. The Chance closed in late 2023, and COVID took other venues with it. Johnny now sees the area building itself back through smaller spaces, VFW halls and the people still willing to book shows.
He points directly to Outsider Magazine, the Hudson Valley punk and hardcore fanzine established in 2000, and to the people behind it who continue organising gigs. Scott from DCxPC Live keeps bands moving through the area. Lee and Deebo from Hardcore in the 914 book shows from Yonkers up to Kingston.
“Without the hard work of them and their teams and all the people that come out to support, we wouldn’t have it as great as we do right now.”
Visiting bands notice it too.
“A lot of the bands that they bring into this area are always complimenting the fact that this scene feels like a family get-together even if you’ve never been to a show here before. We’re always looking to do our part to keep things going and encourage the next generation.”
Twenty-seven years is a long time for any local punk band to keep doing this. Trouble Bound have gone from adolescent train rides into New York City to watching old venues close, younger people take over bookings, and bands they grew up on confront age and illness.
Ineffect Hardcore once put it more enthusiastically: “In my eyes Trouble Bound out of NY’s Hudson Valley are an extremely underrated band who should be household names in the realm of punk rock households.”
Trouble Bound themselves sound less interested in that kind of ranking. Twenty-seven years in, they are still talking about their friends, the people booking VFW shows, the records that got them through adolescence, the jobs that pay the bills and the things outside the window that continue to piss them off.
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“Step To The Line” is out now through Mild Chaos Records on orange vinyl and CD. The record runs 33 minutes. Photography is credited to Outsider Magazine. Trouble Bound can be found through troublebound99.bandcamp.com and @troublebound, with Mild Chaos Records at mildchaosrecords.com and @mildchaosrecords.
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