Vic Bondi And His Issues

Vic Bondi And His Issues is the latest project from Vic Bondi, and the first where he has actively sourced his own back catalog for performing. 

Bondi emerged as a founding force behind Chicago’s early-’80s hardcore movement with Articles of Faith. Formed in 1981 (initially as Direct Drive), the band pivoted toward thrash after Bondi witnessed the incendiary force of Bad Brains. Articles of Faith fused breakneck velocity, dub inflection, and sheets of noise with lyrics that rejected nihilism in favor of structural critique. Their two EPs (What We Want Is Free and Wait) and two LPs (Give Thanks and In This Life – both produced by Bob Mould), helped codify a strain of hardcore that was both intellectually engaged and sonically confrontational.

Following the 1985 breakup of Articles of Faith, Bondi spent time in Jones Very and Alloy, and later fronted both Report Suspicious Activity (feat. J Robbins of Jawbox), Dead Ending (with Derek Grant of Alkaline Trio and Joe Principe of Rise Against), and Tom Morello’s Weatherman project. In 2019 Bondi formed  “surf band for the apocalypse” Redshift, who’s most recent release, Chaos As Planned, came out 2025.

Vic Bondi And His Issues sums this work up. Bondi and his crew of Seattle music veterans (Fred Speakman, guitar; Tully Potter, bass; Adam Dalquist, drums) perform music from all phases of his career, as well as new music, available May 25 on their self-titled EP from Alternative Tentacles. The record doesn’t posture as protest music in the nostalgic sense; it is very much of the moment. After 27 releases, Bondi is not revisiting old battlegrounds; he’s responding to new emergencies. When asked what he hopes listeners take away from the album, he points to the bridge of a song titled “Sun God”:

This is a moment
For firmness of purpose
Manifest kindness
And absolute justice.

Turns out, Bondi’s “issues” are neither neuroses nor indulgences. In an era that often mistakes outrage for action and irony for critique, Vic Bondi And His Issues argues for something rarer: the stubborn belief that music can still intervene in history, rather than merely providing the soundtrack.