Red Scare Industries—the Chicago label formed by Tobias Jeg and The Lawrence Arms’ Brendan Kelly—started 10 years ago as a vehicle to release the first EP by one of Arms frontman Kelly’s own projects, The Falcon. For fans of Chicago punk the band served as a supergroup of sorts, with a line-up rounded out by Lawrence Arms drummer Neil Hennessy, Alkaline Trio bassist Dan Andriano, and former Rise Against guitarist Todd Mohney, and the band’s five-song introduction served as a searing amalgam of what the band’s members had done so well throughout their careers.
The Falcon would go on to release its lone full-length in 2006, but Red Scare would continue on, releasing albums by bands such as Teenage Bottlerocket, Cobra Skulls, The Sidekicks, and numerous others in its decade-long existence. And Red Scare will celebrate its 10 years in existence by throwing a day-long show at The Metro in Chicago on October 25 featuring nearly every band to have released music on the label and a warm-up show in New York on September 26. On September 9, the label will also release a 19-song compilation, Red Scare Industries: 10 Years Of Your Dumb Bullshit, featuring unreleased material from many of the label’s acts.
The A.V. Club is premiering The Falcon’s contribution to the compilation, and its first song in eight years, “We Are The Bald.” Even with that eight year gap in place, The Falcon doesn’t alter its searing attack, and even as Kelly and Andriano acknowledge their age with lines such as, “We’ve got no hair / We are the bald,” the band proves even as its activity wanes—and its members’ hairlines recede—it’s still capable of churning out impactful punk rock with the same exuberance of its younger labelmates.