Members of Atom & His Package, ! franklin & AM/FM Form Dead Best, Share Debut Single "Life, Love & Liberty" (Don Giovanni Records)

Long-time friends Adam "Atom" Goren & Brian Sokel followed interwoven paths through the Philadelphia Punk scene in the late 90's and early 2000's. While Sokel brought riffs to the Dub & Hardcore-blending ! franklin and was the primary song-writer and multi-instrumentalist for AM/FM, Goren was playing in Punk bands Fracture & Armalite and exploring the use of sequencers in his eccentric solo project Atom & His Package. In their respective projects, the two toured The US & Canada together, released each other's music on self-run labels, and Goren would even pay tribute to Sokel's band on the Atom & His Package track "For Franklin." Sokel briefly appears on Atom & His Package's "Out to Everyone" from Attention! Blah Blah Blah. and "Upside Down from Here" from Hair: Debatable, as well as TV Casualty's self-titled 7-inch of Misfits covers. Despite their closeness, Goren & Sokel had never played in a band together until The COVID-19 Pandemic.


As life began to draw them in other directions, keeping up with the Punk scene was no longer a priority. Even without their shared experience in music, Goren & Sokel still remained in each other's lives, oddly enough, finding themselves living next door to each other just outside of Philadelphia. As The COVID-19 Pandemic forced people inside and the occasional neighborly interactions became a sole "social" outlet, the two shared concerns and anxieties. Conversations over the fence about politics and the increasingly confusing state of the world led the two to try writing music together, just to see what it would sound like. One song quickly became three and soon, they were recording what would come to be the self-titled debut offering from Dead Best. Dead Best takes the raw Pandemic expressions of two Punk veterans and refines them into a ripping 13 tracks.


Exhuming deep anxieties through pummelling guitars and frantic, distorted vocals, the LP is a brief, but clear, profile of Goren & Sokel's combined creative voice. Making the most of their fresh collaboration, Dead Best harnesses their years of shared history into a new sound, heard from the croaked vocals of "The Grind" to the instrumental grooves of "Dooms." The duo hadn't, initially, intended the songs for release, viewing the process primarily as a coping mechanism during a period of intense upheaval. With this perspective in mind, the band set out not to clearly articulate a message with others, but to document emotional reactions for their own benefit. Abandoning pressures to "say something important," Adam Goren explains, "at the age I'm at, if I want to say something or argue something or persuade someone of something I think is important, there is media that is much more productive than making rhyming couplets." The end result is a record that is musically emotive even when heavy distortion obscures the lyrics. Dead Best's debut single, "Life, Love & Liberty," is now available on streaming platforms. Their self-titled debut is now available for pre-order and will become widely available 12/10 on Don Giovanni Records.