Local Groningen band will launch their debut album at Vera on 20 March 2026!
Founded in, 2024, Radio Cyanide originally went by the name of STASH (Suppress Totalitarianism And Support Humanism). Their first gig under their present name was at Vera, in February 2025.
Although the band is new, its members have lots of experience in earlier bands:
Bassist Jurjen Kah has a previous history of playing in Seizure, Them Apples, Phonque, Obtuse, Katafalk, Cryonic State. Guitarist Michel Jonker used to be in Anti-Bitch, Venders Of Smut, Gabriels Despair, Delta Clone Project, Absorbed, Massive Assault, Inhumanised, Entrapment, Dead Loyalty, Skroetbalg. Drummer Reinee Huizinga was in Swerve, Evilcentric, Moan, Karbo, Killteam. Singer Serge van Laar was in Le Roi Mort, Koude Kermis, HoppaH!
Radio Cyanide call themselves “progressive punk-hardcore”. ‘Progressive punk’ is a small tendency within punk, influenced by ‘progressive rock’, well-known in the early 1970s, before punk. That ‘progressive punk’ is relatively small is not so surprising: punks in the 1970s rejected progressive rock. Progressive rock arose from hippie culture in the 1960s, when unemployment among young people in the Netherlands was 1%. When punk culture in the Netherlands came in the 1970s, that had risen to 20%.
Punks did not like LPs with only four songs, ‘deep’ religious spiritual lyrics which ‘prog’ band members themselves maybe did not understand and which had nothing to do with the situation of ‘no future’ young people. They did not like the impression that to be in a ‘proper’ rock band one had to have been at a music school for many years, own expensive instruments and amps, and have a contract with a big record label. The punks preferred a pogoing audience to everyone sitting or lying down on concert hall floors.
Progressive punk is said to “break away from traditional three-chord structures in favour of time-signature changes, longer compositions, and diverse influences … Greater focus on musical proficiency than traditional, simpler punk rock.”
Does Radio Cyanide‘s first LP ‘Frogs’ fit these ‘progressive’ criteria? They do have more technical musical proficiency, having played for many years, than punks who recently started their first band. They have time-signature changes: but so have bands which I have not seen included under ‘progressive punk’, such as Crass, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Slits and the U.K. Subs. Longer compositions? The songs on ‘Frogs‘ are about 2-4 minutes long. Fourteen of them are on the album, so, in this respect, they are closer to the Ramones than to Yes. And, of course, the LP is on their own label, not on a multinational corporation’s!
The album ‘Frogs’ was recorded in May 2025 at Soundlodge Studios by Jörg Uken and the band. First song on the LP, ‘Kill the Shepherd‘ and the third one, ‘Skeletons‘ (video above) reminded me of the Dead Kennedys. ‘Nicotine Bitch‘ (video below) is about singer Serge stopping smoking.
The title track ‘Frogs‘ sounds somewhat like some Damned songs. ‘Soldiers Honour‘ starts slowly, then accelerates. The song ‘Covfefe’ is about a nonsensical word used by Donald Trump on the internet. This is a video of their song ‘Human Race‘:
Kilkenny is a city in Ireland. Its name in Irish is Cill Chainnigh, ‘the church of St. Cainnech‘. In the final song of the album, ‘KillKenny’ the band alludes to violence in a wordplay. Radio Cyanide get enthusiastic reactions during their concerts. They will probably also get them from listeners to ‘Frogs‘!
Catch Radio Cyanide at their ‘Frogs‘ album release show at Vera on 20th March – tickets HERE
‘Frogs‘ is out on 20th March – get your copy from Radio Cyanide’s Bandcamp: HERE
- Kill the Shepherd
- Nicotine Bitch
- Skeletons
- Frogs
- Mayfly
- Soldiers Honor
- Genocide
- Settle Down
- Covfefe
- No Man’s Land
- Penny for the Living
- Machine Man
- Human Race
- KillKenny
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In 1978 Herman co-founded Dutch Rock Against Racism and was a founder of Pin punkzine. He’s vocals/saxophone for Cheap ‘n’ Nasty and in 2021 co-founded the Punk Scholars Network, Netherlands.
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