Screeching Weasel

Conceived and birthed in the homogenous suburbs of Chicago, Screeching Weasel have been at it for almost forty years.

Formed in 1986 by lead singer/songwriter Benjamin Foster—who soon took the nom de plume Ben Weasel—Screeching Weasel’s first, self-titled album earned airplay on John Peel’s radio show, a glowing review in NME, and a 10/10 in Sounds. 1988’s BoogadaBoogadaBoogada, released on a small bedroom label out of Chicago, immediately went into heavy rotation on every turntable in the punk universe. It remains the band’s best-selling album and a staple of the punk diet.

Boogada caught the attention of Lookout Records, who made the band their first signing from outside the San Francisco Bay Area. My Brain Hurts, released in 1991, cemented the band’s status as one of the premier bands of the pop-punk genre, along with labelmates Green Day and the Queers.

Ben Weasel’s signature snotty vocal style and hook-laden songwriting is often emulated but never replicated: Everyone from Blink-182 to Rise Against have cited Screeching Weasel as an influence. Menacingly melodic, a Weasel song delivers not just artfully-tuned ear candy but also a portal to the universal: love, hate, comedy, and tragedy. As the title of their 1994 album, How to Make Enemies and Irritate People (featuring Green Day’s Mike Dirnt on bass) suggests, the band embraces the role of “outsiders among outsiders,” barbecuing punk’s sacred cows with a gleeful abandon.

The current Screeching Weasel lineup of Ben Weasel, Mike Hunchback, Pierre Marché, Zach Brandner, and Gianluca Panero represents the group’s most stable incarnation since 2013. Recent albums The Awful Disclosures of Screeching Weasel (2022) and Some Freaks of Atavism (2020), produced by the All-American Rejects’ Mike Kennerty, stand as evidence that the band hasn’t lost a step, still cranking out bitter and sweet pop-punk gems and showing no signs of slowing down.