CHAINLINKS 057: Jose Palafox

With the 10th anniversary of THE CHAIN coming up in April, we've relaunched CHAINLINKS, a series we started back in 2017 to give our friends a space to share the stuff currently inspiring them — music, film, books, or anything else they wanted to recommend to the world.

To kick off the reboot of Chainlinks, we gave the mic to Jose Palafox, whose band Swing Kids will be headlining The Chain’s official 10th anniversary celebration, April 19th at Elsewhere in Brooklyn, NY (presented by Saint Vitus Bar). Get your tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/swing-kids-10-years-of-the-chain-w-fatboi-sharif-trace-amount-more-tickets-1982228315251

Jose Palafox is a radical mental health provider and drummer who has lived experience in recovery from addiction. He is a former academic who now lives with his wife and three cats in Oakland, California in a house filled with 13,000 books and lots of vinyl (jazz and classical sections next to the punk, as they should be).

Radical Psychiatry: Five Recommended Books by José Palafox

Florent Gabarron-Garcia, A People’s History of Psychoanalysis (Pluto Press, 2025).

https://www.plutobooks.com/product/a-peoples-history-of-psychoanalysis/

A short paperback discussing the radical genealogies within psychology and psychiatry by examining the work of Marxist feminist psychoanalyst Marie Langer, radical German-American psychologist Erich Fromm, the Catalan psychiatrist Francesc Tosquelles, the Socialist Patient Collective (SPK), and much more! I love the short and concise quality of this book.

Judith Weisenfeld, Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake (NYU Press, 2025).

https://nyupress.org/9781479829781/black-religion-in-the-madhouse/

Why were African Americans committed to state mental institutions at increasing rates after the end of slavery? This book convincingly demonstrates how diagnostic categories not only pathologized Black religious expressions but how they also evolved to shape the rise of psychiatry as the powerful profession that it became. I like that the author makes this work accessible and insightful minus the jargon.

Regina Kunzel, In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life (University of Chicago Press, 2024).

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo212129044.html

In the introduction, the author asks: How and why did American psychiatrists mid-century believe they could “cure” homosexuality and normalize gender? Why were homosexuality and gender variance so important to them? What did it mean that queer folk were understood as sick people in need of treatment at the moment when queerness was becoming consolidated as an identity and assuming its modern form? Read and find out in this important and timely book!

Sasha Warren, Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt (Common Notions, 2024).

https://www.commonnotions.org/storming-bedlam?srsltid=AfmBOooWWkjlD90EX4-Y0zMRleWVLrme_A5rI_uc3JLmgVGBrXSHrcVC

Mao often said that, wherever there is oppression, there is resistance. In this volume, Warren examines the global development of mental health services throughout the 20th century documenting its utopian and radical origins in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, France, Italy, and Algeria. According to the book, following the George Floyd uprising in 2020, the author founded the project Of Unsound Mind to trace the histories of psychiatry, social work, and public health’s connections to policing, prisons, and various disciplinary and managerial technologies. Also, I like supporting this independent publisher, Common Notions.

Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2018).

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/alienation-and-freedom-9781474250214/

One of my favorite statements in this book from Fanon: “The psychiatrist is the auxiliary of the police”. Why? Because historically and to the present origins, psychiatry and psychiatrist (“moral agents”) have functioned as a mechanism of social control and political power all under the guise of medicine. And yet these are the tools we work with—those of us in the trenches of radical mental health. Fanon was and is one of the most important thinkers and anti-colonial fighters. As he suggests, imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well. The book is still in hardback only but at a decent price (or ask your library for it!).

Photo by Becky DiGiglio

PILGRIMS - "Liminal Travel"

PILGRIMS: South American post-punks explore immigrant experience on bilingual single "Liminal Travel"

With their new album Gemini released in February, South American post-punks PILGRIMS have released their official music video for "Liminal Travel," the album's fourth single.

Stream the video, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGS3R8UCfck

Buy the new album, here: https://pilgrimsofyearning.bandcamp.com/album/gemini

Operating out of Boston, Massachusetts, PILGRIMS were initially known as Pilgrims of Yearning. The band was founded in 2018 by Chilean vocalist Juls Garat and Colombian musician Claudio Marcio, who met in Chile and emigrated together to the US.

Garat and Marcio put Pilgrims of Yearning on the map by way of a series of releases, most notably 2022's Hadal EP and its dreamy lead single, "La Mar." With rigid beats and stark basslines interlacing with ethereal guitars and synths, the songs paid homage to the early works of Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, yet throbbed with their own heartbeat, unique to their makers.

New album Gemini is the first release under the new band name. Marcio gives this statement about the new, concise moniker: "With the name PILGRIMS, we reflect not only our spiritual journey, but our living experience as immigrants, our pilgrimage. The new album is touched by our experience as immigrants existing in this moment and place in history. We feel a lot of people can relate to the archetype of the traveler, the wanderer."

On "Liminal Travel," the album's fourth single, arpeggiated bass and a slamming electro beat lay the foundation. Garat holds court with her sirenic vocals, sung in both Spanish and English, and ethereal guitars and synths swirl. The song's dreamlike music video follows Garat and Marcio as they sightsee across New York City.

Garat gives this statement about the song's lyrics: "As an immigrant, you exist in a limbo, you don’t really belong to anywhere. As cliché as it sounds, it’s the primal experience of migration. It’s a journey where you question your essence, your values, your relationships, societal constructs, all what makes us human. In that journey, Claudio and I have each other as our mutual anchors in the uncertainty."

Photo by Rachael Shorr

CATERWAUL x Rye Coalition

CATERWAUL: post-hardcore legends Rye Coalition join 2026 festival lineup

With this year's incarnation of Caterwaul booked for June 5-7, 2026 in Minneapolis, the festival's organizers reveal another standout of the stacked lineup: Rye Coalition.

Hailing from Jersey City, New Jersey, the shapeshifting Rye Coalition stormed the scene in the '90s as a scrappy, sassy post-hardcore outfit, in league with the likes of Drive Like Jehu and Nation of Ulysses. The new millennium saw a radical reinvention, with the band leaning heavily into its classic rock and hard rock influences. Despite the playfulness of song titles such as "ZZ Topless," "Paradise by the Marlboro Light" and "Between I-Roc and a Hard Place," the transformed Rye Coalition of the early '00s rocked with power and conviction, finding a producer and champion in Dave Grohl, and landing tours with Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, and The Mars Volta. After two decades spent mostly out of the spotlight, the band will grace Caterwaul's stage in June for its first show in several years – a one-off, exclusive appearance from a group that has always marched to its own beat. 

In addition to Rye Coalition, the Caterwaul team has announced ten other artists for the 2026 lineup so far, including:

Dazzling Killmen
Didjits
H.E.A.T.
Mike Watt + The Missingmen
Muscle
New Brutalism
Point Line Plane
Season to Risk
Stress Positions
Tongue Party

Founded in 2020, Caterwaul has established itself as an annual showcase of the noisy, iconoclastic fringes of rock. BrooklynVegan has hailed it as "a unique mix of noise rock, punk, metal, post-punk and beyond," while New Noise Magazine has named it "a gathering of some of the best underground bands existing today." In a city still reeling from tragedies connected to the federal government's heavy-handed immigration efforts, Caterwaul stands as a beacon of independent thought and countercultural action. This year's fest will take place entirely at Minneapolis venue Zhora Darling.

3-day festival passes are on sale now: https://ticketstripe.com/caterwaul2026

Stream Rye Coalition's latest release, a single consisting of covers of Shellac and Drive Like Jehu songs, here: https://ryecoalition.bandcamp.com/album/paid-in-full

Stand by for more lineup announcements, coming soon!

Photo of Rye Coalition, courtesy of the band

HEAVY HALO - US Tour

HEAVY HALO: US tour with My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult fulfills industrial-rockers' childhood dreams

NYC's industrialized alt-rockers Heavy Halo will team up with the legendary My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult on tour this month as TKK's "Delicate Terror Tour" tears across the western half of the US. Kicking off March 25th in San Francisco and concluding in Los Angeles on April 18th, the tour marks Heavy Halo's first time venturing beyond their East Coast turf and bringing what CVLT Nation has hailed as their "soaring industrial metal" to the western states.

Founded in Chicago in the 1980s, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult began amidst the Wax Trax! Records industrial scene, alongside labelmates Ministry and KMFDM, then evolved toward its own signature sound incorporating house, funk, psych, and B-movie obsessions. Always provocative, always fun, the band has toured with the likes of Marilyn Manson and Siousxie and the Banshees and its songs have been featured in iconic films such as The Crow.

Heavy Halo's spiritual connection to TKK runs deep. The band was an early, fundamental influence on the aesthetics and life choices of both of Heavy Halo's members – vocalist/guitarist McKeever and producer Gosteffects – making the upcoming tour much more than a random pairing.

Gosteffects states: "My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult was the very first concert I went to, as a kid in Oklahoma, inspiring me to set out on a lifelong artistic journey, from throwing illegal raves in Oklahoma City to producing hundreds of artists in NYC."

McKeever states: "The film, The Crow, which featured My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult in an unforgettable performance scene, imprinted TKK's stamp on my psyche, becoming key sonic and visual influences for Heavy Halo. It is a full circle moment for us."

This leg of TKK's "Delicate Terror Tour" also features darkwave powerhouse Light Asylum (with whom Heavy Halo collaborated in 2025 on the single "Die Cast Down"), Die Sexual, and Devora.

As a prelude to the impending tour, Heavy Halo will hit the road this week to play two East Coast shows with goth-metal enchanters Cemetery Sex.

3/6 - Philadelphia, PA - Ortlieb’s !
3/7 - Washington, DC - Songbyrd !
3/25 - San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall $
3/27 - Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom $
3/28 - Tacoma, WA - Spanish Ballroom $
3/31 - Boise, ID - Shrine Social Club $
4/1 - Salt Lake City, UT - Metro Music Hall $
4/3 - Denver, CO - Oriental Theatre $
4/4 - Colorado Springs, CO - The Black Sheep $
4/6 - Kansas City, MO - Warehouse on Broadway #
4/7 - Oklahoma City, OK - Beer City Music Hall $
4/9 - Austin, TX - Mohawk $
4/10 - Dallas, TX - Echo Lounge & Music Hall $
4/11 - Houston, TX - Numbers $
4/12 - San Antonio, TX - Paper Tiger $
4/14 - El Paso, TX - Lowbrow Palace $
4/15 - Tucson, AZ - Club Congress #
4/16 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar #
4/17 - San Diego, CA - Music Box $
4/18 - Los Angeles, LA - Teragram Ballroom $

$ = TKK, Light Asylum, Die Sexual, Devora
# = Light Asylum, Die Sexual, Devora
! = Cemetery Sex

• Buy tickets for TKK's "Delicate Terror Tour" here:

https://mylifewiththethrillkillkult.com/

• Stream Heavy Halo's latest single, a remix of "Godspell" by Andy Bell of Erasure, here:

https://open.spotify.com/track/0mYw3qpDR0G8QfeqMEyGrB

• Follow Heavy Halo, here: 

https://www.instagram.com/heavyhalo.nyc/

Photo by Tori McGraw