Last week, the neverending hardcore music gossip factory was spinning with the news that California band Bite the Hand had been served with a cease & desist warning from another group from Arizona with the same name forcing them to change their moniker. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find the details here.
Now known as Bad World, the Bay Area combo is moving on with purpose, dropping two new tracks —"Cold Rolled Steel" and "Unstoppable Force"— the follow-up to their 2024 EP, Brutal by Design.
Bad World are also gearing up to perform at Just Another Gig (JAG) in Tacoma this coming weekend alonside No Warning, Mindforce, Ringworm, and many other excellent hardcore bands.
I connected with Bad World guitarist Timmy Lodhi again to get his thoughts on the band name nightmare, their new music, and future plans for the rest of 2025.
It’s been a pretty interesting week for the band. How has it felt from your perspective?
[Laughs] It’s been a wild one for sure. Honestly, at this point in time, I’m feeling really good about things. I was stressed out about the cease & desist for a while.
It’s a bummer to be told that you have to change the name you’ve worked so hard to establish for nearly 3 years but it’s been amazing to see how supportive people have been throughout the entire process. I’ve gone through the entire spectrum of emotions but honestly I’m looking forward to getting this new music out there and moving forward.
How closely have you followed the social media response, or do you generally avoid that stuff?
Oh, we’ve definitely kept an eye on the response [laughs]. It was hard not to. We just chose not to engage because it wasn’t worth the energy. We spoke our truth and people formed their own opinions.
It was a simple thing. We received a cease & desist, we changed our name. It just so happened that we received a lot of love afterwards and that’s what has kept us motivated.
Tell me a bit about these two new songs that the band just dropped.
After we released Brutal by Design, I started writing for an LP almost immediately. “Cold Rolled Steel” and “Unstoppable Force” were the first two songs that came after. These two songs fit so well together that we knew we’d want to release them as a promo before a full-length.
Originally, we planned to wait a little longer but really wanted to have some new songs released before JAG in Tacoma next month. It just so happened to coincide well with the name change. Honestly, the timing was kinda perfect. I think these might our best songs to date.
Yeah, this JAG appearance should be a big moment in the band’s story with all of the other nonsense that went down. Do you feel the same way?
Honestly, we’ve been so caught up with getting these songs finished and the internet shit that we haven’t had much time to process what JAG will be like.
We’re all very grateful for Zack at Brainstem and our PNW family for giving us the opportunity and we just want to have a good ass time playing hardcore music with some legendary bands. I hope our set is well received, and I’ll personally always remember this moment as a huge chapter in our bands story.
What’s on the Bad World schedule beyond these new tracks and the JAG appearance?
We’re very excited for the upcoming year. We’ve got some tour and show announcements in the next few months as well as finishing up some new material (that LP might be closer than we think).
We appreciate you connecting with us and have all the love in the world to our friends and family for the support.
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Bad World on social media: X | Instagram
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