Murfreesboro/Nashville power-punk and noise pop indie quartet Hamsterdam is a Gen X-trained, 20-year veteran of the local house show and indie venue scene. The band offers a fantastic example of modernized, eccentric, intelligent interpretations of ’90s-influenced songs, taking after their even older Southern-rock forefathers, continuing to rock as a unit as boys become men.
Comprised of a few vintage Murfreesboroans now settling in Nashville, Hamsterdam is Tyler Coppage (who has played drums with numerous local bands over the past decades), Joe Blankenship on vocals and guitar, local journalist and spiral staircase of the quartet, Charlie Zaillian, on lead guitar, and founding Glossary member Bingham Barnes on bass. After two decades popping up in past area ventures and earworms, Hamsterdam still travels to Murfreesboro to visit their mothers, as well as past angst and rage, when things seemed so simple.
Hamsterdam first released Are You Mad At Me? in 2024, but in re-mixed and reissued the elevated 2026 project with some brand new tracks.
The driving and explosive country-punk opener, “Devil’s Hand,” emphasizes the low-fi and simplistic pop-punk feel that characterizes this collection.
The screaming and rasp, bass strums and fast punk feel of “Maniacal” comes out like one might expect from a grungy Tennessee collective raised on quirky, brainiac duo They Might Be Giants and their stylistic offspring, Neutral Milk Hotel.
Hamsterdam channels some ’90s alt-rock angst with “Can’t Break My Heart” in mature form, while the acoustic “Glossary Song” reflects upon the times when Glossary was playing and the Red Rose was rocking in Murfreesboro, and the journeys many in that scene have gone through since—a remembrance of a time and place so exceptional that people still sing about it as much as 30 years later.
“Genuinely a great rock album,” said one Bandcamp reviewer of Are You Mad at Me?, a release that pays homage to a slew of alt-rock influences from Eagles of Death Metal, Spoon and Cracker to Motörhead, Pavement and Hūsker Dü.
Find Hamsterdam’s Are You Mad at Me? on Spotify and Bandcamp.
