Fishbone

Megatron, and a junior high in Los Angeles

Fishbone came together in 1979 among junior-high pupils in Los Angeles. Most of the group — bassist John Norwood Fisher, his brother Philip on drums, guitarist Kendall Jones, keyboard and trombone player Christopher Dowd, trumpeter Walter A. Kibby II — came out of South Central. The singer and saxophonist Angelo Moore came from the San Fernando Valley. They called themselves Megatron before settling on the name that stuck, and played their first club show at Madame Wong's in LA's Chinatown.

Columbia signed them in 1983, which was an odd fit from the start: six Black teenagers playing ska, hardcore, funk and soul at a label that had no obvious shelf to put them on. The single "Party at Ground Zero" arrived in 1985, followed by a self-titled EP produced by David Kahne. The first full-length, In Your Face, came in 1986. Billboard described it as groove-conscious and credited it with lyrical and melodic depth; the New York Times picked it as a rock album of the week, noting a more mature sound and politically conscious material. Neither review quite prepared anyone for how far the band would push the mixture over the next decade.

The records that carried the argument

Truth and Soul, in 1988, is where the band's reputation was properly made — heavier, angrier and more soul-literate than the ska bounce that had defined them. The Reality of My Surroundings followed in 1991 and reached number 49 on the Billboard albums chart, the highest placing the band has managed. Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe arrived in 1993 and pushed further into metal, by which point Fishbone had become the band that a great many better-selling American rock groups cited as an influence while outselling them comfortably.

Kendall Jones left in 1993 under circumstances that consumed the band for years. Dowd departed not long after. The catalogue thinned out: Chim Chim's Badass Revenge in 1996, The Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx in 2000, then Still Stuck in Your Throat in 2006 — and after that, nothing full-length for nineteen years. The band did not stop working. It kept touring, more or less permanently, on a reputation built almost entirely from the stage rather than from record sales.

Through all of it Moore is the only member who never left. Everyone else in the current six-piece has either departed and come back or arrived recently.

The 2024 split, and Stockholm Syndrome

In 2024 the band broke apart again, this time over songwriting disagreements. Norwood Fisher, a founder and the only bassist Fishbone had ever had, left. So did Kibby, and so did the long-serving drummer John Steward. Moore and Dowd, who had returned to the fold years earlier, put a new lineup together quickly: Tracey "Spacey T" Singleton came back on guitar, having left in 2003, and the band added James Jones on bass, Hassan Hurd on drums and John "JS" Williams II on trumpet and vocals.

That group made Stockholm Syndrome, released on 27 June 2025, self-released, running forty-three minutes and moving through ska, punk and funk in the way the band always has. It was the first Fishbone album since 2006 and the first without Norwood Fisher. Moore has explained the title as a reference to prisoners who no longer recognise that they are captive, and pointed it squarely at the dynamics of the previous lineup.

The first track recorded, "Racist Piece of Shit", went out as a single in October 2024. "Last Call in America", featuring George Clinton, followed in April 2025. Reviews were mostly warm — Spin credited the band with continuing to present punk and metal as Black music by routing it through ska, funk, doo-wop, soul and early R&B; Punk Rock Mag called the record a triumph; The Rockpit was gentler, calling it pleasant without a stand-out.

Forty years of In Your Face, handed to other people

The anniversary project announced in January 2026 was not a straight reissue. Disc one is In Your Face remastered; disc two, Cover Your Face, is the same album re-recorded track by track by other artists. The contributors include Twin Shadow, Patrick Stump, Silversun Pickups, Catbite, Wheatus, The Ratchets, Kimya Dawson, Doom Regulator, the comedian Dave Hill, Bite Me Bambi on "Cholly" and Open Mike Eagle on "Knock It". The double LP was pressed in a limited run of 1,000 copies on black and Tiger's Eye vinyl, sold through the band's own webstore, and released on 10 April 2026.

Dowd said hearing the covers was trippy, and that he felt flattered and honoured — "you never know who's inspired by what you do". Moore was blunter about why the band did it themselves: they keep all the proceeds, put them back into the band, and hold full control. For a group whose first decade was spent on a major label that never worked out how to sell them, that is the point of the exercise as much as the anniversary is.

Where the band stands in September 2026

The spring run opened at August Hall in San Francisco on 9 April 2026 and closed twenty-three cities later at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles on 8 May, with dates through Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Detroit, Columbus, Garwood and Brooklyn along the way. Kendall Jones, the founding guitarist absent since 1993, appeared as a guest at the San Francisco opener, playing on "Swim", "Subliminal Fascism", "Black Flowers" and "Sunless Saturday".

The autumn leg has taken the band abroad. Japan came first: Gorilla Hall in Osaka on 14 September, Diamond Hall in Nagoya on 15 September, Ex Theater Roppongi in Tokyo on 16 September. Australia follows — The Gov in Adelaide on 21 September, 170 Russell in Melbourne on 23 September, Liberty Hall in Sydney on 24 September and The Triffid in Brisbane on 25 September, the band's first Australian tour in fifteen years. Local support was confirmed on 8 September: The Kittyhawks in Adelaide and Melbourne, The Porkers in Sydney and Brisbane.

A further studio album was described in March 2026 as planned for the summer, built from a mixture of unreleased material Moore calls the Fishbone vault and newly written songs. He described it then as still in the embryo process. Nothing more has been confirmed about it since.

The room

What the anniversary format has done is put the band in front of audiences who know the 1986 record in sequence, which changes the shape of the night considerably. Songs that had gone unplayed for decades came back: "Post Cold War Politics" was performed in San Francisco for the first time since 1992, "In the Air" for the first time since 1997, and "Adolescent Regressive Behavior" made its live debut.

Reviews of the spring run described a show that stayed unpredictable rather than ceremonial, with the band ripping through the album in a way that felt alive. The Los Angeles finale was covered as intense, chaotic and joyous, played to a multi-generational, multi-cultural crowd of self-styled Fishbone Soldiers who spent much of it stage-diving. Moore's daughter, Cheyenne Star Forever Moore, has been singing on "Skankin' to the Beat" at shows including Brooklyn on 25 April and the LA homecoming.