GOGOL BORDELLO - WE MEAN IT, MAN!
Out February 13, 2026 via Casa Gogol Records

If you're receiving this message, you are a writerly/music/culture person who wants to know more about the new Gogol Bordello album the band just unleashed.

It's called We Mean It, Man! and it's out on February 13, 2026 via Casa Gogol Records.

Gogol frontman and spiritual figurehead Eugene Hutz calls it the band's "post-punk revenge." It's a fitting description.

We Mean It, Man! was co-produced by Nick Launay, whose 40+ year run of musical partners reads like the Great Canon of avant-teasing rock: IDLES, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Public Image Limited, Gang of Four, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (he did the one with "Heads Will Roll" on it—dude is the Quincy Jones of the underground). And Adam "Atom" Greenspan (Nick Cave, IDLES, Refused, Amyl and The Sniffers).

Word on the street is that a 2023 collab with Bernard Sumner (he of Joy Division, New Order, and Haçienda fame) inspired the move towards some loops, gated drums, and bass-driven post-punk grooves.

"Everything that inspired Gogol Bordello—punk, hardcore, techno—can be traced back to the post-punk playground. That's really where all brilliant cross-pollinations took place. Gypsy music, in addition, is a renegade universe of its own."

Now, we know you've heard the party line about how Gogol are the best "Gypsy punk" band of all time, and while we're not here to argue that, we'd like to offer a different platter: this isn't folk music by any means. And Gogol has never been a folk band. A post-modern punk collage with a touch of orchestra pit class, perhaps.

In fact, if you've been following the group's joyride through the fringes of punk, hardcore, classical, Romani, dub, and Madchester, you'll hear all manner of modernistic synths and loops on their seminal Gypsy Punks, the record they recorded with Steve Albini (RIP) way back in 2005.

Go back even further and check the security film at underground rave shops in NYC like Liquid Sky circa 1997 and you'll see Hutz regularly copping 12"s from Atari Teenage Riot and Goldie for his DJ nights.

And so the band's evolution here marks a reverse archeological dig, ya hear?

On to the music. To best situate yourself within this new sonic era, start with the title track, "We Mean It, Man!" which sounds like Turnstile with violins—dancefloor killing at its best. Another solid point of entry is "Ignition," which the band had code-named "Blue and Yellow Monday." You can figure out why. And if you want to hear the musical fruits of Eugene's love of techno made dangerously current, check out "Mystics."

The sounds here are massive, orchestral. Joining the band for the recording of this album is new guitarist Leo Mintek (ex-Outernational) and synth wizard and accordion goddess Erica Mancini. The musical animal—the hybrid beast—keeps growing new tails.

Lyrics time: While "Hater Liquidator" and "No Time for Idiots" offer bitey socio-political satire, the album's heavyweights "Life Is Possible Again," "Ignition," and "Boiling Point" explore intimacy of lifelong friendships and other relationship codes.

"Through angelic faces of fallen upstarts / We are smuggling friendship / Like a forbidden lost art," sings Hutz in "Ignition."

Big stuff.

OK, we've said our piece. If you knew Gogol from their previous touring entanglements with Madonna, System of a Down, and Primus, we invite you to situate them in your next DJ night alongside fellow sonic outsiders like Joy Division, IDLES, Viagra Boys, Amyl and the Sniffers, and Alec Empire.

The swashbuckling continues. Bring your best shoes and we'll see you out on the dance floor.

— the minor genius