Queens, NY-based shoegaze and grunge outfit Bummer Camp have officially released their sophomore album, Fake My Death, via Trash Casual Records. What began as a solo, loop-based project by frontman Eli Frank has successfully blossomed into a cohesive four-piece band, building upon the foundation laid by their 2025 debut LP, Stuck In A Dream.
With Fake My Death, the band shifts toward a more expansive and focused sound. The record serves as a sonic exploration of the anxieties that ebb and flow in daily life, capturing the internal conflict between the desire to disappear and the necessity of moving forward. To celebrate the release, the band unveiled a music video for the track “Perfect Storm.”
“We shot most of the footage in Queens around Highland Park in Glendale,” says Frank regarding the video’s production. “My good friend Ryon who used to play in several projects with me filmed it along with Preston Spurlock who filmed us during our show at Gold Sounds for the end shots. Preston also edited it and made the awesome animated parts.”
The thematic core of the album is perhaps best summarized by a poignant line from “Perfect Storm”: “Wanna fake my death cause I can’t stomach anything.” Frank explains that the album is an invitation to embrace the full spectrum of human experience. “The desire to tune everything out to such a point that you just want to actually disappear forever is not going to help anything, especially yourself,” he notes. “You gotta take the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, and roll with it. In my opinion, whether you’re being punched or hugged, feeling something is better than not feeling anything at all.”
The album’s rollout included the lead single “One Bullet,” which has been praised for its melodic, 120 Minutes-era grunge sensibilities, and the follow-up track “Too Far.” The latter, accompanied by a video created by Owen Lehman, highlights the band’s evolution into a unit that has spent significant time refining their chemistry in a rehearsal space.
Recording for the project took place at The Animal Farm in New Jersey. Working with Brett Bivona on lead guitar and Jon “Steel Wolf” Markson—who handled recording, mixing, and bass duties—the band traded the comfort of home recording for a more disciplined studio environment. “In the studio, time is literally money… a lot of money,” Frank explains. “So you gotta be focused and use your time wisely. We did end up getting the main bits done early so we could play around with percussion and other random stuff, I think it’s important to leave time for things like that because it adds character to the album.”
Bummer Camp is currently supporting the release with a string of tour dates across the Northeast:
- May 21 – Belmar, NJ @ Vintage on Ninth
- May 22 – Brooklyn, NY @ Alphaville
- May 23 – Philadelphia, PA @ Brewery ARS
- May 24 – Kingston, NY @ NightSwim