SHIV AND THE CARVERS SMASH THEIR WAY OUT OF THE DIGITAL HELLSCAPE ON NEW SINGLE “SCREENS”
ANNOUNCES DEBUT ALBUM
ALWAYS WATCHING
VIDEO + SINGLE “SCREENS”
DIRECTED BY SARAFINA BORTOLON-VETTOR OF BONNIE TRASH
WATCH HERE / PREORDER / LISTEN / ADVANCE LINK
PLAYING REEPERBAHN AND CURRENTLY ON TOUR IN EUROPE/UK
Photo Credit: Lauren Riley
“Zippy guitar crunch, blown-out garage production, and snarled '90s melodies.”
- The Line of Best Fit
“Becoming their own judge, jury and executioner, Shiv and the Carvers… give this particular anxiety a home on ‘Executionary.’”
- Exclaim!
“‘Executionary’ wraps a painfully familiar subject in something immediate and catchy: the way anxiety can punish you long before anything has actually gone wrong. It is all nervous momentum, big hooks and the horrible recognition of a brain busily preparing for every possible disaster.”
- Loud Women
September 10, 2026 – Today, Toronto skate-punk favourites Shiv and the Carvers announce their debut album, Always Watching, out October 29, 2026, alongside its latest single and music video, “Screens.” The band is on tour this fall in Europe and the UK, playing Reeperbahn in Germany.
A snarling response to the increasingly blurred line between connection and captivity, “Screens” takes aim at the devices that have become near-permanent extensions of ourselves. Against the band's blistering punk, Shiv wrestles with the strange contradiction of having seemingly limitless information at our fingertips while feeling increasingly powerless over what and how much we consume.
“Screens is about the horrifying adult pacifiers we all carry around and rely on for everything. Modern smartphones are both a marvel and curse. We have access to so much information and power, but we're also being manipulated by them. Our attention spans are getting shorter, and the ways we process information is changing. I frequently find myself standing at the bus stop, feeling slightly uneasy, and pulling out my phone to help pass the time. I love my phone because it shows me pretty things and opens up my world, but I am so tired of seeing footage of war and human suffering interspersed with advertisements for plastic surgery. It's breaking my brain and soul. And I can't disconnect.” - Shiv and the Carvers
That inability to disconnect becomes horrifyingly literal in the accompanying video, directed by Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor of Bonnie Trash. Bathed in a blue light, Shiv finds herself trapped inside a nightmarish room with little more than a television, a baseball bat and the command “DO NOT BREAK OR HIT DOOR” scrawled across its exit. Shiv bites back, taking a baseball bat to the television, violently breaking apart the object that has held her attention captive.
"Screens" is an ode to MuchMusic's golden era, horror movie, Mandy, and perhaps a subconscious sprinkle of 90s action movies. Shiv is experiencing overwhelming dread, being sucked into a TV screen with no way out. When she realizes she has become the screen, trapped, isolated, and threatened to live the rest of her life as a screen... she must free herself. And the only way out is to smash the hell out of it. It was an absolute pleasure working with Shiv and the Carvers, and I cannot wait to see them blow everyone's minds as they take over the world. - Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor (Director, vocalist of Bonnie Trash)
The announcement follows a fast-growing run for the band, with Shiv and the Carvers becoming one of Canada's most exciting punk bands. This September, Shiv and the Carvers head to Germany’s Reeperbahn Festival, where they’ve been handpicked by CIMA to perform at Canada House. The international showcase follows a fast-growing run for the band: they’ve shared stages with Viagra Boys, Lambrini Girls, and Getdown Services, earned a spot in Exclaim!’s Class of series, signed with Twin Fang Records, and were personally selected by Bif Naked to perform at her official Canadian Music Week showcase. Their latest single and video, “Executionary,” continued that momentum, earning a Staff Pick from Exclaim! and being named Single of the Week by LOUD WOMEN, alongside support from The Line of Best Fit, Punknews.org, New Noise Magazine, Alan Cross’ A Journal of Musical Things, and more.
“Always Watching” is our first born, our perfect little angel. It’s a perfect fusion of all of us and we feel like we created the best representation of our lives in the technofascist hellscape that everyone is forced to exist in and struggle through. While we kept it familiar, recording once again with Jesse Turnbull we really pushed ourselves to come up with new sounds and structures by pulling from different genres and layering tracks and tracks of guitar, harmonies and new instruments. Shiv played her grandad’s fiddle on Executionary, played trumpet on Squealerz and we brought Violet de Rege-Braga (of Toronto darlings, RrroachhH) on theremin for ‘Screens.’ - Shiv and the Carvers
"Screens" is available everywhere now and Always Watching arrives October 29, 2026 via Twin Fang Records. Listen here + pre-order here.
More on Always Watching:
“The man in the sky looks down into my room,” Shiv and the Carvers sing on the opener of their new album, Always Watching, “And he wants me to put on a show, and I do.” Whether lambasting tech billionaires, crooked cops, or purity culture, Shiv and the Carvers’s ridiculously fun, anti-authoritarian anthems make for an impeccable show indeed. Incubated in the dusty warehouses of Toronto’s roller derby scene, the band’s “Josie and the Pussycats meet Bikini Kill” sound has been conjuring rapturous mosh pits across their hometown of Toronto and well beyond. Led by the electrifying vocals of Shiv Scott and featuring guitarist Nicky Maxwell, bassist Annie Jane Marie, and drummer Mike Wiznuk, Shiv and the Carvers’s riot grrrl punk brings people together in righteous anger.
At the heart of the band is Shiv Scott's fiercely independent creative drive. A longtime DIY musician, Shiv has always approached songwriting and recording by diving in and learning as she goes. She forged that same determination through roller derby where she met guitarist Nicky. As the project evolved into a four-piece, that fearless mentality became the foundation of Shiv and the Carvers' razor-sharp chemistry and unforgettable live performances.
You can feel the band’s physical force on their new record, Always Watching. Produced by Jesse Turnbull (Klokwise, Dilly Dally), this deeply collaborative project evokes The Donnas and Hole while rallying from pop-punk to indie rock. The kinetic energy makes sense given the band’s ethos: “if a song won’t thrill people, we won’t spend time on it.”
Throughout Always Watching, Shiv and the Carvers dissect modern existence, exposing its oppressive absurdities. The band denounces our burgeoning techno-fascism surveillance state on the violently punchy “Daddy’s Always Watching.” The rollicking takedown sets its sights not only on the “the tech billionaires who think that they’re gods,” but also the depictions of God Shiv was sold as a kid. Growing up with an Irish Catholic background and her dad as her Sunday school teacher, this song riffs on the line Shiv recalls hearing her grandpa re-iterate: “Be good or the man will come and get you!”
Meanwhile, the skate park jam “Screens” digs its teeth into our brain-frying phones, on which Shiv shouts: “take all the thoughts out of my brain / make it real smooth / I don’t ever want to think a single thought again.” The album tackles everyday abuses of power on the track “You Go Big,” while “401” unravels a GTA nightmare in which your entire life, from cradle to grave, takes place in bumper-to-bumper traffic: “We are born and we will die on the 401 / Nothing left to do but pray we will see the sun.” Perhaps most potent is “Squealerz,” whose blunt politics recall the Irish rebel songs Shiv remembers watching her extended family perform when she was a kid. Guitars squish, drums thump, and you can hear some brass squeaks (with Shiv playing trumpet for the first time since high school jazz band) as the lyrics stand firm: “There’ll be no plain-clothes abusers in our communities / kneel and lick the boot and face the brutality.”
As righteously venomous as it gets, Always Watching is ultimately an ode to coming together in solidarity. As Shiv puts it, “community is the only way to fight the forces coming down around us, and making music with other people is the greatest joy.” It’s this joy that resonates in every Shiv and the Carvers song, and at every live show, as the band—clad in leopard print—conjures mosh pits, brings the house down, clawing with righteous rage until love bleeds through.
LIVE DATES
Sept 10 - Sidney & Matilda - Sheffield, UK - Tix
Sept 11 - Hyde Park Book Club - Leeds, UK - Tix
Sept 12 - Castle Hotel - Manchester, UK - Tix
Sept 13 - Billy Bootleggers - Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK - Free Entry
Sept 17 Reeperbahn Festival - UWE - Hamburg, DE - Tix
Sept 25 - Second Summer Festival - Collective Arts Brewing - Toronto, ON - Tix
Sept 25 - Second Summer Festival - Sneaky Dees - Toronto, ON - Tix
Please contact Jess Arcand with any press inquiries jess@takeaimmedia.com
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