Press Photo By Réka Jakabffy

There’s always been something magnetic about Ron Gallo — the way his songs swing between chaos and clarity, satire and sincerity. But with his new album checkmate, out October 17th via Kill Rock Stars, the Philadelphia-born, Nashville-based artist trades his trademark irony for something even riskier: vulnerability.

Gallo’s been called a “rock ’n’ roll disruptor” (NPR) and “a fractured soul spelling out the ills of humanity one song at a time” (VICE), but this time, he’s spelling out something simpler — love. Not the polished kind. The raw, fragile, apocalyptic kind that only makes sense when everything else is falling apart.

“The world is ending. What can I hold on to?”

That question forms the beating heart of checkmate, an album written during one of the most unhinged moments in recent memory. On the final day of recording, Gallo wrote the title track — a song that, in his words, “came from somewhere else” — and instantly realized it summed up the whole record.

“For me, this song IS the sensation of being alive in 2025 while attempting to possess decency, care, and love deeply in a world dominated by fear and destruction,” Gallo says.

“It’s about clinging to what we love most while the world gets turnt upside down.”

He laughs when he calls it “the best love song ever written,” but he’s not really joking. The refrain — “There could never be enough time. You are my life.” — hits with quiet devastation. It’s not grandiose. It’s human. The kind of love that trembles because it knows it can’t last forever.

Love Songs at the End of the World

Recorded with his wife and musical partner Chiara, checkmate is as intimate as it is existential. The album’s sonic landscape is stripped back — voice, guitar, and the kind of stillness that feels almost radical. Where his earlier work poked fun at the absurdity of modern life, this record lets the absurdity simply exist and asks what remains beneath it.

Songs like “Fantasy” and “Feel-It-All Phase” search for grace in simplicity, while “Too Tired To Love You” and “Somebody God Would Wanna Chill With” take aim at late-stage capitalism’s emotional burnout. “Gun To My Head” imagines empathy as an act of survival. “Trampoline” pays tender tribute to Gallo’s late cousin Garry — a song so personal it nearly hovers in the air.

The result is less a record than a reckoning.

From Absurdism to Empathy

Gallo’s evolution mirrors the very themes he writes about: contradiction, renewal, and self-awareness. His once-playful defiance now feels tempered with compassion — a shift that began during his ongoing viral series 7AM Songs of Resistance for The Internet.

Every morning, he wakes up, reads the news, writes a song in five minutes, and uploads it raw. Over 65 songs later, the project has caught the attention of SZA, Moby, Kathleen Hanna, Hozier, and millions online. The humor is still there — biting, brilliant — but it’s now anchored in something deeper: connection.

Empathy as an Act of Defiance

In a time when outrage is easier than intimacy, checkmate dares to choose softness. It asks what it means to stay human when humanity itself feels endangered.

“Love is at the heart of this album,” Gallo says, “but it’s surrounded by apocalypse.”

That duality — tenderness and terror, laughter and loss — is what makes checkmate so piercing. It’s not a resignation; it’s a declaration. The end might be inevitable, but there’s still music, still meaning, still something worth holding onto.

And if that’s not love, what is?

🎧 Listen: “Checkmate” single + video out now

💿 Full album checkmate out October 17 via Kill Rock Stars

📍 Upcoming Shows:

Sept 3 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Rooftop

Sept 6 – Asbury Park, NJ @ Bond St. Block Party

Sept 19 – Nashville, TN @ Musicians Corner

Oct 19 – NYC @ Noise For Now Benefit

Checkmate feels like a pivot from the absurdist shield you’ve often carried — voice and guitar laid bare, sincerity without the usual wink. What cracked that open for you on this record?

I mean there’s always a LITTLE of that, inevitably, and there is still plenty of it scattered throughout this one but it’s a lot more subtle as a challenge to myself because I think it’s scary to be sincere in music. I guess the world not being all that funny right now cracked it open.

You’ve called the title track your “first true love song” and “the best love song ever written” (half-jokingly, half-not). What was it about that last day of recording that allowed it to just pour out of you?

When you think you’re done something or you’re already good to go it unlocks this reckless abandon and that is when the best things happen in music (and in life) and it can’t be manufactured.

Your motto shifted from “the world is fucked, but the universe is inside you” to “the world is ending, what can I hold on to?” How do you see that change reflected in your songwriting?

Definitely in the vulnerability. This record is an ode to the eternal timeless real deal things in my life. The rocks that I cling to amidst the spiraling.  And while we aren’t always serious in life, the existence of these things is no joke – life or death.

Humor, diversion, and self-sabotage have always been part of your DNA as an artist. How did you navigate letting go of those defenses without losing your edge?

I think realizing all that stuff isn’t edgy. Especially self-sabotage. What? Are you such a rebel you are rebelling against yourself? Preserve yourself. Take care of yourself and your surroundings.  What is more radical than the truth? Especially now, no matter what that truth is or how it sounds.  Nihilism and being “edgy” have been associated for so long and it was always bullshit.  It’s over.  Look where it got us. Love, kindness and care are the new “punk”.

The single “Checkmate” captures love in a world “hellbent on fear” — a clinging to decency, care, and humanity. Do you think music can still be a counterweight to the chaos we’re living through?

I always forget/downplay the impact of music because I’m too in it. I guess like cooks in restaurants probably are with food. But yes, music can build people up, inform, soothe, or infuriate them to go make a difference. Those triumphant movie scenes would be nothing without the music.

You’ve been described as a “literate insurgent poet” and a “rock disruptor.” How do you reconcile that anarchic streak with the softness and empathy you’re chasing on this album?

In a world run by psychopaths and harshness, empathy and softness is the resistance.

The song’s chorus ends with “There could never be enough time. You are my life.” You’ve said you tear up every time you hear it. What makes that line so visceral for you?

Loving someone knowing with 100% certainty that someday we will all be gone is the most beautiful and brutal thing imaginable and that line is a reminder.

The press photo for this era shows you emerging from behind the “wall of absurdity.” Was there a moment — personally or creatively — when you decided to stop hiding?

Back in 2023 while touring the last album “FOREGROUND MUSIC”, when we would play the song “I Love Someone Buried Deep Inside Of You”, which is a very direct and sparse song about having a loved one struggling with addiction, I noticed a much different and heavier response than anything else. People crying in the audience, people coming up to me after the show and opening up to me (a total stranger) about really personal stuff because of that song. So, that was pretty telling that the real power was in the not volume and chaos but in the words and in vulnerability and connectivity. To make people feel safe or seen like that is the mission.

You’ve said Checkmate started with just voice and guitar. What do you think stripping away production revealed about your songs — and about yourself?

The message has always been the sole purpose to me and I realized I am only clouding that with MORE stuff.  It revealed I never needed all of that.  There is more fulfillment and intensity in just words for me than any sound. And if a song can’t work as voice and guitar it’s probably not a good song. From a mechanical standpoint – It also allows me to try actually singing in different ways and dynamics rather than yelling or belting all the time.  It also revealed that doing less is way harder than doing too much.

You joked that after this you might only release joke songs or instrumentals. How do you see this record fitting into the larger arc of your work — a one-off burst of sincerity or the beginning of a new chapter?

I do think this record will be one-of-a-kind in the catalog. I don’t know where I’ll go musically next but I know I will stay centered around SONGS for the foreseeable future.  There’s enough great music already.  All that’s left as an offering to me is songs and perspective. I’ve been doing this “7AM” series online for most of this year where I wake up early, assess the state of the world and American politics and write a song about it in about 5 minutes and post it.  Up to about 70 songs or so now and I feel like I might have to record some of them at some point.  Maybe it will be more voice/guitar stuff or maybe it will be disco. Not sure.