Caustic releases ‘It’s Not Gatekeeping If You’re a Douchebag’ for The Trevor Project
Caustic released the single “It’s Not Gatekeeping If You’re a Douchebag” on June 24, 2026, donating all profits to The Trevor Project.
Caustic, the industrial and powernoise project of Madison, Wisconsin musician Matt Fanale, released the single “It’s Not Gatekeeping If You’re a Douchebag” on June 24, 2026. Fanale wrote and produced the track and is donating all profits from it to The Trevor Project, the nonprofit that runs suicide-prevention and crisis services for LGBTQIA youth.
The digital single arrives after Fanale had suggested the 2025 FIEND records might be the last work under the Caustic name. It is the project’s first new music of 2026 outside a reissue.
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‘It’s Not Gatekeeping If You’re a Douchebag’: release details and credits
“It’s Not Gatekeeping If You’re a Douchebag” is a digital single, released June 24, 2026 through Caustic’s Bandcamp page. Fanale wrote and produced the track, with mixing and mastering by Eric Oehler at Submersible Studios.
The single follows the two-part FIEND set, “FIEND I” (August 20, 2025) and “FIEND II” (September 24, 2025), which Fanale had described as potentially the project’s final releases. In February 2026, Caustic also issued a 20th-anniversary “Turd Polish” remaster of the 2006 debut album “Unicorns, Kittens, and Shit”.
Fanale’s full statement and the donation details appear on the single’s Bandcamp page. All profits go to The Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention and suicide-prevention services for LGBTQIA young people.
What Caustic’s Matt Fanale said about the single
The track addresses intolerance within the goth and industrial community and points back to the scene’s roots in LGBTQIA culture. Fanale frames acceptance as a condition of belonging to that community: “You can’t call yourself a weirdo if you don’t love weirdos, and you aren’t going to be accepted if you can’t be accepting.”
He draws a line between nonconformity and political conservatism in the same statement: “Being conservative is not ‘weird’ – it’s the status quo that has marginalized and hurt innocent, harmless people for centuries for a variety of reasons beyond their control.” Fanale calls the song an effort to “protect our own” and closes with “Happy Pride Month.”
About Caustic
Caustic is the industrial and powernoise project of Matt Fanale, who also records under the name Eurotic. He formed it in Madison, Wisconsin in 2002 and has remained its only constant member; the live lineup changes from show to show. The project pairs abrasive electronics with humorous, often self-deprecating lyrics.
Early EPs appeared on Sonic Mainline from 2004. The debut album “Unicorns, Kittens, and Shit” followed in 2006 as a co-release between Static Sky Records and Crunch Pod, with “Booze Up And Riot” on Crunch Pod in 2007. Caustic then moved to Metropolis Records for “The Golden Vagina of Fame and Profit” in 2011, issued in Europe through L-Tracks, and “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop” in 2012. “Industrial Music” came out on Negative Gain Productions in 2015, and recent albums “Buggy” (2023) and “Thirsty Dog” (2025) were released through Submersible Studios. In 2010, Fanale publicly stopped drinking and addressed the experience in later material, including “White Knuckle Head Fuck” on the 2011 album.
Outside Caustic, Fanale has worked in the side projects m00ntz! with Eric Oehler of Null Device and Chuck Spencer of Stochastic Theory, Parasite Twin with Brian Schuh, and Prude with Chemlab’s Jared Louche, Cyanotic’s Sean Payne and Plastic Heroes’ Marc Plastic. Oehler, his m00ntz! bandmate, mixed and mastered the new single at Submersible Studios. Side-Line previously reported on the project in 2016, when Fanale staged a “Caustic caught up in Facebook drama” April Fools prank announcing that everyone had been fired from the one-man band.
“It’s Not Gatekeeping If You’re a Douchebag” continues Caustic’s run after the FIEND records and ties the project’s first 2026 single to a fundraising effort for The Trevor Project.
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