People's Temple /​ Hood Rats /​ Hickey

Three hard­core re­leas­es es­pe­cial­ly stuck out this week, all of 'em more or less tread­ing off the genre's beat­en paths. The most con­ven­tion­al­ly sound­ing - rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing of course - is the EP by People's Tem­ple on NY la­bel Roach­Leg Records, giv­ing us an ex­treme­ly tune­ful vari­a­tion on 80s hard­core, at times com­ing across like a blend of Cir­cle Jerks with ear­ly-to-mid­dle-era Naked Ray­gun and with oc­ca­sion­al flour­ish­es of Hüsker Dü to boot. Of more re­cend Bands, Fried E/​m might al­so fit the bill.
Hickey's tape on Arch­fiend records then in­fus­es con­tem­po­rary strands of garage-, synth- and egg­punk weird­ness with plen­ty of old­school hard­core en­er­gy, along the way al­so evok­ing the some vibes of Flip­per, Spike in Vain, Bro­ken Tal­ent… With this re­lease, we might just be en­ter­ing the eggcore era!
Montreal's Hood Rats op­er­ate in a vague­ly sim­i­lar ter­ri­to­ry, al­so hav­ing a sound ground­ed in garage punk brim­ming with lo-fi egg­punk quirky­ness just as much as with an un­kempt KBD en­er­gy and the tunes to make it stick.