This Sydney group has never disappointed and neither do they on their newest top-secret EP, so secret in fact, that even the song titles shall remain a mystery for the time being. What i can tell you though is that this thing once again fucking slams - another perfect run of lo-fi power pop, garage-, fuzz- and eggpunk. Just don't tell anyone, okay?
Excellent new rough and noisy shit from this Perth, Australia group operating on the intersections of garage- and hardcore punk with an added distinct oldschool KBD-Vibe not entirely dissimilar to the likes of the Liquid Assets, Freakees, Liposuction, Launcher or Mystic Inane. An EU edition of this beauty is promised to drop pretty soon via Goodbye Boozy Records!
Just as i think i'm done blogging for the week and while i least expect it, a new Neo Neos record materializes pretty much out of thin air! Now that's always a major event in the 12XU microverse anyway but the occasion is made all the more special as this is the first new release in a couple years (not counting the Hard Drive Experiments outtakes comps) by garage punk overlord and alternate-dimension guitar god Connie Voltaire. This shit has me feeling right at home from the start, unmistakably Neo Neos in all its depraved glory and absolutely up there with the best of his material. In case you prefer slabs of PVC, Under The Gun Records has you covered with a new LP compiling this thing on one side as well as the 2018 opus Get The Neo Neos on the other.
Their recent split tape with Dadgad was plenty of fun already and their newest EP, marking the Roman group's (formerly known as the garage one-man-band Mustard) debut as a full band lineup, dials up the goodness to ridiculous levels with an overall vibe that you might compare to the best moments of fairly melodic garage punk acts á la Liquids, Booji Boys or Erik Nervous, with some added psychedelic/british invasion Vibe akin to, say, the Resonars in the closing track Samurai.
Absolutely fucking brilliant shit once again arriving at our shores courtesy of Total Punk Records! Glittering Insects feature members of GG King, Predator, Wymyns Prysyn and Uniform (the atlanta group, not the NY industrial punk/-metal duo) and of these, it bears the most similarity to the latter two groups with the melancholy arrangements strongly echoing that distinct Uniform vibe. Overall the combination of gritty abrasive textures, the aforementioned sense of melancholy, a songcraft that comes across as sad and unwieldy yet melodic and catchy at the same time, reminds me a lot of australian noise-/indie rock gods Kitchen's Floor, the scuzzy post punk of City Yelps or, in its most catchy moments, the noise pop of early Treehouse. An exceptionally immersive and epic experience best taken in as a whole - a rare thing these days.
Still having compared their last digital single mainly to the established Mission of Burma formula, i'll expand that assessment to a more nebulous triangle of Burma, Wipers and Sonic Youth in face of the newest tracks by the Wollongong, Australia group - an aesthetic hovering inbetween the worlds of post punk, noise rock and fuzz punk which you might as well compare to more contemporary groups like early No Age or recent italian sensation Orrendo Subotnik.
After the more vicious attack of their 2020 debut album, Mexico City group Cosas Illegales take a sharp turn towards a more melodic, somewhat eggpunk-related approach to their electrically driven garage punk. As before, groups such as S.B.F., Race Car and Kid Chrome might serve as useful comparisons but as of late, i'd add stuff like Prison Affair and Set-Top Box to that list as well as a spoonful of Metal Urbain / Dr. Mix and the Remix.
Synth punk maestro Klint doesn't need an introduction here at this point, i guess. His half of this awesome split cassette gives us another three artifacts skimmed off the top of that bottomless pit of pure creativity that dude seems to magically conjure up as soon as someone allows him to plug a cable into anything. Orrendo Subotnik from Pisa, Italy then craft a very different, yet no less exciting soundscape. Having sent some shockwaves already with their ultra-rough second tape last year, their sound comes into much sharper focus here. A weird mixture that is, charging up the noise pop and fuzz punk of acts like early No Age, Male Bonding or Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, noisy and darkly melodic post punk á la Die! Die! Die!, Piles or Times Beach, with a decidedly hard-/postcore kind of energy and a sense of widescreen drama you might expect of Lower or early Iceage… among tons of other stuff i've yet to unpack.
Just another quick roundup of noises and disturbances out of the extended hardcore orbit. Starting off the batch with Sex Hater of Kansas City, who will surely please admirers of chaotic and downright filthy hardcore shit in a similar vein to groups á la Total Sham, Fried E/m or Launcher.
Speaking of filth, Clinic from Fresno, California dial that certain aspect even further - their latest EP feeling like one single murky puddle of primitive anger and deep despair, not entirely dissimilar in some places to the early Beast Fiend EPs.
pH People, a group of unknown origin, then slow the tempo down considerybly while by no means lacking energy - their tape on Urticaria Records is a potent mixture from the fringes of harcore punk and (proto-) noise rock with clear echoes of mostly older stuff á la Flipper, Spike In Vain, Noxious Fumes or Broken Talent.
And lastly, there's one for the dungeon dwellers among us in the form of Philadelphia's Alien Birth who deliver an oldschool metal-infested beast kinda like a mix between a more primitive Poison Ruïn and Golden Pelicans going all in on their sleaze rock leanings.
This montreal group's debut EP delights with a batch of fairly melodic, simple-and-effective little smashers in the realm of garage pop, fuzz- and post punk reminding me of a particular cluster of groups from a few years ago including acts such as Feature, Negative Scanner, Slowcoaches and UV-TV. Also, in Get Loose, there's a distinct Wire vibe at play here and y'all know i'm a sucker for that kind of shit.