A bucketload of unhealthy sugary joy, the second EP by this NY act delivering a quirky and catchy mix of synth- and garage-, art- and eggpunk that skillfully and precisely hits kind of a sweet spot inbetween the sonic worlds of, say, Metdog, Smirk and Cherry Cheeks, more or less. Good shit!
A new EP by the San Antonio, Texas group and as always i'm happy to say that Sex Mex still sound very much like Sex Mex, their mixture of garage- and synth punk, noise- and power pop transporting the aesthetics of only the most catchy and melodic artifacts out of the whole Reatard era. Reliable shit that doesn't try anything funny and instead just delivers on the hooks!
The EP suffers from non-embeddable bandcamp disease, but you can listen to the whole thing over at their bandcamp page.
New shit by these Olympia, Washington Lo-Fi punks and you kinda know what's gonna hit you: More of that deliciously blown out and catchy-as-fuck garage-/electro/fuzz punk dementia for the moderately desensitized mind, hellbent on damaging your speakers, corrupting your soul, spilling your booze and puking on your carpet. Very negative influence these kids, stay away!
Jake Robertson's Alien Nosejob usually finds some way to subvert our expectations and their newest 7", coming to us as usual via Anti Fade Records, ain't no exception in that regard! The Executioner surprises with what might easily be the most post punk the group has ever sounded as cold and raw electric beats get welded to an equally rigid construct of repetitive guitar riffs, combining into a slightly industrial-ish overall vibe. West Side Story then is closer to the familiar and beloved standard Alien Nosejob formula, a straightforward yet elegant garage punk smasher based on a single exquisite riff that could just go on forever but conveniently gets faded out in time before it can cause any lasting (hearing-) damage.
Following up on their much rougher, hardcore-leaning International Heartthrob EP of last year, Indiana's Spewed Brain take their sound into a catchier, slightly egg-ish direction on their new LP while staying delightfully fucked-up and unpredictable, at different times reminding me of groups as diverse as, say, Trauma Harness, Print Head, Exwhite, The Gobs, Snooper, Rolex, Witch Piss or Slimex.
Oh look, it's that mysterious dude again who also goes by such names as Zhoop, Djinn, Nightman, Feed, Brundle and even more disguises i can't recall right now. As usual he does exactly one thing on here and he gets it right every single time - five excellent no-frills minimalist detonations on the intersection of garage-, hardcore- and fuzz punk.
The second LP by this Melbourne garage punk supergroup brings further gradual refinement to their distinct formula carrying all the right baggage from many decades of particularly australian punk history both ancient and recent, presented with heartfelt urgency and a persistent sense of melancholy that's quite unique to them, a knack for catchy hooks, elegant, simple and effective songwriting which has had the group running circles around the bulk of the genre pretty much from day one, all the while leaving impact craters with the unrelenting fury of their performance. Nothing short of spectacular, this record!
A mainstay of recent years in garage punk is back with a somewhat more high-profile LP via Erste Theke Tonträger following a recent string of more understated cassette and digital releases. This thing is as eclectic as any of these but at the same time, a lot more focused, determined and consistent than some of those more scrappy recent offerings. Spanning a spectrum from the propulsive post punk of the opening salvo (When It's Gone, A.P.A.C.), melancholy indie rock ballads (Texas Cloud), compfy synth pop tunes (Let U Know) to straightforward garage-/fuzz punk explosions (Can't Take It, 2 Car Garage), there's plenty of meat to dig your teeth into, all held together by Vinny Earley's always confident, often plainly brilliant songwriting powers. Last but not least, Weekend Shadows and Carryon are further examples of exactly that kind of supreme power-/fuzz pop hymn the dude has always excelled at.
Following their perfectly appetizing (and as far as i can make out, completely vanished off the face of the internet by now) Black Box EP in 2022, we get this group's debut full-length courtesey of Dirtnap Records and this time around, there's actually some tangible background info available. No wonder these folks sounded familiar the first time around, since we're dealing with a duo consisting of US garage punk royalty Mark Ryan (most notably of Radioactivity, Mind Spiders and Marked Men) and Micah Why, whose previous bands i don't think i've ever come across. Their minimalist synth punk certainly has retained some of that Mind Spiders vibe although this shit is a lot darker, more stripped-down and abrasive, having a certain oldschool vibe to it wich echoes of Minimal Man, Nervous Gender, Screamers, Units or Visitors but you might just as well compare them to more recent phenomena like Powerplant, Pow!, Spyroids or a somewhat less spikey version of Lost Packages crossbred with the digital insanity of Nubot555, the more minimalist moments of Digital Leather.
Songs about motor vehicles aren't quite as ubiquitous as they once were and i'm just gonna say say deservedly so because honestly, that ancient, most wasteful mode of personal transportation can't be phased out soon enough and the future clearly belongs to all varieties of bikes and trains. But here we go, it's an unlikely new EP made up of nothing but carpunk tunes. Musically the thing slaps though, their weird and whimsical mix of art- and garage punk being of similar character to household names such as Vexx, Cel Ray, Warm Bodies, Warp or Fugitive Bubble.