Cleveland's The Cowboy are back! Two years after their explosive debut album, the group featuring members of Pleasure Leftists and Homostupids haven't lost their ability to kick ass with a sound oscillating between garage- and post punk, noise rock overtones, an abrasive surface combined with disarming catchyness. All this reminds me of bands like Plax, Ex-Cult, Shark Toys and Flat Worms. Also, in a rather unexpected turn of events, we get exposed to a laid back indierockin' instrumental tune on the b-side.
This excellent Debut EP by Liverpool's Sallow Pillow easily wins me over with its flavor of straight and effective, slightly surf-infused garage punk right in the vein of Black Lips, early Ty Segall or Debate Club. You can also sense a consistent Gun Club vibe as well as a certain post punk edge similar to Luxury or scandinavian acts like Holograms and RA. And to make things complete, when they roll out some americana influences like in Wear Out The Rope i can't help but feel positively reminded of Vaguess.
Alien Nosejob seem to become the kind of band where Ausmuteants singer Jake Robertson only does whatever the fuck he wants to at the moment. They started out as a more or less exact copy of his more well known band, then it started to get unpredictable as they ventured into retro tearjerker power pop, among other things. Also, we had to suffer through a maxi single of ultra-cheesy synth pop. This time they make it easier for me: It's hardcore. It rotates 45 times a minute. And it's very good.
Two preview tracks from this (probably) british band's debut EP already made me kinda hungry for more of their shit and now the record's other two songs prove we haven't been promised too much. A soundscape of restless garage punk unfolds, transporting a feeling of widescreen spaciousness you rarely get to witness in this genre - somewhat as if recent Uranium Club met Radio Birdman and Modern Lovers, complemented by a bit of MX-80 weirdness. Also, the epic closer Seasons 13-31 seems to have taken some cues from Wipers' Youth Of America.
Exquisite shit from Rouen, France. Kumusta emerge on the scene with a fun mixture drawing a line from noise rock & -core on one end of the spectrum, some raw garage energy on the other, a shitload of post punk & postcore in between. Imagine a fusion of slowed-down Bad Breeding with Criminal Code in certain moments, or at other times, you might be reminded of Australia's postcore powertools Batpiss and Bench Press.
This band from Richmond, Virginia gives us another ten minutes of pissed off and exquisite no-frills garage punk just dripping with loads of raw hardcore energy.
Three short bursts of quite charming Lo-Fi garage punk by some dude or band from Melbourne, moving on a scale between dangerously catchy power pop melodies and determined hardcore attacks. Friends of acts like Booji Boys, Datenight, Erik Nervous or Neo Neos will certainly appreciate this.
This Toronto/Vancouver based group featuring members of Damagers, among others, gives us yet another one of those fuzzed out, deliciously explosive hardcore-/garage punk mixtures, at times evoking comparisons to Vertigo, Fried Egg, Kaleidoscope or Cülo. Excellent stuff!
Five short and fun blasts of off-kilter genre blurring rumble - part garage-/fuzz punk, part hard-/weird-/noisecore, part KBD style strangeness. Somewhat like a mix of Lumpy & The Dumpers and Murderer, this shit might also contain traces of Flipper and No Trend.
Not too long after a rather synth-heavy tape by that guy who recently seems to be involved in pretty much any other Berlin band, we get a small encore exhibiting a more guitar-centric sound, shifting the sonic coordinates closer to the garage. The overall vibe here kinda reminds me of early Erik Nervous.
