Cutters - Cutters

This Mel­bourne group's de­but 7" is a con­cen­trat­ed blast of high­ly flam­ma­ble garagecore spiked with ad­di­tion­al noise- & post­core ac­cel­er­ants, achiev­ing a res­olute punch akin to ADVLTS, Bad Breed­ing while their un­ruly garage & old­school hard­core ri­ot leaves a trail of de­struc­tion not un­like Fried E/​M, Elec­tric Chair or Mod­ern Needs.

Future - Demo

Now that's™ some po­tent shit com­ing out of poland, pre­sum­ably. Equal parts hard­core- and garage punk, ef­fi­cient­ly pro­pelled for­ward by an ul­tra-sim­plis­tic drum­ming style giv­ing the whole thing an al­most cow­punk vibe, but al­so leav­ing plen­ty of room for the noise-laden son­ic tex­tures by the string tor­tur­ing di­vi­sion to spread out - kin­da like you might have heard in the past from Bands like Leche, Mur­der­er, Yam­bag, Lux… maybe even a bit of Wymyns Prysyn hid­den in there.

Al­bum-Stream →

Liquid Assets - Offshore Accounts

I've al­ready failed to men­tion this group at least two times and feel kin­da bad about that - al­though you might have heard them al­ready on some of my "Verspan­nungskas­sette" mix­tapes. So, if you haven't been ac­quaint­ed with this Ot­tawa group's chem­i­cal­ly un­sta­ble garage-/hard­core-/KBD-style punk ex­trav­a­gan­za yet, here's your next chance. This tape, brought to us by malasyan punk strong­hold Pissed Off! Recs, con­tains pret­ty much every note of their de­mo tape and 7" re­leased last year in, as it ap­pears to me, most­ly re-record­ed and ex­tra ex­plo­sive ren­di­tions.

Al­bum-Stream →

Tower 7 - Entrance To A Living Organism

From the same bou­tique New York noise man­u­fac­ture that has brought us, among oth­er things, the vig­or­ous and smart hard-/post­core of Kalei­do­scope, we're giv­en an­oth­er force of na­ture to deal with. The de­but al­bum by Tow­er 7 sure bears some re­sem­blance to the afore­men­tioned Kalei­do­scope but, by al­so tak­ing more than just a few cues from an­cient UK crust tra­di­tion, man­ages to de­liv­er a bunch of blows even more re­lent­less. Their tools of choice are ob­vi­ous­ly a bit more blunt, though equal­ly ef­fec­tive.

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Cells - First Second

As you prob­a­bly al­ready know, i'm a to­tal suck­er for pret­ty much any weird chunk of noise Min­neapo­lis dude awe­some Con­nie Voltaire re­leas­es in­to the wild, so while we're still wait­ing for new stuff of his best-known project Neo Neos (or maybe its ac­tu­al flesh-and-bones full-band in­car­na­tion Neo­types), an­oth­er batch of raw and blown-out farts re­leased un­der his hard­core punk al­ter ego Cells does an ad­mirable job at sat­is­fy­ing my ad­dic­tion in the mean­time.

Al­bum-Stream →

Psykik Vylence - Psykik Vylence /​/​ Erik Nervous - Bugs!

Af­ter last year's de­but LP with his Be­ta Block­ers pret­ty much blew everyone's socks and pants off, there's some new stuff out by one of con­tem­po­rary garage punk's most blaz­ing fig­ures. First, there's been a tape ear­li­er this year un­der the Psykik Vy­lence moniker, which sees him mess­ing around with a prop­er­ly raw as­sort­ment of hard­core punk sounds - the re­sults of which are just plain gor­geous. And then, there's a new dig­i­tal EP with him go­ing it so­lo again, just as was the case with Psykik Vy­lence. But with or with­out Be­ta Block­ers - he's do­ing what he's best known and loved for: Quirky and in­ven­tive Garage Punk with built-in ear­worm guar­an­tee, this time al­so in­clud­ing a pret­ty ob­scure choice for a cov­er ver­sion (no, i in­deed nev­er heard of Taste Test be­fore…) and an un­fin­ished - though to­tal­ly smash­ing - in­stru­men­tal clos­ing track with the promise of ac­tu­al vo­cals for it in the near fu­ture. Got­ta adore the shit out of this!

Al­bum-Stream →

Cement Shoes - A Love Story Of Drugs & Rock & Roll & Drugs 7"

IMHO, at this hour Ce­ment Shoes of Rich­mond, Vir­ginia are the cur­rent kings of the garagecore mi­cro genre, cou­pling a mas­sive amount of bor­der­line-sleazy rock'n'roll with an un­de­ni­ably hard­core kind of en­er­gy you will find in rel­a­tive­ly few oth­er groups - Cü­lo or their qua­si-suc­ces­sors Taran­tüla, Man Eaters come to mind as a some­what more hard­core-lean­ing com­par­i­son… just maybe. Or kin­da like aus­tralian sleaze-garage rock­ers Gold­en Pel­i­cans hav­ing a hard­core epiphany. On their newest 7" via the ever re­li­able british qual­i­ty out­let Drunk­en Sailor Records we get more of just that, while the clos­ing track Go­ing Off The Grid , a rather straight­for­ward, clas­sic garage tune, might or might not in­di­cate a fu­ture move away from hard­core speeds. But what­ev­er they're gonna do next, they're an ex­cit­ing act to keep both eyes on.

Fucking - Superior Firepower

It took a while for new ma­te­r­i­al of these Min­neapo­lis punks to sur­face af­ter their first two in­cred­i­ble 7"s. I'm glad to say though, that their unique mix of chaot­ic hard-/garage-/post-/weird­core lost none of its spark and their re­fresh­ing dis­re­gard for com­mon genre tropes and con­ven­tions is on full dis­play here, mak­ing for an­oth­er five glo­ri­ous min­utes of noise, just as i've come to ex­pect from this group.

Al­bum-Stream →

Das Drip - _​

Sad to hear that not long af­ter their genre-de­fy­ing/de­stroy­ing/­fuck­ing/de­con­struct­ing/­ex­plod­ing al­bum of last year, this EP is al­ready the swan song of North Carolina's hottest ad­dress in con­tem­po­rary hard­core. So take this last chance to mar­vel at Das Drip's am­bi­tious hardcore/​postcore/​artcore/​weirdcore… cer­tain­ly nev­er bor­ing­core.

Al­bum-Stream →

Freaks - Freaks

An un­re­lent­ing storm of raw KBD-meets-ston­er punk kicked loose by the Freaks of Philadel­phia, en­forced with loads of hard­core propul­sion. Starts out kin­da like an amal­ga­ma­tion of ear­ly Milk Mu­sic or Di­nosaur Jr. with Every­thing Falls Apart-era Hüsker Dü, then set­tles in­to a mode that comes across like a mix of Tarantüla/​Cülo, Fried Egg, a hint of Launch­er and some added sludge and death rock vibes, the lat­ter re­mind­ing me of Be­ta Boys.

Al­bum-Stream →