Sniffany & The Nits - The Unscratchable Itch

The full length de­but of this Lon­don group is a per­fect storm of de­light­ful­ly off-the-rails hard- and post­core, of­ten per­me­at­ed with un­ex­pect­ed­ly melod­ic sub­cur­rents and at first glance kin­da play­ing out like a mid­dle ground be­tween weird­core pow­er­house Warm Bod­ies and fel­low some­one-and-the-some­things group Judy and the Jerks… but theres more than just that go­ing on here with mo­ments rem­i­nis­cent of an eclec­tic clus­ter of am­bi­tious hard­core groups á la Acrylics, Cri­sis Man, Mur­der­er, Kalei­do­scope or Straw Man Army.

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Everyone Is Alone Sometimes - Everyone Is Alone Sometimes

Pointy Sticks, the un­ex­pect­ed­ly melod­ic open­er of this Char­lotte, Car­oli­na group's de­but cas­sette, kin­da sounds like what i'd ex­pect if weirdo garage punk out­fit Print Head were to record a hard­core record. The rest of the tape re­mains beau­ti­ful­ly ec­cen­tric too, mix­ing old­school hard­core thrills with catchy garage hooks and, at times, the odd old­school hard rock or doom riff, the lat­ter sug­gest­ing stuff like Para­noise as a com­par­i­son. Oth­er times, you might liken them to some Con­nie Voltaire hard­core project or the re­cent Hip­py­fuck­ers de­mo, all of that steeped in a rough fi­deli­ty akin to any ran­dom Deluxe Bias or Im­po­tent Fe­tus re­lease.

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Lamictal - Doctor's Orders

Speak­ing of eggs… here's an­oth­er batch of short and sweet smash­ers in the realm of oc­ca­sion­al­ly hard­core-in­fused garage- and post punk that at one point or an­oth­er kin­da re­sem­bles a cu­ri­ous mix­ture of Big Bop­per, Feed/​Zhoop/​Djinn, S.B.F., Pat­ti and Landown­er.

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Crisis Man - Asleep In America

An­oth­er pow­er­ful punch in the nuts from that Cal­i­for­nia su­per­group shar­ing mem­bers with the likes of Acrylics, Pub­lic Eye, Vi­o­lent Change and Cer­e­mo­ny. Here, they de­liv­er their most com­pact and vig­or­ous set of new tunes so far, hav­ing fine-tuned their for­mu­la of equal parts hard­core- and garage punk for max­i­mum im­pact, fus­ing the un­re­lent­ing force of Acrylics and Bad Breed­ing with the abra­sive garage qual­i­ties of, say… ear­ly Teenanger or Video.

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The Vortex - Executive Dysfunction

This San­ta Ana group emits short and noisy KBD-soaked ar­ti­facts, equal parts old­school garage- and hard­core punk with the oc­ca­sion­al touch of Gun Club. The over­all im­pres­sion ain't too far off Neo Neos or any of mae­stro Voltaire's var­i­ous hard­core projects, ear­ly Erik Ner­vous and maybe some hint of Launch­er, meshed to­geth­er with some beau­ti­ful ac­ci­dent of the kind that might've just as well oc­cured on some ran­dom Deluxe Bias or Im­po­tent Fe­tus re­lease.

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Total Sham - Life as a Total Sham

Gear up for some com­plete­ly un­san­i­tized, garage-in­fest­ed old­school hard­core may­hem, just as rough as it's catchy and fun, on this EP by a Kansas City group that ap­pears to con­sist of the same folks oth­er­wise known as Dye. Fans of groups á la Fried E/​m and Mod­ern Needs are sure­ly gonna ap­prove of this, as will those of slight­ly more garage-lean­ing bands like Launch­er, Liq­uid As­sets or Mys­tic Inane.

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Feed - Western Fun /​/​ Djinn - Relapse /​/​ Zhoop - Top Shelf

I don't think i've ever giv­en this dude from Ham­mond, In­di­ana the full spot­light he de­serves here, al­though you might've en­coun­tered his shit on some Verspan­nungskas­sette mix­tapes, where his var­i­ous al­ter egos have been a reg­u­lar oc­cur­rence in re­cent months. Now here are three of his lat­est batch­es of min­i­mal­ist hard­core punk, each of his projects sound­ing pret­ty sim­i­lar if you ac­count for some slight vari­a­tion in tem­po and in­ten­si­ty… as well as some added bot­tom-of-the-bar­rel-end elec­tron­ic reen­force­ment in the case of Feed, which should've right­ful­ly earned him the ti­tle of great­est sty­lo­phone play­er in hard­core punk by now.

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Unknown Liberty - Chain Of Madness

Cu­ri­ous mix­ture of hard­core-, an­ar­cho- and post punk on this Kingston, NY group’s de­but tape, as­sem­bling a dis­tinct style out of grit­ty KBD-drenched vibes à la Launch­er, a hint of UK82 en­er­gy, plen­ty of Rudi­men­ta­ry Peni and the oc­ca­sion­al bit of Crass.

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C-Krit - C-Krit

Fuck, that shit smells… but in a good way. Af­ter their mild­ly dis­turb­ing one-and-a-half tapes on Im­po­tent Fe­tus we fi­nal­ly get their first “full” length cas­sette from Tetry­on Tapes and once again this is some joy to be­hold. Ul­tra-sep­tic hard- and noisec­ore vague­ly rem­i­nis­cent of present-day acts like Soup­cans, Stink­hole or Vul­ture shit but al­so of old pi­o­neers of the Flip­per, No Trend, Bro­ken Tal­ent va­ri­ety. There was a time when, as a kid, folks from my church told me that lis­ten­ing to evil rock’n’roll mu­sic might give you a de­mon in­fes­ta­tion (thank­ful­ly, the fear­mon­ger­ing didn’t work for long…). I don’t know what lis­ten­ing to C-Krit is gonna leave you with but its side ef­fects in­clude vi­o­lent sar­casm, di­ar­rhea and not giv­ing a shit.

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Hippyfuckers - ????

A ver­i­ta­ble gut punch, the de­but tape of this St. Louis, Mis­souri group. Hard­core punk with elab­o­rate & flex­i­ble any­thing-goes song struc­tures, at times catchy and melod­ic, in oth­er parts show­ing a gloomy post punk /​ death rock un­der­cur­rent and al­so there’s some of that oh-so-fash­ion­able (don’t get me wrong, i to­tal­ly love that) garage edge to it. You might be re­mind­ed of hard­core-era Hüsker Dü at some points, as well as re­cent hard- and post­core stuff such as Nopes, Pink Gui­tars, Ce­ment Shoes or the col­or­ful yet night­mar­ish hard­core psy­che­delia of Mur­der­er.

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