Garage-/synth-/electro punk from Cleveland, Ohio that carves out its own little place in the current landscape of similar groups by way of a certain psychedelic haze, kinda like a mix between The Spits, Silicon Heartbeat and Smirk, observed through some dense Chrome- or Metal Urbain-esque fog. Or you might describe it as some kind of garage punk incarnation of Murderer's hallucinogenic cowpunk nightmarescapes.
Metdog's fourth extended play is yet another treasure trove of playful and easygoing garage punk… let's not talk about eggs again here. Admirers of R.M.F.C., Research Reactor Corp. or Satanic Togas will aprove of this, just as i'm gonna make an exception here and give my full approval for the use of auto-tune or vocoder or whatever that shit in the closing track is… fucking art, i guess.
Um… what meaningful thing is there left to say about a new Alien Nosejob record at this point? They kinda come in two shapes: The grab bag style ones where Mr. Robertson branches out in every direction possible and the hyperfocussed monoculture ones where he doubles down on a single genre - like his hardcore 7"s for example or that synth pop/eurotrash 12" maxi a while ago. Well, this one's another grab bag record and apart from that, it's just the plain old usual awesomeness we've all come to expect from this dude who seems utterly unable to write a dull tune.
The debut EP of this group from Utrecht, Netherlands is pure concentrated joy from start to finish, channeled into five properly demented synth-/garage punk jams wondrously able to bypass the intellect entirely only to make an even bigger splash with your primal instincts. Neat!
Perfectly exhilerating shit, the first crumbs of noise we get from some group or project that might or might not be based in Los Angeles. The first two tracks deliver a flavor of electrically driven garage punk taking cues from acts like Mononegatives, Useless Eaters, Powerplant, RRC or Alien Nosejob while the closing track ups the weirdness considerably, going all-in on pure synth punk mayhem.
It only took them like… twelve years but finally the Munich duo has released their second 7" via Slovenly Recordings and it's an irresistable blast of garage- and electro punk with echoes of The Spits and Stalins Of Sound, plus an unlikely touch of Big Black in the highly combustible opening track Shut Your Face.
New shit from one of KBD-informed garage punk's prime makers in our time, L.A.'s Freakees. Having tried on quite diverse stylistic flourishes, bits and pieces on recent EPs including pure synth-/electro punk on their previous one, they have never sounded more focused than on their newest effort and this pays off admirably as the current, pretty synth-heavy iteration of their sound totally slaps and might be compared favorably to acts like early Launcher, Alien Nosejob, Research Reactor Corp., Liquid Assets and Satanic Togas.
…and here's yet another exquisite load of quirky, fun & catchy DIY garage- and synth punk by some australian dude that fits right in between, say, the last Alien Nosejob full-length and the even more colorful microcosm of Warttman-affiliated groups.
Everyone keep an eye on the chilean label Instant Party. Having already caught my ears recently with the Pizza Boys tape, these folks have just unearthed another gem by a mexican group i probably wouldn't have heard of otherwise and they fucking rule! This tape compiles all four EPs they've released so far. Electrified garage- and synth punk kinda like S.B.F.-meets-The Spits, but the latter with way more robots, more cyberpunk but maybe also… mumble punk?
So the egg-plague has now arrived in Greece. Was about time, i'd say. Μπριτζολιτσεσ are a duo from Athens cooking up a mixture of garage- and synth punk that even yours truly has to classify as totally and deliciously nuts. A level of nuttyness that's roughly in the ballpark of lunatics like Skull Cult or the whole Warttman-infested Research Reactor Corp./Set-Top Box clusterfuck. Whatever undecipherable mess google translate makes of the lyrics gives me a hunch that understanding the language won't make the whole thing any saner.