2026 is the year i'm finally coming to terms with the fact that egg punk has clearly peaked sometime over the last couple years and at this point, much of it feels kinda gentrified and overdone and i'm basically waiting for the next creative explosion in punk to emerge from some other unexpected niche. Just for the record, i'm not suddenly losing interest in, or even hating on the genre. This ain't another eggpunk sucks manifesto, haha. The beautifull mess we've retroactively come to assign the egg punk label to has been an endless well of joy and creativity that helped keep garage punk fresh and thrilling for the last decade-plus and the whole thing probably ain't going anywhere in the forseeable future. Also, if you're old enough to have seen a couple of subgenres rise and decline over the years, you know that no genre ever really dies anyway - eventually everything's always gonna re-emerge in some mutated form. The main thing that's changed for me in recent years is merely a sense of complete oversaturation and the fact that that certain strains of the genre appear to have very much consolidated themselves into a set of easily quantifiable, infinitely reproducible standard formulas - akin to some shallow instagram "aesthetic" - that has lost much of its novelty over time and if there's ever been a punk subgenre in danger of a hostile AI slop takover, that would probably happen to egg punk first with its increasingly generic-feeling library of tropes and set pieces. Anyway, all i'm saying is i'm rapidly losing patience and tolerance for the less inspired, middle-of-the-road strains of the genre and everyone's just gonna have to do a little more than just faithfully reproduce an established genre pattern to gain my attention going forward.
In that slowly declining landscape, a new Cherry Cheeks LP just came along and i'm actually positively struck by how admirably the group's sound has held up over the years (actually im gonna say that quite a lot of the genre's veterans' and forerunners' output still sounds pretty freakin' fresh to my ears to this day), though weirdly they're also exactly the kind of group whose past output is now in constant danger of retroactively fitting that aforementioned standard formula a bit too closely and thus being drowned out by the sheer forgettable mass of what i'd now call MOR eggpunk releases. The curse of being ahead of the curve i guess... What has always kept them afloat has been their excellent songwriting ability though and on this new LP, they not only fully lean into that strength, they even considerably up their game with an all-killer set of insanely catchy and addictive noise- and power pop tunes while also ever-so-slightly roughing things up on the production front with an overall just slightly more organic and propulsive drive that just about does its part to let their sound shine in 2026, even though it ain't exactly on the cutting edge of anything in this day and age. Let me put it like this: If you wanna ride the 12XU eggpunk coaster from now on, you need to be at least this tall. Also: In the end it's always about the songs, stupid. And these just fuckin' rip.
Last Year's Epoxy River and Super Pool LP by this Evesham, New Jersey (presumably one-man-) group was already such a massive leap in quality for them and yet again, they manage to considerably refine their sound on this newest LP, on which they kinda leave behind the late-2000s fuzz punk and noise pop ingredients that dominated that record and lean even more into the oldschool '80s and '90s college- and indie rock-informed sounds ranging from classic Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh, Bitch Magnet and early Seam to the likes of Superchunk and Polvo, with just a subtle hint of first and second wave emo thrown in for good measure but also increasing amounts of '80s hardcore-based proto-noise rockers like Flipper, Big Black, Drunks With Guns and No Trend, especially in the final stretch of the record. There's an unpredictable quality and an explosive, uncontainable energy to these tunes, radiating the pure untamed joy of blasting a euphoric and abrasive, larger-than-life and kinda anachronistic type of melodic noise out of your gear that feels pleasantly out-of-place in this era, all of it further thrown deliciously off-balance by the ear-piercing screams that prove this dude still ain't ready to half-ass anything here.
Damn, has it really been close to five years since we last heard from these spanish egg-/garage punk veterans? Anyway, this new EP shows the group in top form once again, the opening tune Almas Perdidas transporting a kind of intricacy and elegance you'd rather expect from, say, late-career Fugazi than anything coming out of the current eggpunk circuit, easily transcending the band's humble beginnings, though they ain't doing anything to betray or obscure their roots either, the thrilling polyrhythmic playfulness of Pues pues pues pues being yet another impressive example of fusing fun, egg-ish quirks and whims with a healthy dose of subtle postcore smarts before Yo Yo leads the EP to an insanely satisfying conclusion with another energetic, comparatively straightforward but by no means simplistic punk smasher. This may easily be the most well-balanced and elaborate thing Finale have done so far.
Holy fuck, what this Wakefield, UK group is pulling off on their debut EP is pushing so many of the right buttons for me. Rooted in timeless buzzsaw-guitar post punk with more than just a bit of a Big Black edge, this shit also incorporates much of a catchy garage punk immediacy, noise rock sonic assault and relentless hardcore propulsion with plenty of melodic scraps and fragments peppered all throughout. This is so fucking up my alley and reminds me of another crop of UK post punk acts that either predate or avoid the more gentrified nature of the current UK landscape, the closest comparisons i can come up with from the top of my head would be Leeds-based groups Cool Jerks and Coded Marking, but that doesn't tell the whole story either.
This group's debut EP is Indiana DIY punk at its best that on one hand appears to have quite a few things in common at least spiritually with the state's early eggpunk scene as it certainly has a similar air of chaos, inventiveness and unpredictability you'd expect of a Skull Cult or Erik Nervous record for example, even though the rough sonic parameters here are often of a completely different nature, ranging from propulsive straight-ahead garage punk and a no-bullshit hardcore energy reminiscent of another indiana curiosity - that whole Zhoop/Feed/Djinn/Brundle/etc. clusterfuck - to plenty of geographically rather unrelated postcore vibes of the Wymyns Prysyn or oldschool Hot Snakes-/Drive Like Jehu variety, various stages and incarnations of NYC's Science Man or the fuzz punk excess of early The Gobs. Anyway, as you may have gathered, there's always some thrilling and unexpected shit happening on this record.
As pretty much anything the Moncton, New Brunswick one-man-band TJ Cabot has done in recent years, this new EP after like a three-year break is yet another excellent burst of oldschool garage punk goodness, possibly the strongest thing they've done even and among the roughest sounding too once the melodic and absolutely brilliant opener Palm Stings is out of the way, when the remaining tunes take on a more primitive oldschool aesthetic that more than once recalls the proto- and KBD punk stylings of, say, Death, Pagans or Rocket From The Tombs.
Expectations are always through the roof with a new Electric Prawns 2 record but so far they've never disappointed and these two new tunes won't either, showing the group 100% in their element, City Streets being the kind of psych-infused garage punk smasher based around a strong and simple hook they've always excelled in and Be With You Tonight once again showcasing the group's supreme power pop instincts. After a half-year long break that almost feels like an eternity with this group following their incredibly prolific 2024-2025 streak, our favorite australian hallucinogenic hit factory still doesn't show any signs of wear.
