I was intrigued when the Brisbane-based label Grog Records (re-)issued the Hello, Mr. Operator EP by New York electro punks Hand Helds on cassette, originally released late last year. A closer look at their bandcamp profile reveals not only that they’ve had a new EP out in January already but also that quite obviously they’ve been at it for a while already, churning out a ton of EPs in a varying spectrum of dark and noisy garage punk, minimalist and often quite harsh synth- and electro punk. I’m pretty sure i already came across them in the past but i’m also reminded why i passed over that stuff back then, as much of their earlier cataloque sounds like the equivalent of throwing lots of shit at the wall to see what’s gonna stick. Anyway, a couple of things have stuck apparetly and on their latest two EPs, things click into place way more tightly thanks to a more minimalist and deliberate less-is-more approach. Hello Mr. Operator is certainly the cruder of the two EPs with a heavily Primitive Calculators and occasionaly Suicide-indebted brand of Synth Punk minimalism. The Transatlantic Death Machine EP then trades in the bass guitar for live drums and things get even wilder and, dare i say, kinda sophisticated, despite the best efforts and dissonant patterns of synth cacophony in tunes like Glue Tongue to obscure the fact. There’s a weird kraut-ish, motorik quality to the whole thing and a successful approach of trimming the fat while giving attention to the details that matter, all of which positions these two records a couple notches above your average electro-kraut effort or no wave-ish ’80s synth punk throwback.
After the grave diasppointment that was the too-slick-for-its-own-good, overly sanitized second Poison Ruïn LP recently, i’m glad to have come across this neat substitute drug created by a Philadelphia group, scratching some similar itch of strongly ’80s heavy metal-influenced, dungeon-adjacent punk, even if the overall style here feels more at home in the wider hardcore and d-beat landscape. Nonetheless, if you take a closer listen these tunes reveal an abundance of sophistication, attention to detail and tons of highly captivating hooks to both anchor and elevate these seven bursts of breakneck-speed ecstasy.
You could easily file these swiss dudes away as yet another artifact of kinda fashionable, Pisse-induced german-language post punk but this stuff is operating on a high level and standing very much on its own two feet with enough identity and ideas of their own to set them apart with a sound that strikes me as just a tad more international, with Rien Pour Moi reminding me a bit of the likes of Ismatic Guru or Landowner for example, while Animal Farm has a bit of an old Giorgio Murderer Vibe. Anyway, even if they won’t be able to shake off that Pisse comparisons just yet, this is a neat and excellent debut EP in its own right and i can’t wait to see where they’ll go from here.
Nourishment’s past two releases have been on kinda shaky ground in terms of song material in my opinion but anyway, on their newest one, they’re really hitting the nail on the head again with a batch of new tunes that deliver the familiar thrills way more consistently and artfully and for now, i’ll still say they’ve carved out a micro-niche very much of their own with both their compositions and atmosphere having way more in common with ancient death rock and contemporary post punk influences than anything currently happening in the wider blackened/dungeon punk landscape.
Snarewaves’ discography can feel kinda confusing and overwhelming with tons of releases so far that may suddenly appear and then disappear again at any given time, have tracks added to or trimmed off them and most recently there’s also been that throughline of “haven’t i heard this song before” and “is this just a reissue or a re-recording?”. So yeah, that kind of situation is often the point where i choose to temporarily check out of the whole thing and take a step back while waiting for something more definitive and permanent to emerge out of it. Here we have just that kind thing in the form of a new EP via the reliable purveyor of maybe a bit too boldly premium-priced egg-ish punk quality, Nashville-based tape label Knuckles On Stun – an artifact that will probably just stay the way it is this time. Some of these tunes you may have heard before in one form or another too, but does that even matter at this point? It’s good shit as usual and i still don’t know of any other band that sounds even remotely like Snarewaves.
Basic Income I Wanna Be Selfdestructive Bug Swallow Kream Korn Aspanya Has perdut Emergeense! Desire At The Bar The Caries Company Punto 4 M-Chev Sloth Pocket Pool Undercover Rubber Lover Power Pants Empty Space Boodles & The Buttholes Where Have You Been? Billiam Not The Boss Air Vent Dweller Gaming The Pox Stuck Excited To Die Dee Dee
Triple Ente Bajo El Hielo Stranded FCK MSTRD Dasgüt Dumbass Dog The Guise Stuttered Promises Stabber Alright Zero Sanity Gore Reality Brainwash Victims Revenge Mortuary Ritual Do It All Again / Disassociate Yambag Scenicide Gunner Here Come the Warm Jets Underats The Fast and Black Dead For Fun Acid Godess Riff Rats Rat From The Streets
Tracklist
King Tuff Delusions Corpus Earthling The Andy Complex United Stare Voice of Change Bog Imp I Don’t Wanna Scrap With You Kerosene Kream 12345 La RAF Violencia La Llama Psychotic Nerve Suburban Pagans Veneral General
Physicalist Choking Season Cuir Road Trip Nightwatchers Malemort Crisis Party Pessimism Les Remplaçants Cafards Stepmother Don’t Be Long Dead Finks Stolen Vehicle
Here are two new kickass artifacts of egg-ish garage punk delight. The first one is by Triple Ente of Alicante, Spain. It would be pure understatement to say the spanish scene has become an indispensible force in that whole genre clusterfuck and Triple Ente have been taking part in that from early on. So they don’t need to prove anything by now but nonetheless they won’t half-ass a thing on their newest LP, which delivers 14 new smashers of a heavier garage punk-leaning variety that already feels pleasantly oldschool by now in the eggpunk context, more reminiscent of the genre’s early wild west days.
Relatively new in the game then are Philadelphia group Dasgüt who at times lean into an even more oldschool-ish garage punk energy like in the heavily Gun Club-esque opening tune Dasgüt, before more of the expected eggpunk insanity kicks in with tons of weird ideas and irresistable hooks strewn all throughout this record. Like that Triple Ente record, this one avoids some of the genre’s most pervasive clichés by staying 100% free of synths, electronics or pronounced lo-fi bedroom recording aesthetics, instead boiling things back down to a lean core of catchy, fun and offbeat garage punk joy.
The last two weeks had two outstanding hardcore releases in store for us which i’ll take the shortcut of rolling into one post here. Brainwash Victims from Milwaukee, Wisconsin have a new cassette out via Alawful Assembly sporting a sound that’s not only fuzzed-out and noisy, raw and pissed as fuck but also comes up with plenty of inventive twists and turns, catchy hooks and melodic overtones along the way. These dudes don’t just go hard, they’ve also got the tunes to make it stick!
Cleveland’s Yambag then is a group i’ve had a bit of a sketchy view of over the years, especially with some of their more recent outings which at times sounded as if the harder these dudes play, the less effort they tend to put into the underlying tunes as if to compensate for a lack of song substance… Anyway, a decade into their efforts, they’ve released a new eight-song EP that shows them from their best side with a strong set of new tunes that keep things simple but also hard-hitting and catchy, just about hitting the sweet spot in their stylistic Venn diagram where everything that makes them shine is in place and perfectly dialed in. This one’s a keeper.
