JJ and the A’s – Unnatural Disaster
JJ and the A’s releases June 23rd via La Vida Es Un Mus Discos.
Vangas – Every Day Is The Same
Vangas releases July 20th via Chunklet Industries.
Leber – Sackerl für’s Gackerl
Katzenjammer releases whenever via Support Nothing Records.
Verspannungskassette #57 (C-60)
Optic Sink A Face In The Crowd
Clarko Stifled
Payphones No Change
Cammy Cautious and the Wrestlers Critter
Klint Should Have Run
Joust Blue Star Tattoo
White Collar Pedigree
Repulsion Switch Cuaderno
Ransom Reflection
Anti-Machine Secretly Drinking
Easy Targets Cult
Lovebite Rigged
Dust Collector Scalpel Life
Curb Alert Pest
BBQT Dangerous Dame
The Lee Majors Crash This City
Bad//Dreems Black Monday
Shrinkwrap Killers Perfect Sperm for Sale
Yuvees Penny Farm
Stuck Time Out
TV Cult Party’s Over
Astio Casa Prigione
Glaas Maybe I Should Leave Neukölln
Nag Pool Rooms
Sandre Katalina
Guardian Singles Nightmare Town
Psychic Baths This Better Be Important
Organs Anhedonia
Canned Snakes Choppe Shoppe
Les Lullies Dernier Soir
Clarko – Welcome To Clarko
It took a couple years to materialize but here it finally is, the first LP by some dude of unclear whereabouts who previously sparked our curiosity with a kickass 7″ also on Iron Lung Records in 2019. The full length debut is everything you could have hoped for in a new batch of kinda Devo-fied, whimsical, deliciously insane garage-/synth-/eggpunk malfunctions, spicing things up with a slight touch of Television guitar leads and solos added to an overall mixture whose rough parameters also kinda reflect a bunch of more recent phenomena vaguely in the Snooper, Useless Eaters, Alien Nosejob, Set-Top Box, Mononegatives or R.M.F.C. ballpark.
Album-Stream →Stuck – Freak Frequency
For some reason i had my doubts about this record beforehand (dunno… might have been down to the somewhat slick production? Intelligible lyrics, urgh!) but now listening to the whole thing, i gotta say it turns out to be pretty fucking awesome shit once again, even incrementally improving on the already impressive quality standard of the Chicago group’s previous releases in a flawless batch of smart and elaborate postcore tunes, which at certain points might draw comparisons to groups like Batpiss, Meat Wave, Bench Press, Bloody Gears, earlier stuff by the likes of Tunic, Pile and USA Nails, angular post punk acts like Lithics, Pill or Marbled Eye as well as occasional flashes of, say… Jawbox, Smart Went Crazy, Q and not U and mid-’90s Fugazi. What more could i ask for, really?
Album-Stream →Glaas – Cruel Heart, Cold Summer
Repeatedly the Berlin group featuring members of, among others, Useless Eaters, Idiota Civlizzatto, Exit Group und Clock Of Time delivers the goods of elaborately constructed, slightly deathrock-infused post punk grooves, with Clock Of Time being the most obvious comparison among the groups mentioned as these folks do indeed play some variant of what i can’t help but classify as quite traditional Berlin school of the past decade-plus, scratching a similar itch to bands like Pigeon, Liiek, Diät, Pretty Hurts… Not that i’d consider that to be a bad thing at all. Quite the contrary – after all, “Berlin sound” wouldn’t be a thing really if it hadn’t been built up over the years to embody such a consistent legacy of impeccable quality releases.
Album-Stream →Shrinkwrap Killers – Feed The Clones
Oakland’s Shrinkwrap Killers, whose prior output always struck me as a bit one-note and hit-and-miss, easily deliver their strongest and most versatile set of new tunes so far on their second LP on Iron Lung Records. This is an eerily familiar mix of sounds and influences which i might describe as simple and accurate as a horror/sci-fi/dystopia themed mashup of Lost Sounds, Spits and Stalins of Sound. Well… for me, it works just fine!
Album-Stream →Git Some – The Test
New Blood releases June 23rd via Rad Girlfriend Records.
SLIP-ons – Heavy Machinery
Heavy Machinery releases June 30th.
