Barcelona's Lux already have a demo and a promising debut album under their belt, but with this recent EP their sound really clicks into gear, in which some of the more excentric strands of 80s post- and hardcore punk - Man Sized Action and The Proletariat come to mind - collide with distinctive goth/deathpunk bass lines. You might also be reminded of more recend bands like Street Eaters or the potent cowpunk propulsion of Murderer.
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Three short bursts of quite charming Lo-Fi garage punk by some dude or band from Melbourne, moving on a scale between dangerously catchy power pop melodies and determined hardcore attacks. Friends of acts like Booji Boys, Datenight, Erik Nervous or Neo Neos will certainly appreciate this.
This Toronto/Vancouver based group featuring members of Damagers, among others, gives us yet another one of those fuzzed out, deliciously explosive hardcore-/garage punk mixtures, at times evoking comparisons to Vertigo, Fried Egg, Kaleidoscope or Cülo. Excellent stuff!
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Five short and fun blasts of off-kilter genre blurring rumble - part garage-/fuzz punk, part hard-/weird-/noisecore, part KBD style strangeness. Somewhat like a mix of Lumpy & The Dumpers and Murderer, this shit might also contain traces of Flipper and No Trend.
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Not too long after a rather synth-heavy tape by that guy who recently seems to be involved in pretty much any other Berlin band, we get a small encore exhibiting a more guitar-centric sound, shifting the sonic coordinates closer to the garage. The overall vibe here kinda reminds me of early Erik Nervous.
The Nico Missile is another one of Ricky Hell's many pastimes. There are few surprises here, instead you get more of his familiar trademark of quality. If you know some of his other Bands like Fascinating or Ricky Hell And The Voidboys you kinda know what to expect: Garage-edged Fuzz Punk and Noise Pop somewhere in the Neighbohood of No Age, Terry Malts, Tiger! Shit! Tiger! TIger! or Male Bonding. What more could you want?
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Although other british bands of their genre enjoyed much more media attention than london art-/post punks Italia 90 have in recent years, few other bands, in my humble opinion, embody so much of the soul and rebellious no-bullshit DIY attitude of the scene, a bitter and emotional indictment of a society collectively shrugging off its own guilty conscience. It's about time this Band gets noticed a lot more. On their third EP -just like on its predecessors - i hear strong echoes of old post punk greats: Crisis, Membranes, Swell Maps and early Mekons for example. Simultaneously Italia 90 keep expanding on their sonic spectrum. Usually when punks go slow, this tends to result in a horrible trainwreck. But surprisingly, the slowest, most subdued moments are the clear highlights of this record. In Open Veins, the gentle performance collides with the disillusioned and angry charges delivered by its lyrics. This combination reminds me a bit of recent Protomartyr, while the closing track Against The Wall has a subtle psychedelic note in common with Wire's Chairs Missing album.
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Missouri punks Fried e/M create some beautifully rough and oldschool noise, somewhere on the fringes of hardcore-, garage- and KBD punk. Their sound specifically reminds me of Noxious Fumes, but a more recent Band like Launcher might also be a good enough comparison.
What the title promises, this record delivers. Danceable shit? You bet! Anarchist messages? Tons of those get proclaimed here in such density you really can't miss or ignore them. Musically, this is not exactly something you'd associate with anarcho punk, although this stuff clearly has much of the same spirit. This is infectouis post punk with a punchy postcore edge which, despite its dancefloor effectiveness, also succeeds in the noise department, showing no fear of waking up the neighbors. This, and their explicitly political lyrics seperate them quite a bit from last decade's short-lived dance punk explosion. Instead of New York cool you get an appropriately blunt and distinctly british sense of urgency, even as they seem to share many of the same influences. Gang Of Four, obviously, as well as Minutemen, mid- to late eighties Membranes, The Pop Group. And in the present, comparing them to Tics, Pill, Slumb Party, Special Interest or UZS wouldn't be too far off.
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With their first long playing cassette, Paz SS from Valencia, Spain deliver a good batch of plain old garage- and fuzz punk done right, eqipped with the necessary propulsion by a thoroughly competent band. You might compare them to the straght garage punk of bands like Ex Cult, Sauna Youth or Foul Swoops, the energetic Fuzzcore of Ill Globo and occasionally there's even a faint shimmer of Wipers.
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