Greg Wheeler & The Poly Mall Cops – Slimephone (You Can’t Hide From Me)
Slimephone Surveillance releases October 24th via High Dive Records.
Manduria – Shake It
Bite Me releases December 5th via Wild Honey Records.
AUT! – Straight Line
Sklitakling – Tror Deg Ikkje
Verspannungskassette #99 (C-60)
Tracklist
TFA GT Racer
Corpus Earthling Killer On The Loose
Losses Programmerer
Electric Prawns 2 Fire
No Peeling Pink Flamingos
Power Pants Sucka For Love
Billiam New Wave
Teenage Hearts Gotta get rid of you
The Icks Pressed
Winston Hytwr’s Perfect Harmony P.H.M.O.
Mitraille Fuck You I’m Going on Tour
Billy Batts & The Made Men Cory, the Breadman
Autolyse No-Go Zone
I.C.B.M. Borderlines
Teenage Earthquake Summer Of Sam
Fan Club Stimulation
Robber Dog Eat Dog
Gob Infantino
Shudder Riot in Gods Love
Sakura Mierda De Vida
Illiterates Sustainability
Syphon Dull Moments
Daunting Nightmare Air Thick With Flies
Tracklist
Radioactivity Time Won’t Bring Me Down
Mujeres Podridas Sol
Tank Kiss A Bug Called Fear
Cool Whip Oblivion
God’s Hand Remodelled
Orrendo Subotnik Fango infetto
Teens Late July
Fog Bloody Rotten
Alt Generic Me And My Catastrophe
LÁZ Általános Életkrízis Magyarországon
Haraball Floral Prints
Computer Fight Past Man
Pegamento La Fuerza
Electric Prawns 2 – Back Off Track
I wasn’t entirely sold on the novelty-rocker vibes of the bluesy, hard-/dad-rockin’ preview tune Hairy Man, but damn, does this new record not only get better from there on (plus, Hairy Man does work a lot better in the album context too), but there’s also easily some of the groups best material to be found on here with the following tracks Beef and Fire having plenty of an oldschool Useless Eaters and Pow! feel to them while Out Of Touch gradually dials up the levels of psychedelic haze that we’ve known at its most pronounced from their previous Perspex LP, before Hell (or rather, the first part thereof) finally kicks open the floodgates of catchy-as-fuck garage punk/fuzz pop goodness as we all know pretty much any Electric Prawns 2 record eventually does. The second circle of Hell (or maybe they’re better understood as two seperate songs, both called Hell?) takes all of the above and imbues it with a slightly campy goth note not unlike more recent Powerplant. Other notable highlights are the burst of ultra-classic aussie rock’n’roll that is Piece of Me and the in equal measure melodic and blues-infused bubblegum vibes of Waste, all of it arguably making for their overall strongest record so far. Who would’ve thought, making albums of conventional length may not be the worst idea after all!
Album-Stream →Orrendo Subotnik – Orrendo_3
Previous releases of this group from Pisa, Italy have all been obscured by a thick veil of of Lo-Fi grime and muck, yet the rough sonics couldn’t do anything to fully conceal the raw brilliance hiding beneath all the clutter. For their newest EP, they polished up their production values just enough for the first time to bring their eccentric, pocket-sized post punk epics out of the murky shadows and confirm our suspicion they don’t have to fear the revealing exposure to broad daylight. Starting off with a vibe not dissimilar to early 2010s surf-infused noise pop and fuzz punk groups like Male Bonding, early Wavves, No Age, Times Beach, Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! or, way more recently, Shooting Losers, it doesn’t take long though before their tunes also develop a distinct last-decade post punk feel á la Die! Die! Die! and Piles, but also rougher, weirder punk phenomena like Dumb Vision, Piss Wizard and Pink Guitars wouldn’t be too far fetched as a reference. On top of that, there’s an unmistakable hint of mid-90s-to-early-2000s postcore at play here, the kind some uncultured philistines may be inclined to dub screamo but let it be known once and for all that this distinction shall be considered an insult to any good band, so no, this ain’t screamo and fuck you for even bringing up that cursed idea.
Album-Stream →Haraball – Fear Of The Plow
Propulsive and well-rounded post punk on what appears to be the fourth album already by this group from Oslo, Norway that’s been existing for well over a decade by now but hasn’t released anything new in the last eight years. Anyway, this is highly competent shit that imbues their dark post punk / postcore sound – at first glance fitting in pretty well with the genre’s contemporary stretch – with plenty of thrilling texture, flashes of melody and a good deal of compositional finesse and rock-solid craftsmanship, reminding me of an unexpectedly colorful bunch of groups including the likes of Criminal Code, Wymyns Prysyn, Pretty Hurts, Corker, The Nation Blue, Girls In Synthesis, Bloody Gears or that recent Shepparton Airplane LP.
Album-Stream →Yuasa-Exide – Go To Hell Encyclopedia Britannica
The second LP of Minnesota’s Yuasa-Exide starts off with a thrusting burst of fuzzed-out catchy mid-tempo punk channeling a mix of mid-fi era Guided By Voices, the more power pop-ish ends of the Bevis Frond universe and a slight hint of Eric’s Trip or classic-era Dinosaur Jr. to boot in the opening track The Picture You Painted, just to increasingly and deliberately destabilize the sonic landscape on subsequent tracks. Their tunes and arrangements based somewhere inbetween the realms of ’80s to ’90s indie- and college rock, Flying Nun Records-style psychedelia and busy C86-ish strummery gain a more shambolic, hazy and surreal quality, always in acute danger of falling apart at the seams. Yet, quite wondrously, the looming sword of damocles never seems to strike, the tunes somehow always maintain their fragile equilibrium. The ability to pull that shit off already kinda struck me as their superpower on the previous Hyper At The Gates Of Dawn LP released earlier this year and i think it holds even more true here, a rare quality i previously found in early works by the likes of Rat Columns and The Molds over a decade ago and, maybe, the comparatively straightforward Psych Pop nuggets of Blank Realm’s 2014 Grassed In LP which, then again, brings us back full circle on the aforementioned Flying Nun vibes.
Album-Stream →LÀZ – Lassan Átjáró Zavar
As you may have noticed, i have an unhealthy habit of comparing lots of bands to Saccharine Trust, some of whom may have never listened to Saccharine Trust to begin with. Now here’s a group actually confessing to that specific influence for a change, refreshing! The music of these Hungarians doesn’t disappoint either, their debut LP having a bit of an oldschool anarcho bent to itself and plenty of a Drive Like Jehu energy to boot, a touch of Big Black in Általános Életkrízis Magyarországon and glittering Sonic Youth-Style guitar textures all throughout with further similarities to more recent post punk phenomena like Straw Man Army, Marbled Eye, Institute and Corker. Best of all, their sound is bolstered by plenty of substance, their compositions being held together by smart, rock-solid craftsmanship and wise sonic construction.
Album-Stream →