This group from Santa Cruz, California delivers six neat little calorie bombs made of oldschool Power Pop excellence, flawlessly executing a simple old formula that could actually have occured at any time in the past five decades and wouldn’t feel out of place in any of these multiple eras, while their way-above-average songwriting powers never falter even for a second. Even if at times i can’t help but feel like i’ve heard these songs many times before, this is one of those instances where i’m perfectly content with coming off as a kinda basic bitch as far as quality rock’n’roll is concerned.
Right on the heels of the Billiam & Busted Head Racked collab EP more excellent shit keeps rolling in already of egg-ish australian garage punk’s prime driving force and it’s a neat little gimmick indeed to put a five-minute track on one side of a 7″ and five one-minute tracks on the other. Naturally, this is yet another kickass bunch of six catchy-as-fuck hits including an explosive Ausmuteants cover tune, but the biggest surprise on here is actually how admirably that aforementioned five-minute song format is working out here. Dude should try that more often! Longpunk or shortpunk? The proper answer is yes, please!
This Montreal group’s spectacular debut EP pulls off a pretty neat trick and does so flawlessly and at exactly the right time in our collective cultural consciousness. Ultra-catchy punk rock kinda bridging the gap between classic eighties acts like mid-career Hüsker Dü, Dinosaur Jr., Dag Nasty, Embrace or the later works of Naked Raygun and Government Issue on one hand; previous-decade noisy punk and indie rock groups á la earky Milk Music, Kicking Spit, California X, Milked and Happy Diving on the other, gets blended here with flourishes of decidedly ’80s-sounding heavy metal shredding and solo-ing which, in tandem with the heavily dungeon-themed artwork, is sure gonna strike a chord with friends of Steröid or Poison Ruïn, with this shit at times coming across a bit like a catchier, immediably approachable spin on the latter group’s work so far.
New Gobs! What’s left to say about them? If you didn’t know about them before, now you do! These Olympia, Washington-based folks absolutely solidify their status as the current kings of fuzzed-out noisy hi-speed lo-fi no-frills garage punk smashers all over again with yet another set of exquisitely explosive sonic weapons.
This Brooklyn, NY group’s newest EP mostly continues the breakneck pace and sonic assault of its predecessor, the Body LP released earlier this year, while still subtly evolving their sound in a somewhat more compact and approachable direction, allowing for just a tiny bit more nuance and variety compared to that aforementioned, utterly uncompromising previous slab of vinyl without sacrificing much in terms of sheer unrelenting force.
Portland’s Yacht Fire absolutely killed it with last year’s self-titled debut EP of cool-as-fuck DIY fuzzed-out garage punk that alternated between quite catchy and utterly abrasive tunes. The successor now transports the same awesomeness while slightly expanding on the folk-ish vibes already subtly present on the first EP, now taking center stage most notably in Run and Kiss Off, while Nod and Cigarettes are punchy no-frills bursts of simple and effective fuzz punk mayhem and the closing tune Werewolf keeps hitting hard too with a bit of a Wipers-meet-Dead Moon vibe. This is yet another all-killer record by a band you should absolutely keep a eye on!
The tireless Leipzig scene strikes again with yet another quality bunch of eggpunk tunes roughly in the vein of a less distorted Prison Affair, Beer, Egg Idiot or Research Reactor Corp.. Sure, don’t expect anything new or groundbreaking here but this shit still packs plenty of a familiar quirky punch and tons of a reliable, if – at this point – kinda basic and no longer terribly original kind of fun.
A lovely and fun debut by some Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania group. The instrumental opening tune Liftoff Jam (White Boys in E) swells into a monotonous monster of psychedelic haze that sounds a bit as if MX-80 and Chrome were being fused with early The Men, only for the rest of the EP to settle into a slightly less cumbersome aesthetic of straightforward, somewhat Stooges-esque garage punk that occasionally approaches some hardcore speeds and energy levels and keeps setting itself apart by way of its subtle psychedelic overtones and a constant melodic undercurrent flowing through their catchy, oldschool garage- and proto punk stylings.
Lansing, Michigan’s Snarewaves are releasing quite a lot of stuff to keep up with so you gotta forgive me for not posting about it every single time the dude releases like another two-minute EP. Now’s a good time however as the I’d Rather Die Than Be On Linkedin EP first released a couple weeks ago has now been extended into a twelve-song micro-LP with an epic total running time of six-and-a-half minutes, plus, there’s already the next one available which may or may not get that same treatment over the coming weeks. Snarewaves releases are iterative. We’re used to that by now. And what can i say, their music always appears to make more sense to me when it comes in a larger bundle, transforming his ultra-short bursts of lo-fi electro punk into some kind of disjointed opera. Right now this shit still sounds like no one else around, as if current developments in garage punk and oldschool hardcore elements were being forced through the low-res sample meatgrinder of ancient Amiga 500 tracker files. If i had to come up with something at least superficially related, it would be the Schleswig, Germany based synth punk viking Klint, probably.
Brilliantly simple anarcho-flavored post punk is what we get on this Demo by a group from Perth, Australia, working a decidedly rough, unpolished aesthetic of minimal means towards maximum impact, along the way reminding me of a bunch groups ranging from more obvious references like Institute, Impotentie and early Rank/Xerox to a significantly slowed-down variant of either Nag or recent Pyrex.
