The trajectory Brooklyn punks Shop Talk have taken over the years has certainly been among the less likely ones, having first come to my attention with their self-titled 2016 debut mini-LP, still featuring what i’d describe as a more leaned-back garage punk style very much of its time, somewhere inbetween equal parts Gun Club and contemporary acts of the time like Woolen Men and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. After that, it took them like seven years before their next release, 2023’s incredible The Offering EP which saw both a thorough overhaul and significant maturation of their sound defined by catchy-ass ’77-ish hooks rarely heard in such a rousing manner since the glory years of Dickies, Buzzcocks and Adverts, which would already be more than enough for them to perfectly stand out from the pack but it’s actually only half of their appeal here and wouldn’t be complete without the equally melodic, elaborate guitar work of front man Jon Garcia and his vicious yet soul- and tuneful singing. A winning formula to which they’ve stuck ever since and now their second or first longplayer, depending on how you count, feels like the logical culmination of all those years of infectious songcraft, half of it consisting of new material and the other half of kickass new recordings of some of their greatest hits so far, stretching back as far as their aforementioned debut record. The result sounds like a million bucks and as far as straightforward but elegant punk rock with a clear vision goes, i doubt you’ll get to hear much better this year. An instant classic if i ever heard one.
Not terribly hard to describe what this Atlanta group is doing on their debut LP as it’s basically yet another Crass Discharge of Rudimentary Peni unspooling right in front of us, yet for somthing this straight and specific, they pull this shit off in a thoroughly convincing fashion with plenty of intelligence and variation to their compositions, staying reasonybly close within the expected boundaries of their chosen early hardcore, 1st gen anarcho and death rock frameworks while never repeating themselves and drawing a good deal of fresh energy and surprising turns from the decades-old genre tropes in an effort that strikes me as leagues ahead of your average oldschool genre excercise.
This Richmond, Virginia group’s ’24 tape Fucking USA already showed the early signs of something worthwhile but their newest EP via Sex Fiend Abomination finally proves what what all the fuss has been about in the first place, as this group strikes me as a breath of freah air breaking up the rampant hardcore comformism signified by a bottomless ocean of fairly oldschool-ish groups that seem to pride themselves on playing really fucking hard yet never fail to bore me to death with their ultra-generic, fatally unimaginative tunes and arrangements. Yankee Bastard refuse to play that game, not by inventing anything particularly new here, but by exhibiting a baseline level of creativity and playfulness that should be the rule rather than the exception in punk, basically enriching every tune with that certain bit of weirdness, a novel idea or a flash of melodic brilliance that reminds you how this music can be grim and angry but really freakin’ fun at the same time. And damn, as much as we do need our music to speak the ugly truth, we also desperately need to get some fuckin’ joy out of it cos honestly, just reading the news every day is enough of a depressing doom spiral to me right now. It’s been said that an integral feature of fascism is an utter failure of the imagination so in turn i expect of punk groups to have some of it instead, ‘cos otherwise, you’re just wasting my time and attention and i’d rather read more of the news then… at the very least there won’t be any boring-ass bland music accompanying it.
Before i forget it, there’s been yet another kickass burst of certified not-boring hardcore released on the same day, same label, same city. U.A.V. excell on this one by way of a neat garage-y, KBD-esque basis to their unpretentious, oldschool sound, a neat fuzzy and quite adaptive guitar performance and an unhinged, over-the-top pissed vocal freakshow. It takes so little to stick out of the pack, really… an idea or two basically, the slightest of fucks given to your songs and arrangements and maybe a riff that’s not that one stale riff everyone is playing all the time. It’s why i’ve grown increasingly unwilling to engage with anything less in hardcore these days. If you can’t do as much, i don’t care how fast and hard and tight you’re playing your borecore and how freakin’ punk you look doing it.
The Debut LP of these portuguese fellows delights with a flawless blend of synth-enhanced garage punk that on one hand often feels like a welcome throwback to an earlier, late-2010s era of electrified, egg-ish punk delirium of the Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp. variety with additional touches of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Kid Chrome’s heavy-duty riffing, while all the same feeling stylistically equally well-connected to somewhat more recent artifacts by the likes of Beef, The Gobs, Kerozine, Factory City Children and, most of all, 3D and The Holograms. So, certainly not reinventing the wheel here but nonetheless this is fun and well-executed shit that any genre aficinado shouldn’t miss out on.
This group from Perth, Australia featuring members of Semtex 87 easily outdoes that band’s already pretty fuckin’ brutal sound in terms of sheer overwhelming force in a maximally hazardous sonic assault obscured by a thick layer of noise, feedback and distortion, grime, oil and dust, though if you listen closely, you’ll also find surprising amounts of nuance and intricacy underneath the rough surface, making this thing an unexpectedly rewarding listen, more than just a couple notches above your average noisy hardcore artifact.
One of the most esoteric tentacles of the current art punk world strikes again with yet another kickass six minutes of math-y, dub-infused, polyrhythm-obsesed and altogether unapoligetically self-indulgent post punk nuggets that would come across as way up their own arses from any lesser group. These Buffalo, NY folks though, who’ve constantly improved and fine-tuned their intricate formula over the course of five years and six releases so far, are among the very few exceptional bands able to meet their lofty ambitions with an overflowing abundance of musical substance and rock-solid craftsmanship.
More excellent hardcore shit from this Dartmouth, Nova Scotia group on what i consider their most appealing release so far, mixing some classic early eighties hardcore attack with lots of garage-y hooks, ’77- and KBD-era melodicism. If the likes of Jacket Burner, Buck Biloxi or Bart And The Brats were to record a hardcore punk record, this is just about what i’d imagine it to sound like.
Oh hey, right on time to that other dog-themed group, here’s new shit from the only band in the world not called The Dogs and while Dog Lips of Portsmouth, New Hampshire may have had some similarity to that group around the time of their first EP in 2022, they’ve already evolved away from that with their previous Danger Forward LP at the very latest, on which they dabbled in more of a Post Punk sound, though not without some distinct hints and flashbacks towards their garage punk past. Their newest one then feels like a straight continuation of that stuff at first but also keeps morphing and evolving their style of quite catchy post punk that more often than not reminds me of such groups which started out in the past decade like Flat Worms, The Cowboy, early Protomartyr, Plax or Speed Week.
Portland death rockers Excess Blood’s 2024 self-titled EP on Impotent Fetus was pretty fucking good already and on their recent follow-up, they sorta stick even closer to a pretty oldschool goth/post punk/death rock formula, so much that in the first seconds of Turn To Stone you’d almost think they’re about to segue right into a cover Joy Division’s Transmission. Usually that kind of thing doesn’t sound like the most attractive proposition to me on paper, but i gotta admit even the most traditional sounding records of that ilk aren’t all created equal and the devil is in the details really. On this one, all those details add up admirably – the tunes, the vibes, the performance and attitude, it’s all perfectly on point here, making for a record that sounds kinda old-fashioned but, unlike so many similar bands, not the least bit dull or stale.
After a number of EPs which at first may have come off as all vibes and attitute with rather little in terms of substance, that thing has gradually improved over time and now i’ll say the welsh group has just released what may count as their most substantial release so far with their newest EP via Gob Nation, which i’ll also admit i like quite a bit more than most of the other only bands called the dogs. This is no more and no less than an all-killer batch of simple but dead-on-target ’77-ish, sleazed-up garage punk tunes making you wanna smash some shit.
