You could easily file these swiss dudes away as yet another artifact of kinda fashionable, Pisse-induced german-language post punk but this stuff is operating on a high level and standing very much on its own two feet with enough identity and ideas of their own to set them apart with a sound that strikes me as just a tad more international, with Rien Pour Moi reminding me a bit of the likes of Ismatic Guru or Landowner for example, while Animal Farm has a bit of an old Giorgio Murderer Vibe. Anyway, even if they won't be able to shake off that Pisse comparisons just yet, this is a neat and excellent debut EP in its own right and i can't wait to see where they'll go from here.
Nourishment's past two releases have been on kinda shaky ground in terms of song material in my opinion but anyway, on their newest one, they're really hitting the nail on the head again with a batch of new tunes that deliver the familiar thrills way more consistently and artfully and for now, i'll still say they've carved out a micro-niche very much of their own with both their compositions and atmosphere having way more in common with ancient death rock and contemporary post punk influences than anything currently happening in the wider blackened/dungeon punk landscape.
Snarewaves' discography can feel kinda confusing and overwhelming with tons of releases so far that may suddenly appear and then disappear again at any given time, have tracks added to or trimmed off them and most recently there's also been that throughline of "haven't i heard this song before" and "is this just a reissue or a re-recording?". So yeah, that kind of situation is often the point where i choose to temporarily check out of the whole thing and take a step back while waiting for something more definitive and permanent to emerge out of it. Here we have just that kind thing in the form of a new EP via the reliable purveyor of maybe a bit too boldly premium-priced egg-ish punk quality, Nashville-based tape label Knuckles On Stun - an artifact that will probably just stay the way it is this time. Some of these tunes you may have heard before in one form or another too, but does that even matter at this point? It's good shit as usual and i still don't know of any other band that sounds even remotely like Snarewaves.
Basic Income I Wanna Be Selfdestructive Bug Swallow Kream Korn Aspanya Has perdut Emergeense! Desire At The Bar The Caries Company Punto 4 M-Chev Sloth Pocket Pool Undercover Rubber Lover Power Pants Empty Space Boodles & The Buttholes Where Have You Been? Billiam Not The Boss Air Vent Dweller Gaming The Pox Stuck Excited To Die Dee Dee
Triple Ente Bajo El Hielo Stranded FCK MSTRD Dasgüt Dumbass Dog The Guise Stuttered Promises Stabber Alright Zero Sanity Gore Reality Brainwash Victims Revenge Mortuary Ritual Do It All Again / Disassociate Yambag Scenicide Gunner Here Come the Warm Jets Underats The Fast and Black Dead For Fun Acid Godess Riff Rats Rat From The Streets
Tracklist
King Tuff Delusions Corpus Earthling The Andy Complex United Stare Voice of Change Bog Imp I Don't Wanna Scrap With You Kerosene Kream 12345 La RAF Violencia La Llama Psychotic Nerve Suburban Pagans Veneral General
Physicalist Choking Season Cuir Road Trip Nightwatchers Malemort Crisis Party Pessimism Les Remplaçants Cafards Stepmother Don't Be Long Dead Finks Stolen Vehicle
Here are two new kickass artifacts of egg-ish garage punk delight. The first one is by Triple Ente of Alicante, Spain. It would be pure understatement to say the spanish scene has become an indispensible force in that whole genre clusterfuck and Triple Ente have been taking part in that from early on. So they don't need to prove anything by now but nonetheless they won't half-ass a thing on their newest LP, which delivers 14 new smashers of a heavier garage punk-leaning variety that already feels pleasantly oldschool by now in the eggpunk context, more reminiscent of the genre's early wild west days.
Relatively new in the game then are Philadelphia group Dasgüt who at times lean into an even more oldschool-ish garage punk energy like in the heavily Gun Club-esque opening tune Dasgüt, before more of the expected eggpunk insanity kicks in with tons of weird ideas and irresistable hooks strewn all throughout this record. Like that Triple Ente record, this one avoids some of the genre's most pervasive clichés by staying 100% free of synths, electronics or pronounced lo-fi bedroom recording aesthetics, instead boiling things back down to a lean core of catchy, fun and offbeat garage punk joy.
The last two weeks had two outstanding hardcore releases in store for us which i'll take the shortcut of rolling into one post here. Brainwash Victims from Milwaukee, Wisconsin have a new cassette out via Alawful Assembly sporting a sound that's not only fuzzed-out and noisy, raw and pissed as fuck but also comes up with plenty of inventive twists and turns, catchy hooks and melodic overtones along the way. These dudes don't just go hard, they've also got the tunes to make it stick!
Cleveland's Yambag then is a group i've had a bit of a sketchy view of over the years, especially with some of their more recent outings which at times sounded as if the harder these dudes play, the less effort they tend to put into the underlying tunes as if to compensate for a lack of song substance... Anyway, a decade into their efforts, they've released a new eight-song EP that shows them from their best side with a strong set of new tunes that keep things simple but also hard-hitting and catchy, just about hitting the sweet spot in their stylistic Venn diagram where everything that makes them shine is in place and perfectly dialed in. This one's a keeper.
On their second LP, this New Jersey group dabbles in a make of garage punk that feels weirdly old-fasioned and pleasantly out of touch with most genre developments of the last decade or two. Really, this artifact could have been released anytime between the classic Reatard(s) era and the last gasp of Male Bonding- or No Age-esque melodic fuzz punk in the early 2010s. Now it feels like a bit of an oddity in our times and you all know that's the kind of shit i like best, especially if it comes with such an abundance of strikingly simple, charmingly sloppy and viciously catchy pop tunes of fuzzy, melodic bliss.
Mexico City group La RAF certainly have an unlikely knack for taking decades-old post punk formulas and tropes while always succeeding in putting their very own stamp on them with every tune here kinda weirdly sounding like something that may have been released at any point from the late seventies onward, yet never quite like a tune you thought you've actually heard before - there's a fresh and lively energy to these tunes, imbued with plenty of personality and propelled forward in tight and punchy performances, even if the basic ingredients are as old as time.
