Now here's a true mystery band for ya that may well originate from earth's inner core or from Saturn's rings or Bavaria or the nth circle of hell, or maybe i'm just imagining the whole thing i don't know what the fuck is going on here. But in case that shit's actually real, i'll try to describe it as the sort of at best tangentially egg-infused, spaced-out psych punk of the most out-there and deraged breed, the kind you'd imagine being blown through the raptured speaker cone of some ancient haunted AM radio coming alive and blaring away each night in an abandoned shopping mall or hospital building or whatever. Quite appropriately, these broadcasts themselves are about as impenetrable as any old numbers station dispatch, probably unrivaled in the 12XU class of '26 in terms of sheer unsettling disorientation as these tunes appear intentionally set-up to catastrophically fail at any moment in unpredictable ways but rather miraculously, the fragile structures holding things in place here, as much as they keep swaying and creaking incessantly, never quite collapse, but rather even expose a good deal of quite catchy garage hooks under their deep layers of grime and fuzz. Though not completely unheard of in our spheres - i'll say Psychal have a number of spiritual peers in the likes of Zoids, Silicon Heartbeat, Corpus Earthling, Mateo Manic or Thee Hearses for example - you've rarely encountered a specimen of this kind going quite as far in its boundless excess of acid rock depravity.
One of hard-/postcore's most incorruptible acts of recent years returns with yet another kickass record that doesn't sound like much else these days, apparently still not feeling any urge to significantly polish up their sound which of course doesn't mean there hasn't been tons of growth and refinement to their music along the way, which more than ever feels like a comprehensive round-trip through a decent stretch of the more out-there and weird fringes of artsy early eighties punk and hardcore history. This shit is just about the roughest-sounding material these Olympia, Washington based folks have done in a while, yet there's always a strikingly purpusefully crafted quality to their sonic chaos, the kind only a group as wildly superior and creative as Fugitive Bubble can pull off so consistently and effortlessly.
Leicester, England dude Roo Stafford appears to be on a roll right now, firing off another batch of first-rate garage punk projectiles just about a couple weeks after the pretty fucking excellent Stoned & Running EP. This time i get a less pronounced sense of 2010s proto-egg vibes and am instead reminded a lot of different groups from that same era á la Kid Chrome, S.B.F., Urochromes or Andy Human & The Reptoids, though beyond that welcome flashback to what i'll call 12XU's formative years, this kind of shit has also been kept alive in recent times by the likes of Jean Mignon or D. Sablu for example. Anyway, this is yes another viciously addictive treat of this particular kind.
In the current, heavily consolidated and codified eggpunk era, the third EP of NYC's Raybees doesn't exactly break the genre mold on a surface level, but stil sticks out by at least bending the rules a decent bit, elevating what at first glance could have been yet another average artifact of the Prison Affair school with a more cluttered production aethetic and what sounds to me like some truly fun pots-pans-and-washbasket style bedroom drumming laid atop the otherwise kinda standard vintage electric beats. There's a genuine sense of joy and a creative spark emanating from these songs which the genre is often lacking for me more recently and it certainly helps that there are some heavy-duty songwriting chops on display here too, especially in the increasingly synth-dominated second half with tunes like Knife Fight and the closer Victory March having more than just a little of an oldschool Digital Leather feel to them.
This dude from Lawrence, Kansas who's apparently also been making sick noises with the likes of Ghoulies (not to be confused with the australian egg punks of the same name), Jackoffs and Drastic Plastic, now has another quite enticing treat for us in the form of a solo cassette that captivates right away with a make of somewhat glam-, southern rock and power pop-infused garage punk goodness that sits somewhere in the neighborhood of the early Sheer Mag singles, early works of Powerplant and more recently the incredible Elvis 2 LP. The last two tracks can't quite live up to that level of brilliance but damn, for such a quick-shot effort written and recorded in just a couple weeks this ain't shabby at all. Looking forward to more.
The newest EP by Sprgrs from Granada, Spain is yet another egg-ish artifact that appears to adhere a bit too closely to a standard genre formula in its early stretch and wouldn't have been much to write home about if it weren't so dramatically upping its game with every successive tune, continuously moving away from a tired Prison Affair-informed template towards one leaning heavier on the increasing quality of its song material whose strengths really start to kick in from the third song onwards although admittedly, they kinda regress back to their old ways in the closing tune Trabaja. But hey, it's the year 2026 where we just don't have many good things anymore, let alone in eggpunk specifically, so i'm not gonna complain about an EP with three such certified bangers on it and i'll call that kind of thing a keeper in this new era of tempered expectations.
This thing popped up on the re-branded former Pigeon Bandcamp so Tense may be the exact same folks or they may not, but that's just the usual murkiness we've long gotten used to from the notoriously anonymous Berlin post punk arena, always keeping a low profile. It they're the same though, their sound has surely gone through a bit of a transmutation and strikes me as the most focused and uncompromising it's ever been. Though still pretty much textbook Berlin school post punk in many ways, this shit is setting itself apart nonetheless with levels of doom and anxiety truly goin' through the roof here, feeling kinda alarming even in light of most other things coming from that neck of the woods - the most deliberate blow we've heard from there for a good while, delivered with ice cold precision and unforgiving rotational momentum, its hyper-economical not-a-note-wasted procedure making sure all the pain point gets struck without fail while having me bobbing along in pure ecstatic bliss all the same.
So let me try to get this right. It appears this new-ish Soft Shoulder LP ain't so much a compilation of stuff released on various lathe-cut EPs and -singles over the past couple years rather than a collection of songs recorded years ago that deliberately first got put out in that piecemeal way starting in 2022, but was intended from day one to eventually make up a full LP, which we now have in front of us. Phew, that sure is some kind of clunky roundabout way of doing things and i'll say it's just fitting for one of the most intentionally clunky, roundabout types of bands of our time, one that's been around way longer than this blog, is probably gonna outlast it too and has never failed to amaze with their cluttered and messy, though also totally unmistakable, singular vision of vagely The Fall-inspired, No Wave-informed post punk and noise rock. And you know what? I think it's the greatest thing the (in its current incarnation) one-man-band from Tempe, Arizona has ever done even after the knockout double whammy of 2023s Smile Building's Exit and It’s A Small World After LPs, as i'll say these new old tunes hit even harder in their collected, re-sequenced new form - so much creativity and brilliance concentrated into a dense 21-song 45-minute record that refuses to get tedious for even a second and the added punch and clarity of a stellar new mastering job also sure contributes a good bit to making this thing gel together and rise way above just the sum of its parts.
Holy fuck how the hell did i miss this Vienna group's debut record when it first came out in April? This is for sure nothing less than one of the standout releases of this year on the more oldschool end of the post punk spectrum with a sound feeling like a welcome throwback to the simpler days of the genre's 2010s resurgence with more than just a fleeting glimpse of bands á la Rank/Xerox, Negative Space, earlier works of Institute or The Estranged, maybe a hint of Nervosas even or the very first Diät single? There's also a healthy pulsing garage punk edge to this shit in tunes like Collecting Dust, as well as a neat topping of Wipers-Esque guitar work. This is exactly the kind of stripped-down no-frills direct-impact energy i would sure appreciate more of in this day and age.
Any new 1-800-MIKEY record is always a treat of pleasantly predictable, uneventful comfort food from a dude otherwise known as part of Gee Tee among other things, whose own little niche on the garage-punk / power-pop spectrum has been well-established by now and though his music won't ever blow anyone away through sheer originality or innovation, it sure always does through the pure and innocent power of straightforward, no-frills songwriting brilliance! And so he does again on his third LP now, unleashing yet another batch of infectious and utterly endearing pop earworms that won't leave you terribly surprised but never fail to delight either in what may be their most relaxed and low-key effort so far, this time at points even fully embracing kind of an oldschool dream pop vibe, especially in the record's second half and tunes like K-Style and Falling In Love.
