When the Carp released their first demo 2021 it was love at first sight but still the group felt a bit like a fifth wheel as far as Nathan Ward-Fronted bands are concerned, kinda like a slightly too logical middle ground between the jaggy post punk efficiency of Knowso, the wild off-the-rails energy of Cruelster and the rougher garage edge of Perverts Again. Their excellent debut LP in 2024 then saw them branch out a little, though still sounding kinda noncommittal to any clear direction that would differentiate them from the established Cruelster and Knowso blueprints. Now this new one for the first time sounds to me like the group is slowly starting to develop an identity of their own marked by a more rustic, wilfully dumbed-down garage punk undercurrent and a way less brainy and detached, more earnest and unfiltered heart-on-your-sleeve approach to their tunes. Anyway, as pretty much anything these dudes have touched so far, this yet another essential nugget for admirers of their particular strain of highly structured and sturdy post punk cubism with a fuzzy garage edge.
Two bands from the greater Los Angeles area have pooled their resources for a true god-tier hardcore split here that shall one day be regarded as one of the great roaring '20s split releases in a leage with, say, last year's Stunted Youth & Save Our Children LP. Naturally, the Animated Violence tunes garner most of my initial attention for not only did these dudes already catch my ear with two kickass tapes since 2022 but also considerably upped their craft and insanity on here with a sound as eclectic, playful and inventive as it's catchy, melodic and noisy-as-fuck nonetheless, making for a wild and bumpy unpredictable ride. But as much as this shit is right up my alley, that should by no means lead me to discount the Total Vacation tracks here which on the surface revel in a simpler early '80s oldschool direction yet are in no way less thrilling and packed with bright ideas and weird flourishes, only these tend to be more spread out here over roughly double the amount of shorter tunes and there's absolutely no arguing with instant hits like Chimera and Perspective / For Once.
This Victoria, British Columbia group is generating tons of fun and eccentric post-/art punk bliss that partly, but not quite, fits the common mold of late '70s / early '80s Siouxsie, Pylon, Delta 5 or B-52s inspired groups… there's a similar catchy quirkines to these but you also can't deny a strong garage-y proto punk thing goin' here and a rougher, more anarchic UK-bred DIY vibe, the kind you'd rather expect from the likes of Cravats, Membranes, Fatal Microbes or Flowers In The Dustbin or hidden away in the depths of some old Messthetics compilation, while there's still some plausible connection you can draw to more recent post punk phenomena of the Spread Joy and Marcel Wave variety and even some 2010s weirdcore phenomena loke Warm Bodies and Vexx. That's some appealing shit right there.
Dammo does that Domo demo kablammo. This presumably Winnipeg based group excites my synapses in a way that surely does feel kinda egg-related in this day and age but also stands apart thanks to more of an oldschool vibe that harkens back to the more innocent pre- and proto-egg days of the 2010s and the hook-laden no-frills garage punk explosions by the likes of Kid Chrome, S.B.F. and, a little later, Set-Top Box, Crown Moulding, Liquid Face or the earliest works of Science Man.
Featuring Mickey Marie of Nervosas, The Missed and, most recently, Xanny Stars fame along with a whole mess of other notable participants in the current Cleveland punk scene, this group kicks loose some confident and soundly constructed garage punk mayhem with a slight Wipers, Saints or Dead Boys undercurrent at first but also gaining a bit of a Strike Under or Really Red quality along the way. Gotta admit the whole thing sags a little in the middle, me having an especially hard time warming up to the somewhat cookie-cutter dad punk stylings of Fortunate Few, but otherwise this thing is a thoroughly thrilling affair that only gets better from there, the other tune sung by Marie Sit and Stare already growing on me much better and then there's no denying that the final two songs sung by Jake, formerly playing drums for Bad Noids, are a couple of instant classics in their own right that kinda remind me of peak Piss Test energy and once the NWOBHM-style metal shredding puts in the final touches for the closing track Vestigestability, you just know these folks know exactly what the fuck they're going for.
It's been a running theme with french garage punks Bart And The Brats that whenever i get a sense that their wilfully dumbed-down and minimalist oldschool approach to the genre is running out of ideas and into the law of diminishing returns, they come up with a fresh set of tunes that up their game in some subtle, hard to pin down way and so they do on their newest EP once again, containing some of their strongest tunes in a good while and showing all the strengths of their brilliant 2025 Missed Hits LP and then some, after their most recent, somewhat bloodless tunes on the Jacket Burner split just kinda failed to convince me that this band has some bullets left. But what can i say, they're so back baby!
This english group's debut tape is a welcome little distraction made of surface-level egg-ish shit that can rely on a solid foundation of actually pretty rough and propulsive, fuzzed-out garage punk at its core, kept afloat by a reliable wealth of quite well-trodden and by no means new or original, though always perfectly functional hooks and riffs. A record that knows exactly what it sets out to do and then delivers just that. Nothing more, nothing less.
Okay so here we have yet another Alien Nosejob record showcasing Jake Robertson and accomplices in full-blown hardcore mode, superficially similar to what we've heard a couple times previously, most notably on their two hardcore 7"s via Iron Lung Records, though this wouldn't be a true Alien Nosejob LP if it didn't come up with plenty of neat surprises and bright ideas along the way. Also, by no means is this a straight rehash of said 7"s which veered closer to a harsher '80s-informed style more appropriate and in line with the influences that permeate through much of the Iron Lung Records catalogue. Here, the overall vibe is much closer to earlier incarnations of the west coast punk scenes with the usual suspects such as Germs, Circle Jerks and Adolescents looming large and as much as Alien Nosejob were never shy of catchy melodic hooks even on these, their most uncompromising records to date, they really come to the forefront on this one and it would always be unfair to shrug off any AJ record as a just a curious oddball genre excercise as i've always felt that even at the rawer end of their pretty eclectic musical spectrum, the group pours in just as much effort of plainly superior craftsmanship and songwriting prowess as with any other release of theirs. These records ain't mere curios but central pillars of their incredible discography, carrying the unmistakable handwriting of these modern-day garage punk auteurs.
Smirk always kinda stood apart from the pack of 2nd wave eggpunk groups in as much as there always appeared to have been some tension going on between the more upbeat and quirky egg-ish vibes and a much darker post punk undercurrent in many of their early tunes, a trait they went all-in on for the first time only on last year's incredible Domestic Dog 7", just in time when their previous trajectory, as well as that of much of their eggpunk surroundings in general, started to show serious signs of diminishing returns. Its two tunes put them more in the neighborhood of essential post punk pillars of the Institute, Marbled Eye and The Estranged variety and the shit worked just admirably 'cos these impressively elaborate and balanced tunes absolutely held their own and so does everything on this new LP now, their most sober and earnest set of tunes to date, showing all the hallmarks of another eggpunk outfit hatching into a full-blown chickenpunk group in a way that i'm sure would make ex Lumpy dude quite proud, even if i still think he's got the whole chicken-and-egg problem upside down. In all these cases, clearly the egg was there first and these eggs need to have room to exist and be bred and flourish in order to mature into the kind of beauty we see right here. Damn does that sentence make me sound stupid and pretentious. I better refrain from typing any more random words now.
Finally here's the debut LP of this group from Bremen, Germany, a record i've been hotly anticipating even though i've also had some reasonable doubts as to how well that whole schtick is gonna play in 2026 given how insanely, in the short span of 18 months since their debut EP, the proliferation and oversaturation of vaguely Snooper and Prison Affair-informed egg-ish garage punk groups has progressed to the point of some unavoidable genre fatigue on my part, as i've been moaning about previously already. On one hand i'm kinda sad to say that, for me at least, the enjoyment of a new Wax Minds LP is indeed somewhat affected and it's actually through little fault of their own so i'm kinda feeling like an asshole for even saying that. My initial impression ain't helped by the fact that the record ain't exactly front-loaded with its strongest material - especially the second and third tunes Lead-Limbed Losers' Anthem and Growing Old, Staying Gold somehow just don't quite cut it for me - and it's only starting with the title tune Funatic Asylum that the album begins to really come into its own and finally settle into that golden zone of catchy-ass hooks, exciting slicing-and-dicing guitar work and vicious like-clockwork garage punk propulsion we've all been hoping for. Did i also mention this group absolutely kills live? Go see 'em if you have the chance! Many of my gripes may be purely a me-problem actually, borne out of following the eggosphere a bit too closely for a long time, and as much as this record has to stand up to a glut of vaguely similar sounding groups these days, i actually think it does an admirable job at that once it gets over its somewhat shaky opening stretch.
