In case you like your hardcore punk wild, catchy and innocent like it's 1981 on the US west coast… there's your new jam as it won't get much more 1981 than this Toronto group's debut EP. These five ridiculously appealing tunes don't sound anachronistic in the slightest though. Rather, with their timeless garage and KBD vibes, they fit in just as well with contemporary groups á la Launcher, Freakees, Liquid Assets or Cement Shoes.
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Some weird-ass shit, this archival release containing the complete recordings, made in or around 2016, of a short-lived Brisbane group… and of course it doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out this is yet another project revolving around eccentric avant-garde guitar torturer Glen Schenau of Kitchen's floor, plus two other dudes who played in Sydney 2000 and Piss Pain respectively. It might be their involvement rendering this stuff almost approachable for a Schenau-related artifact, although by approachable i mean: No more approachable than, say, early The Fall or Membranes records are approachable. If that sounds approachable to you, then this will too!
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With this London dude's debut tape having been such an incredibly fun ride, its follow-up - a hot mess made up of reworked/remastered/re-heated older demos and a pair of new tracks - sure feels a bit unfocused in direct comparison, yet still manages to kick plenty of ass on its own. Another adorable batch of quirky DIY garage punk that, despite its british origin, has a predominantly australian feel to it with groups like Set-Top Box, R.M.F.C. and Satanic Togas coming to mind as well as the unavoidable Ausmuteants/Alien Nosejob, a touch of Useless Eaters.
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A Cleveland, Ohio group presents a rough and dissonant mix of noise rock and post punk with a sharp garage edge on their first EP which, in the current music landscape, positions them roughly inbetween such Groups as The Cowboy, Spray Paint, Flat Worms and Plax, at times supplemented with a certain Flipper vibe.
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I don't think i ever gave Berlin's mystery act Heavy Metal the full spotlight on here and in retrospect i can't really tell if that was because Heavy Metal weren't quite ready for me or 'cos i wasn't quite ready for Heavy Metal. All i can say is i've been monitoring their curious and prolific trajectory over the past few years and with every release their garage-/electro-/totalfuckingnuts-punk bastard concoctions resonated a bit better with my broken brain until finally they hit a prefect sweet spot with their fifth (duh…) longplayer on which they come off kinda like a more out-there version of a certain North Carolina group that's been rumored to not be punk enough for heavy metal or something… thrown in a blender with a healthy dose of Swell Maps or Métal Urbain/Dr. Mix & The Remix. Never before have they sounded this nebulous and just wrong in all the right ways, except maybe for the idea of fighting the devil… that simply doesn't strike me as the most heavy metal thing to do. It might please the christian rock crowd, though.
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Once again stupid me was way too late noticing that a new record by Cincinnati, Ohio's pop wizards Vacation has hit the shelves via Salinas Records, repeatedly proving their knack for crafting refined jewels of melodic noise at the intersection of oldschool nineties-style indie rock, graceful power- and noise pop. This shit is catchy as fuck without ever getting too formulaic or predictable. A rare breed these days and even more rarely does it ever come across as powerful and flawlessly executed as here. An album of twelve hits and zero misses as for this group, "pretty good" simply doesn't cut it.
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New shit from one of KBD-informed garage punk's prime makers in our time, L.A.'s Freakees. Having tried on quite diverse stylistic flourishes, bits and pieces on recent EPs including pure synth-/electro punk on their previous one, they have never sounded more focused than on their newest effort and this pays off admirably as the current, pretty synth-heavy iteration of their sound totally slaps and might be compared favorably to acts like early Launcher, Alien Nosejob, Research Reactor Corp., Liquid Assets and Satanic Togas.
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Garage punk made by a group from Stuttgart, Germany which, despite its german lyrics, thankfully doesn't sound all that german. Rather i'd compare them to recent groups of the more or less KBD-influenced breed like Liquid Assets and Freakees. Further parallels might be drawn to Erik Nervous, Useless Eaters or Sauna Youth. A fine selection, that is.
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The Seattle group has been around for quite some time now and accordingly at this point, their ultra-oldschool garage punk sound heavily indebted to MC5 and Stooges feels as worn-in and mature as it gets. Their speeds occasionally reach into hardcore territory now, but that's pretty much the only major change since their 2015 Demo. All of this would be a recipe for utter boredom in the hands of a less capable band but as always, Lysol easily hammer that shit home by virtue of sheer force.
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A kinda unexpected and excellent music submission came in here by a group from Zagreb, Croatia playing a variety of dark oldschool post punk with a very slight goth edge, reminding my at different points of contemporary groups like Daylight Robbery, The Estranged, Primitive Teeth, Anxious Living, Criminal Code or Xetas while of the old guard, there's certainly some Wipers-esque guitar work in there and maybe some mid-80s Naked Raygun? In the second half of the album, things get increasingly more melodic, gaining some kind of melancholic Leatherface-, HDQ- or mid-to-late 80s Government Issue vibe.
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