This Fort Collins, Colorado group delivers six blows of rough as fuck hardcore punk whose rustic aesthetics can’t do anything to obscure the catchy garage punk foundations underlying the whole thing, the smart postcore overtones being peppered all throughout and the numerous surprises and compositional quirks it has up its sleeve. This is a record sounding a lot dumber at first glance than it actually is and you know i’m a sucker for that kind of shit.
The third EP of this Montreal group is yet another irresistible candy seemingly inspired by the more melodic strains of eighties punk somewhere inbetween, say, Fastbacks, late-era Naked Raygun and Hüsker Dü, but also previous-decade revivalist indie punk rockers like Milk Music, California X, Milked and Kicking Spit ain't too far off either. This time they keep us waiting a bit - until the very last track to be precise - before they fully lean into their trademark heavy metal shredding which has also been the secret ingredient of their brilliant previous EP, but that shall in no way distract from the bucketloads of catchy joy we had along the way leading up to that point too!
The Tampa, Florida group had a neat little demo out late last year already and their newest EP now too sound's like they mean business with six fresh attacks of rabid and primal hardcore punk built on top of a strong fuzzed-out, KBD-ish garage punk foundation, the singer's bitten dog vocals almost channelling the insanity of that classic Lumpy & The Dumpers- and Fried E/M era it's main perpetrator would apparently like to disassiciate from but i'm not gonna let him. Once a Lumpy, forever a Lumpy.
On the excellent demo tape by this group from Shrewsbury, UK, proto- meets garage punk and occasional flashes of NWOBHM-style solos, Stooges meet Saints meet Discharge but also plenty of more recent acts of the Punter, Puffer and Split System variety. A perfect storm of simplicity, raw energy and immediate catchyness.
Well, it took like a year longer than promised but better late than never i guess, here's finally a new LP of Stockholm's synth punk bulwark that's been around for roughly a decade already. So they've got nothing to prove at this point anyway and simply deliver yet another brilliant collection of spaced-out garage punk delicacies filled with their trademark Devo-isms and bookended by a couple of somewhat John Carpenter-esque instrumentals to underscore the pervasive cinematic qualities of this record, another killer one at that.
Here we have a marvellous debut LP from a Berlin-based group that - after a post punk-ish instrumental intro reminding me in equal parts of The Estranged and oldschool west coast punk of the Adolescents, Germs and Agent Orange variety - mostly settles into a heavily Spits-indebted, occasianally somewhat Ramones-ish garage punk sound enriched with a certain space punk ingredient reminiscent of such groups as Corpus Earthling, Silicon Heartbeat, Stalins of Sound, Zoids and Mateo Manic or, fairly recently, Shrudd, Zulo and Electric Prawns 2, although the aforementioned post punk vibes also return occasionally in tunes like Freiheit and Vittima. Seamlessly glued together by rock-solid songwriting qualities throughout, this makes for a flawless all-killer record getting the optimal bang for the buck out of a time-tested oldschool formula.
On their second album, this grop from the small town of Torquay, Australia - just a stone's throw from Geelong and still within comfortable driving distance from Melbourne - sets off ten punchy instances of dead-aim Garage Punk of the almost stereotypically australian-sounding variety that seems equally indebted to Saints, Birdman and New Christs as to some classic AC/DC-style shredding and regarding more recent happenings, the likes of Split System, Pist Idiots and the earlier works of Civic heavily suggest themselves here as comparisons or, in a way, this may also kinda be the record those disappointed by the shockingly lifeless latest Mini Skirt LP would have wished for. This is some completely old-fashioned Rock'n'Roll that largely plays by the established rules but makes it all work thanks to a neverending stream of catchy hooks and determined performances.
Once again a real knockout tape brought to us by the reliable New York purveyor of varyingly punk-related eccentricities, Fuzzy Warbles Cassettes. The opening track No Kill Means immediatelty radiates kind of an art punk vibe á la Television-meet-Ruts or more recently, Peace de Résistance or later Institute. Soft Change then takes a way more abstract, minimalist post punk route, quite cold and rigid but kinda funky at the same time. Cave One is a relatively straightforward, but by no means dumb, scrap of catchy garage punk and so is All Skill Levels with its equally post- and proto punk-ish vibes and an additional layer of dissonant noise. Great Pastures compresses some of these same traits into an unexpectedly catchy and compact little package of tangentially Sonic Youth-esque buzz. Anticev then surprises with a lot of a surf rock feel. And so it goes on... this is an eclectic grab bag of a record that pulls a new surprise out of its hat at every corner and quite woundrously doesn't drop the ball even once but rather feels weirdly coherent and methodical in its shapeshifting approach.
This London group recorded their debut LP in a single day at Abbey Road. Does that actually matter all that much? I don't think so but anyway, this thing sounds kinda neat, unexpectedly raw and unpolished. Right out of the gate, Defenestration greets us with a melodic and slightly folk-ish post punk vibe somewhere inbetween the worlds of Mission Of Burma, Sebadoh, Volcano Suns, Angst, Polvo or Medications, followed by a somewhat Wire-esque post punk exercise with hints of mid-2000s Indie Rock in Sinnes, the latter of which places this among my least favorite things on here along with the somewhat sleepy and undercooked Cruel Tutelage. Thankfully, Liar then picks up speed again in a mix of oldschool garage punk and a Mudhoney-esque Fuzz Punk-/Neo-Grunge vibe, some of which also resonates through the straightforward punk smasher Bumble Been before Red Fuzz leads into the overall much stronger secod half of the album with its catchiest pop tune so far. Pink Liquor then is a compact no-frills burst of noisy garage punk excellence and Automated Response sounds like yet another early Wire tribute right out of the Pink Flag Playbook, a much more well-balanced one this time though. Cavern Killer adds a bit of a rather contemporary sounding post punk and noise rock vibe to the mix before I Love You ends the record with a flawless oldschool oddity of the heavily '77 and KBD-influenced variety.
This Cleveland, Ohio group weaves compact and simple gems of moderately spaced-out, egg-ish garage- and synth punk into a neat little package of catchy delirium that reminds me of a quite colorful bunch of groups á la Metdog, The Gobs, SGATV, Sex Mex, Hyperdog, Beta Máximo or Apero and this shit is every bit as good as any of these.
