On their latest EP this Dunedin, New Zeeland power duo unleashes a bloody hell of noise rock with a vagely industrial feel to it, but also of the somewhat sludgy variety that always takes a lot of refinement to not bore me to death. Yet these guys effortlessly pull that thing off, reminding me - among other things - of groups like Haunted Horses or Wax Chattels.
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An awesome little debut mini-LP by a Buenos Aires group. Revolving around a more-or-less oldschool-ish, brass-enhanced style of garage- and art punk vaguely reminiscent of Downtown Boys, they certainly like to mix things up a bit here and there when they occasionally enter post punk territory or try on a '77-touched Buzzcocks-meet-Undertones powerpop vibe like in Sin tu amor, keeping this a fun and entertaining ride throughout. While not everything hits the bulls-eye quite yet (Ya no soy is simply too little of an actual song), most of it works out just beautifully.
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As a counterbalance to my last post, here's kind of a musical shitpost created by some seattle dude who also happened to play in one or the other local legend you might have heard of. A fourteen-act rock opera of 7"-sized proportions that kinda plays out like an odd fusion of 80's Nomeansno, early Minutemen and Saccharine Trust… chances are i'm already overthinking this though.
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Not a whole lot ever changes in the music of Vancouver's Needles//Pins and in crap times like the past year-and-a-half, this familiarity is rather comforting. They still play that certain kind of punk rock… you know the one. The wholly unsubtle und unapologetically earnest, melodic, emotional and euphoric, the folk- and americana-infused kind. The kind that inevitably leads to embarrassing singalongs and awkward displays of emotion from concert audiences. Disgusting, man. I miss it so much...
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Some pathetic loser in Leipzig, Germany is playing around with bleep-emitting hardware and recording equipment, not yet fully realizing this leads to him ending up fighting the good battle at the forefront of the egghead revolution. This record is a fucking masterpiece you need to have in your life. Having only listened to it once, i already feel a lot smarter, more balanced - full enlightenment only inches away. Almost being a wise old man myself, i can't stress enough how fucking proud i am of this little shit.
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The Berlin scene, where every musician is also secretly playing in all your other favorite groups, has dropped another pile of something. That something starts out kinda like S.Y.P.H. filtered through Wire and Crass, subsequently touching on Weirdcore stuff á la Stinkhole, Stuttgart-style-post-punk-but-much-more-fun and last but not least, dissonant post punk/proto noise sketches reminiscent of Membranes. Sometimes they opt to spew their lyrical nonsese in the english language which i think has its own awkward charm.
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This demo by a Cardiff group lures the listener in with an ultra-raw hardcore red herring, though it doesn't take long after that to realize there's a lot more to this burst of concentrated Lo-Fi energy as you blaze a trail through a thick layer of fuzz and distortion, which finally gives way to bright flashes of melody and an overall soundscape combining core ingredients of post punk and noise pop, coming across kinda like a beautifully deformed crossbreed between Sievehead and Piles.
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Business as usual on the newest 7" by L.A.'s Flat Worms. Delightful, high quality business that is, with these two songs nailing their very own formula incorporating elements of garage punk, post punk and bursts of noise just dead on. So far, Flat Worms never failed to deliver the goods.
Let me be blunt here: You guys wanna convince me to pay the equivalent of ~4,60€ for a digital download of only two songs, those two songs better be fucking brilliant. Luckily, fucking brilliant is exactly what these these two tracks by some Tokyo group are. Ka-ching!
This London, Ontario group had put out a couple of already quite neat EP's in 2019 but it's only on their new full length debut that all the moving pieces really click into place for twelve 12XU-certified killer tracks made up of charmingly odd, highly inventive and exquisitely energetic garage-, synth- and post punk echoing shit like Useless Eaters, Pow!, Ex-Cult and Predator.
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