It appears this Austin, Texas group's second full-length has already been slowly rotting away on their bandcamp page largely unnoticed for a while now. This has to change fast. The album starts out somewhat akin to the melodic Lo-Fi garage punk and power pop of Vaguess or Booji Boys, then cycles through various iterations of a slightly KBD-esque garage-, and hardcore-leaning sound not entirely unlike recent acts in the Launcher, Liquid Assets, Fried Egg or Freakees vein, with the occasional subtle Gun Club vibe. Also, there's a beautifully shambolic cover version of Minutemen's Corona that manages to not suck in the slightest. Now all of you go make these dudes filthy rich and famous!
Another delicious leftover from last week is this debut EP by an australian group, made up of four flawless hardcore-meets-garage punk bangers, the straight and simple Frustrated Youth being nothing short of a timeless anthem. Inevitably i'm reminded of Cement Shoes and - to a lesser degree - earlier Electric Chair, Chainshot or Exxon.
One of my favorite unidentified noise-emitting Berlin entities has done it again! Gear up to be enraptured by four of his newest, straightforward-yet-playful lo-fi garage- and post punk jams.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
