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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An abrasive yet quite melodic wall-of-sound piles up on this Aarhus group's debut album, a sound inbetween the worlds of noise pop, art- and post punk, equally reminiscent of Teksti TV 666 and Open Your Heart-era The Men, 80's SonicYouth-isms and some MX-80 edge. And as if all that weren't compelling enough on its own, the addition of a restless brass section makes the whole thing outright irresistible.
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This Los Angeles group's most recent EP is some excellent, albeit disturbing shit. Gloomy post punk about rather dark subject matter concerning the human abysses both exposed and enabled by our modern technology (and yes, that explicitly includes child porn and -abuse, among other things). Sound-wise, i would describe this as a weird fusion of The Estranged and The Spits, supplemented with some serious death rock and synth wave action.
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This week's mandatory injection of Devo-ish garage- and synth-punk comes from some Perth based group whose quirky and catchy sounds surely won't fail to more than adequately re-vitalize admirers of groups like Skull Cult, Research Reactor Corp., Alien Nosejob, Isotope Soap or Erik Nervous.
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Boom! What this canadian group has spit onto their debut tape is seven minutes of absolutely flawless and unrelenting, slightly garage- and KBD-soaked oldschool hardcore fury exposing not a single weak link in their breakneck performance.
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Oh my… it took a good two years (or rather, two somewhat below-the-usual-standard years) for this Los Angeles duo to come up with a follow-up to their fiendishly fun debut EP. Just as back then, this is nothing short of another glorious spectacle of sleazy, stinky, forbidden synth-/electro punk delight, the likes of which you'll only ever encounter in the shadiest corners of Bandcamp's adult entertainment section.
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I've been a bit late to the party when it comes to this Atlanta group which has been around for over a decade by now, with their 2018 No Face 7" being my first exposure to them. Also, i didn't know at that time they're sharing members with post punk minimalists Nag. Now that certainly makes sense. Not only is this clearly the same singer here, but there are also abundant sonic similarities to note. Predator kinda sound like the slightly more sociable cousin to Nag, leaning heavier into garage territory with occasional hardcore moments. I mean like… at times they almost sound like they're actually enjoying themselves!
This Melbourne group's newest EP starts out quite good, then becomes even better with every song, first suggesting kind of a mix between synth-less (at first) Ausmuteants, Ex-Cult, Sauna Youth, early Teenanger… but also with a slight post punk edge á la Flat Worms, Constant Mongrel. The latter tendency (plus the formerly elusive synths) then kicks into overdrive in the record's second half and that's where things go from good to great, culminating in the epic anti-hymn Australia - an unmistakable fuck you to nationalism in their home country whose lyrics strike me as unapologetically frank and straightforward.
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