Having only released one 7″ before, the maturity of this Dublin group’s debut album is quite stunning – nothing less than a fully realized, versatile and inventive take on Noise Rock, Postcore and Math Rock clearly taking some cues from classic 90’s and early 00’s acts like Unwound, Bastro, Chavez, Frodus, some early Shellac, while still standing on its own two feet. In the current genre landscape, Multicult might also be a somewhat useful comparison.
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It’s quite fitting that the first-ever 12″ record on US garage überlabel Total Punk starts with a thumping groove reminiscent of ISS, whose most recent EP might have been the last 7″ ever to be released on that label – the transition into a new Total Punk era couldn’t feel any smoother really, reassuring us that despite a change in format, the label’s spirit is still the same, is alive and well. Grown up a bit, maybe. New York garage noise group Brandy sound their most compact and forceful on their sophomore LP after having cut their teeth already on a rough and brilliant debut album and on another 7″ – guess on what label that one came out… More ever before you can feel some distinct Feedtime influence, while in their most abstract moments there’s some kind of a Spray Paint vibe going on. But even more than that, i’m reminded of contemporary post punk acts Knowso and NAG, both of whom had released records on Total Punk in the past – just amazing how things come full circle here.
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Another release courtesy of Satan. Thanx a lot Satan, we’re all big fans of your work over here at 12XU. The newest longplayer on Sydney’s exquisite Warttman Label along with italian powerhouse Goodbye Boozy amazes with another fun, fast-paced twenty minutes of oddball garage- and synth punk that has quite a lot in common with other Warttman acts á la Research Reactor Corp., Dot.com, Set-Top Box. Other than that, comparisons to early Useless Eaters or Ausmuteants don’t seem too far fetched either.
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Here’s some ultra-simplistic, drum machine driven garage punk shit by a Copenhagen duo, catering only to our most animalistic instincts. Style-wise this falls somewhere in the neighborhood of Buck Biloxi and the Fucks, S.B.F. and Dr. Mix & The Remix – just imagine even further dumbed down versions of each. Absolutely perfect, i love it.
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Another extended play by these Vancouver punks. You know what to expect, they know how to deliver. Six flawless eruptions of oldschool-ish, garage-doped no-frills hardcore punk.
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After releasing a true shitload of EPs over the past few years and their sound showing a steady increase in maturity, it’s really no surprise that their debut album comes across as the most accomplished batch of songs by this London group yet, their very own formula made up of post punk, noise rock and postcore elements fine-tuned and engineered into a smoothly running, high precision machine while still occasionaly expanding their musical vocabulary – like some Wire-meet-Big Black-isms in Set Up To Fail for example or the bleak doomscapes á la early Uniform in Human Frailty.
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Another tasty EP by this River Falls, Wisconsin electro punk/-noise duo, on which they once again sound a bit like Big Black going full electro, then joining forces with Primitive Calculators, armed with power tools instead of guitars.
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Well… i like to discourage folks from mailing me physical copies of stuff for good reason, since in most cases all this amounts to is a tremendous waste of money and natural resources while digital files are way easier to dispose of. However, these seven inches of black PVC arriving at my doorstep from a duo based not that far away from… said doorstep, has quite a bit of unexpected class – propulsive synth punk in a manner you might currently associate with the likes of Le Prince Harry, Clarko, Powerplant or R. Clown, while those english lyrics straight from the Klaus Meine bargain bin just add to its kinda cute & campy DIY charme.
A new EP by Maestro Voltaire’s second most prolific project Cells. Need i say more? Seven more gems of gloriously fucked up, blown out hardcore punk joy.
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Another Berlin group whose members already made some waves elsewhere in the 12XUniverse, namely in Bands like Diät, Ausmuteants or Vexx, although Diät certainly are the closest match here in terms of sound – with a somewhat more pronounced 80s death rock vibe, maybe. Also there’s some similarity to a slowed down incarnation of Pretty Hurts, Criminal Code or austrian colleagues Red Gaze.
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