Not many new things to say about these belgian garage punks' most recent EP as they kinda stick to their basics, which also means there won't be any negative surprises when they do what they've always done best, chunrning out a nonstop barrage of simple but ultra-catchy and forceful garage smashers that make you wanna join a satanic cult or pet a cute dog or set fire to a hippie or go on tour becouse fuck you! No use arguing with that i'll say.
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Now that's one glorious first offering from Iowa City punks God's Hand and it's a mystery to me how i could have missed this 7" when it first came out in May already. Remodelled, the opener of the two-track single feels kinda like an amalgamation of folk-infused post punk acts of the Volcano Suns, Angst, Fire Party or Sebadoh variety, maybe a hint of Strike Under, with the comparatively more recent, melodic garage punk goodies of early Woolen Men. The second tune then continues the trend of spanning both earlier and more recent punk history, this time feeling like a fusion between the post punk and proto-postcore of Minutemen, Saccharine Trust, Mission Of Burma and Really Red with the contemporary landscape of varyingly anarcho-influenced, noisy post punk by the likes of Marbled Eye, Institute, Corker, Sarcasm, Tube Alloys or Warm Red.
We're already two-and-a-half releases deep into Fog's discography here, though a quick glance over the New Zeeland group's previous LP/EP immediately reveals substantial improvements on their newest one. Although their basic ingredients of contemporary post punk and a hint of anarcho don't bring anything new to the table in 2025 and may rightfully be compared to such groups as early Institute, Pyrex, Corker, Nag, Criminal Code and such, there's also no denying that these songs are without exception expertly crafted blasts of grainy and underexposed noise with faint flashes of melody throughout, all the moving parts feeling a lot more deliberately arranged and refined than anything they've done previously.
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Ever since Lysol rebranded themselves as Fan Club, with it came a considerably more traditional, straightforward garage punk sound that so far never hit quite as hard for me, always just a bit too much on the rather basic, traditional, dad rock-ish side of things. Their newest one now feels a lot like the timeline has been reset back to about 2021, right around the peak of their previous hard-/garagecore era and i couldn't be happier about that 'cos let's be real here, if there's one thing i surely won't get exited about in 2025 it's yet another bloodless, The Hives-style garage "revival rock" record. That shit already sounded pretty fucking stale just a couple years post-Y2K and i'm sure not gonna muster up any patience for it today.
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Ever since i first stuck my nose in their immense output sometime last year, New Jersey group Monda have proven their worth as not only one of the most productive, but also most consistent purveyors of catchy and fuzzed-out delicacies sitting somewhere inbetween garage punk, oldschool indie rock, noise- and power pop. One other thing you're quickly gonna notice about them is that they really like to rearrange the sonic furniture a bit between releases to keep things fresh and exciting which, among other things, has led to a heavily spaced-out, psychedelic-leaning stretch in their discography most noticeable in and around 2024's Ponderous Leviathan LP. Their newest one now sees them kinda going back to the basics and once again they're getting all of them so fucking right, channelling some pronounced '50s-'60s bubblegum pop vibes just as much as 'eighties Flying Nun and Sarah Records-type art-/indie pop artifacts and various C86-style oddities in a flawless string of strikingly simple but lovingly crafted new tunes that just hit their marks dead-on without exception.
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Detroit garage punks Fen Fen have never disappointed me and they won't on their newest LP either. After their sound seemed to get ever more elaborate and artsy with every previous release, culminating in the almost postcore-adjacent aesthetics of last year's National Threat LP, this new one feels like a bit of a reversal of direction, reconsolidating their sound with a razor-sharp focus on their garage punk roots in a super compact bundle of eight concise and straightforward yet unshakably engineered '77- and proto punk-infused garage punk nuggets.
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Is it the third Dragnet LP already? Time flies man. For some reason (time & energy, usually) i've never given them the full blog post treatment here but i'm also gonna say they've never before sounded quite as tight, well-rounded, caffeinated and to-the-point as the Melbourne group featuring members of Vintage Crop, Gonzo and Teen Line among others does on their newest record. There's on one hand that slight Uranium Club-esque vibe to it that also pervades much of the Vintage Crop discography but there's just as much of a distinct quirky synth-driven, eggpunk-ish action going on that sits somewhere inbetween oldschool Ausmuteants, US bands like Smirk, Cherry Cheeks and Australia's own Ghoulies, Aborted Tortoise and Electric Prawns 2.
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I didn't expect the latest LP of this Portsmouth, New Hampshire group to hit this hard - what an impressive qualitative leap from pretty much anything they've done before! Right out of the gate the opener Brain Feeder establishes a propulsive force in which weighty grooves and glittering melodic textures collide in a mix of post-, garage punk and a slight hint of postcore. For the remainder of the record, the formula gets further explored and expanded upon and their driving energy certainly gets plenty of reinforcement out of deliberate build-ups and carefully set-up dramaturgy in their sometimes rather simple but oftentimes quite intricate, always perfectly balanced song architectures.
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The debut EP of this Boston, Massachusetts band outright wallows in an unapologetically old-fashioned puddle of oldschool punk, hard- and postcore with a slight garage edge that calls to mind many of the more left-field and eccentric acts of both the early D.C. postcore era with bands like Gray Matter, Government Issue, Embrace, Rites of Spring, Fire Party and just as many west coast acts like Really Red, Tragic Mulatto, early Saccharine Trust, balanced out with some lighter, straightforward rocking and energetic moments that evoke a bit of a classic Germs and Adoloscents energy.
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Okay here's yet another of these francophone (though in this case seemingly not french) Oi!-infused garage punk groups and i have nothing new to add here but also no complaints whatsoever 'cos the quality is right up there with the genre's best and friends of shit á la Telecult, Stalled Minds, Distance, Nightwatchers, Litovsk or most recently Laxisme are gonna have a ball with this one as well.
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