Kickass electro punk from Portland, Oregon that stikes a perfect balance of abrasive crunch and catchyness. Right away this shit kinda strikes me as a less choppy version of Lansing, Michigan group Snarewaves, especially similar in their overall Lo-Fi Amiga 500 tracker-ish sample punk aesthetic but just as well i'm reminded of Germany's own synth punk sensation Klint and somewhat older phenomena like North Carolina sample punks ISS and Berlin's Heavy Metal.
Another utterly puzzling burst of lo-fi hardcore noise is coming to us from an Orlando, Florida group who already had a decent Demo out via Bellicose Records, but this new one on Drunken Butterfly Records is even more up my alley with its completely blown-out and unpredictable make of hardcore punk insanity that, below the rough and grimy surface, has a good deal of an oldschool garage-, proto- and KBD punk undercurrent going on.
Whatever this Cleveland, Ohio group conjures up on their newest EP always carries that certain air of sugary fuzz punk and noise pop, the varyingly Primitives-informed kind that had a bit of a resurgence in the previous decade with such bands as Feature, UV-TV, Slowcoaches, Monster Treasure or Male Bonding and has been kept alive in more recent times by the likes of Private Lives, Exo and Glitter on the Mattress among others. And what should i say, this shit is every bit as good in its ultra-catchy song substance and has a couple of neat flourishes and surprises to boot, like some mid-to-late-era Hüsker Dü vibe in Here We Go Again, while the slightly Wipers-vs.-Wire-esque sounds of the closing track Symmetry also make me think of a slowed-down version of Nervosas or early Milk Music.
This new collection of alleged b-grade material from one of Melbourne's prime instigators of noisy garage-/hardcore punk chaos is yet another solid proof that you can't ever go wrong with this group, as for much of this EP i absolutely can't see why these tunes wouldn't have made the cut for a "regular" release. Well, one man's trash is another man's treasure i guess and i'm just having a glorious time diving into in this neat little dumpster of leftover scraps.
Now these chaps are from Spain yet their sound rather makes me think a whole bunch of predominantly french bands, their sound sitting inbetween the coordinates of post punk and -core, melodic garage punk and Oi!, calling to mind the likes of Youth Avoiders, Telecult, Nightwatchers, Bleakness and, most recently, Distance or the french-singing Leipzig, Germany group Laxisme. It would thus be easy to dismiss this as yet another artifact of a recently quite ubiquitous subgenre but that would be kinda unfair and discounting what a massive fireworks of powerful hooks this way-above-average record is setting off from beginning to end.
I gotta admit i had severely subdued expectations for the successor to this Long Beach, California group's excellent 2022 debut LP, not because of anything actually related to them but rather simply 'cos sound-wise, they kinda struck me as the kind of group likely to either get too ambitious and bite of more then they can chew or, alternately, suddenly decide that it's about time to break through to the wider broccoli-haired indie crowd and water-down and gloss-up their sound accordingly. Thankfully, i was so fucking wrong and none of that has happened here. Although like on their debut, you may once again classify this shit as an, on the surface, quite fashionable make of jagged post punk with echoes both of first- and second-wave art punk groups á la early Siouxsie, Delta Five, Transmitters, Pylon and even a hint of Wire, as well as more recent phenomena like Marcel Wave, Spread Joy, Sweeping Promises and Marbled Eye, everything appears a lot more deliberate and refined on this one. While retaining that subtle undercurrent of no-wave mutant funk-ish dissonance, all of these new tunes distinguish themselves through perfectly balanced dramaturgy and dynamic, nuanced song progressions, often dialing down the pace and noise to a deliberately understated appeal, making perfect use of elaborate song architecture to achieve the maximum oomph not by way of sheer force but a mindful, punctual and laser-focused group effort.
This Montreal group's previous two EPs were already each a fat bucket chock-full of sleazy-ass rock'n'roll bliss and now they really hit it out of the ballpark with their first full-length effort, on which they considerably expand their stylistic color gamut and dial up the catchyness to eleven of their already dangerously combustive recipie made up of garage punk, hard- and postcore elements, a slight hint of Oi! and lots unapologetic dabbling in sweaty '70s hard & heavy dad rock territory while in tunes like Never Enough, there's an undeniable hint of roots-y folk- and cowpunk going on aswell. Immediately this shit strikes me a bit as a significantly dumbed down version of that recent Punter LP and further reminds me of a colorful bunch of sleazecore acts á la Cement Shoes, Golden Pelicans, Flea Collar, Cülo, Cutters, Polute and Chain Whip.
Melbourne's Metdog have absolutely cemented their status as one of the major players of the contemporary garage-/synth-/eggpunk scene with last year's pretty fucking gaga full length Questions and Answers Regarding Computers and Screens. For their newest LP though, they dial down the overall weirdness ever-so-slightly, which i'm gonna say is actually for the better as i think another iteration of that '90s PC- / early web-themed insanity and ultra-cheesy general MIDI-esque sonics certainly wouldn't hit quite as hard the second time around. Instead we get a somewhat more streamlined and straightforward bunch of alarmingly catchy garage tunes that still let their freak flag fly aplenty, just in case you were worried things might get even remotely too serious here. Anyway, it's certainly their most substantial release so far, supported by a matching growth in the songwriting department without giving up too much of the group's overall playfulness and unpredictability.
There's more going on under the hood than first meets the eye on this Budapest group's debut cassette whose eight tunes on one hand - especially in its first half - channel some vaguely oldschool-ish KBD- and garage punk vibes with alternating flourishes of Gun Club and Wipers, counterbalanced by a bunch of way more contemporary sounding elements on which groups of the current anarcho-/postcore-axis á la Straw Man Army and Fantasma have surely left their mark while at many other points, a certain breed of art punk melancholy akin to, say, Kitchen's Floor and Uniform (Atlanta, not NYC) also shines through.
For the follow-up to their excellent 2023 EP Feed The Clones Pt. 1 - which has been their first record to fully realize their potential IMO - the Oakland group can't be bothered to tweak their specific formula a whole lot, just as the "part 2" designation would already suggest. That's fine with me 'cos there wasn't anything broken with their sound to begin with and much of the song material collected on here is top notch shit once again - even though, admittedly, this thing sometimes feels more like an EP's worth of hits wedged inbetween a good deal of more sluggish, abstract, atmospheric tunes this time around, much of which i'm tempted to classify as glorified interlude material. Nonetheless, this is yet another essential listen for connoisseurs of demented, Spits-flavoured horror-/garage-/synth punk fodder.
