A new entry into the young dungeon punk microgenre coming our way from medieval Utrecht. That means competent new fodder for connoisseurs of D&D-savy imagery and themes, of heavy armor and blunt weapons as well as a small but expanding roundtable of skullcrushers á la Poison Ruïn, Bloody Keep, Weenog, Steröid or whoever else has recently been busy uniting the aesthetics of garage punk with those of oldschool black- and/or super-ancient "heavy" metal.
Pointy Sticks, the unexpectedly melodic opener of this Charlotte, Carolina group's debut cassette, kinda sounds like what i'd expect if weirdo garage punk outfit Print Head were to record a hardcore record. The rest of the tape remains beautifully eccentric too, mixing oldschool hardcore thrills with catchy garage hooks and, at times, the odd oldschool hard rock or doom riff, the latter suggesting stuff like Paranoise as a comparison. Other times, you might liken them to some Connie Voltaire hardcore project or the recent Hippyfuckers demo, all of that steeped in a rough fidelity akin to any random Deluxe Bias or Impotent Fetus release.
The New York group's newest cassette clicks with me instantly, their quirky power pop tunes striking me as a somewhat new wave-ish melange of melodic, predominantly early british post punk somewhere in the extended neighborhood of groups such as Desperate Bicycles, Mekons, Television Personalities and Swell Maps.
Speaking of eggs… here's another batch of short and sweet smashers in the realm of occasionally hardcore-infused garage- and post punk that at one point or another kinda resembles a curious mixture of Big Bopper, Feed/Zhoop/Djinn, S.B.F., Patti and Landowner.
Another tape by Barcelona's best address for dazzlingly upbeat and catchy garage punk delivers yet another ultra-compact payload of low-fidelity, high-egginess transcendence, no amount of tape hiss being able to drown out that constant barrage of ultra-potent and highly infectious pop hooks bearing some vague similarity to acts like R.M.F.C., Nuts, Set-Top Box, Dee Bee Rich or Erik Nervous.
This Melbourne group's 2017 debut EP still resonates with me as one of the most unique experiences in the garage-/post-/art punk spere of its time. Almost five years having passed since then, it's no surprise their follow-up EP showcases a somewhat more streamlined yet still ambitious and surprising grab-bag of songs which continue to draw plenty of inspiration from both Chairs Missing-era Wire and early, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, this time leaning in heavier on the spaced-out post punk side of things, also sounding not quite unlike a more eleborate version of B-Boys or Gotobeds. Then at their most melodic and straightforward, Elsewhere is the kind of anthemic oldschool indie rock smasher rarely encountered these days.
Another powerful punch in the nuts from that California supergroup sharing members with the likes of Acrylics, Public Eye, Violent Change and Ceremony. Here, they deliver their most compact and vigorous set of new tunes so far, having fine-tuned their formula of equal parts hardcore- and garage punk for maximum impact, fusing the unrelenting force of Acrylics and Bad Breeding with the abrasive garage qualities of, say… early Teenanger or Video.
This dude from Schleswig, Germany already made an excellent first impression a couple weeks ago with his debut 7" on Goodbye Boozy. The artwork sure suggests some dungeon synth/-punk affinity, although sound-wise - lacking the latter genre's obvious black- and/or oldschool "heavy" metal elements - i'd rather compare this shit to recent developments on the intersection of garage-, synth- and electro punk and associated acts of the Mononegatives, Pow!, Liquid Face, Ghoulies or Slimex variety.
This Santa Ana group emits short and noisy KBD-soaked artifacts, equal parts oldschool garage- and hardcore punk with the occasional touch of Gun Club. The overall impression ain't too far off Neo Neos or any of maestro Voltaire's various hardcore projects, early Erik Nervous and maybe some hint of Launcher, meshed together with some beautiful accident of the kind that might've just as well occured on some random Deluxe Bias or Impotent Fetus release.
The busy Montreal scene has yet another head-scratcher in store for the discerning connoisseur of weird-ass garage-/post-/egg-/ADHD-punk and oh boy, is that a delightful and quirky, disjointed-as-fuck mess of an EP scavenging bits and pieces from all the right phenomena of contemporary punk eccentricity including acts such as Print Head, Reality Group, Patty, Slimex, Big Bopper or Skull Cult.
