Alien Nosejob - Cold Bare Facts

Jake Robertson's Alien Nose­job usu­al­ly finds some way to sub­vert our ex­pec­ta­tions and their newest 7", com­ing to us as usu­al via An­ti Fade Records, ain't no ex­cep­tion in that re­gard! The Ex­e­cu­tion­er sur­pris­es with what might eas­i­ly be the most post punk the group has ever sound­ed as cold and raw elec­tric beats get weld­ed to an equal­ly rigid con­struct of repet­i­tive gui­tar riffs, com­bin­ing in­to a slight­ly in­dus­tri­al-ish over­all vibe. West Side Sto­ry then is clos­er to the fa­mil­iar and beloved stan­dard Alien Nose­job for­mu­la, a straight­for­ward yet el­e­gant garage punk smash­er based on a sin­gle ex­quis­ite riff that could just go on for­ev­er but con­ve­nient­ly gets fad­ed out in time be­fore it can cause any last­ing (hear­ing-) dam­age.

Spewed Brain - Spewed Brain

Fol­low­ing up on their much rougher, hard­core-lean­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Heart­throb EP of last year, Indiana's Spewed Brain take their sound in­to a catch­i­er, slight­ly egg-ish di­rec­tion on their new LP while stay­ing de­light­ful­ly fucked-up and un­pre­dictable, at dif­fer­ent times re­mind­ing me of groups as di­verse as, say, Trau­ma Har­ness, Print Head, Exwhite, The Gobs, Snoop­er, Rolex, Witch Piss or Slimex.

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RONi - Demo

Oh look, it's that mys­te­ri­ous dude again who al­so goes by such names as Zhoop, Djinn, Night­man, Feed, Brun­dle and even more dis­guis­es i can't re­call right now. As usu­al he does ex­act­ly one thing on here and he gets it right every sin­gle time - five ex­cel­lent no-frills min­i­mal­ist det­o­na­tions on the in­ter­sec­tion of garage-, hard­core- and fuzz punk.

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Split System - Vol. 2

The sec­ond LP by this Mel­bourne garage punk su­per­group brings fur­ther grad­ual re­fine­ment to their dis­tinct for­mu­la car­ry­ing all the right bag­gage from many decades of par­tic­u­lar­ly aus­tralian punk his­to­ry both an­cient and re­cent, pre­sent­ed with heart­felt ur­gency and a per­sis­tent sense of melan­choly that's quite unique to them, a knack for catchy hooks, el­e­gant, sim­ple and ef­fec­tive song­writ­ing which has had the group run­ning cir­cles around the bulk of the genre pret­ty much from day one, all the while leav­ing im­pact craters with the un­re­lent­ing fury of their per­for­mance. Noth­ing short of spec­tac­u­lar, this record!

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Vaguess - Thanks /​/​ No Thanks

A main­stay of re­cent years in garage punk is back with a some­what more high-pro­file LP via Er­ste Theke Ton­träger fol­low­ing a re­cent string of more un­der­stat­ed cas­sette and dig­i­tal re­leas­es. This thing is as eclec­tic as any of these but at the same time, a lot more fo­cused, de­ter­mined and con­sis­tent than some of those more scrap­py re­cent of­fer­ings. Span­ning a spec­trum from the propul­sive post punk of the open­ing sal­vo (When It's Gone, A.P.A.C.), melan­choly in­die rock bal­lads (Texas Cloud), comp­fy synth pop tunes (Let U Know) to straight­for­ward garage-/fuzz punk ex­plo­sions (Can't Take It, 2 Car Garage), there's plen­ty of meat to dig your teeth in­to, all held to­geth­er by Vin­ny Earley's al­ways con­fi­dent, of­ten plain­ly bril­liant song­writ­ing pow­ers. Last but not least, Week­end Shad­ows and Car­ry­on are fur­ther ex­am­ples of ex­act­ly that kind of supreme pow­er-/fuzz pop hymn the dude has al­ways ex­celled at.

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O-D-EX - Breaker

Fol­low­ing their per­fect­ly ap­pe­tiz­ing (and as far as i can make out, com­plete­ly van­ished off the face of the in­ter­net by now) Black Box EP in 2022, we get this group's de­but full-length cour­te­sey of Dirt­nap Records and this time around, there's ac­tu­al­ly some tan­gi­ble back­ground in­fo avail­able. No won­der these folks sound­ed fa­mil­iar the first time around, since we're deal­ing with a duo con­sist­ing of US garage punk roy­al­ty Mark Ryan (most no­tably of Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Mind Spi­ders and Marked Men) and Mic­ah Why, whose pre­vi­ous bands i don't think i've ever come across. Their min­i­mal­ist synth punk cer­tain­ly has re­tained some of that Mind Spi­ders vibe al­though this shit is a lot dark­er, more stripped-down and abra­sive, hav­ing a cer­tain old­school vibe to it wich echoes of Min­i­mal Man, Ner­vous Gen­der, Scream­ers, Units or Vis­i­tors but you might just as well com­pare them to more re­cent phe­nom­e­na like Pow­er­plant, Pow!, Spy­roids or a some­what less spikey ver­sion of Lost Pack­ages cross­bred with the dig­i­tal in­san­i­ty of Nubot555, the more min­i­mal­ist mo­ments of Dig­i­tal Leather.

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Scud - Car

Songs about mo­tor ve­hi­cles aren't quite as ubiq­ui­tous as they once were and i'm just gonna say say de­served­ly so be­cause hon­est­ly, that an­cient, most waste­ful mode of per­son­al trans­porta­tion can't be phased out soon enough and the fu­ture clear­ly be­longs to all va­ri­eties of bikes and trains. But here we go, it's an un­like­ly new EP made up of noth­ing but carpunk tunes. Mu­si­cal­ly the thing slaps though, their weird and whim­si­cal mix of art- and garage punk be­ing of sim­i­lar char­ac­ter to house­hold names such as Vexx, Cel Ray, Warm Bod­ies, Warp or Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

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Billiam - Jump To 3D

Al­righty, so here's a new Bil­liam record do­ing all the awe­some tricks a new Bil­liam record's sup­posed to do and by now i'm sure you've long since made up your mind about the dude and whether you love or hate his schtick - kin­da the mu­si­cal equiv­a­lent to a Wes An­der­son flick i guess. I'm firm­ly in the "love" camp con­cern­ing both Bil­liam and Wes An­der­son though and even if they'd both just con­tin­ue to re-make that ex­act same kind of film/​record for the rest of their lives, i can al­ways take one more of that!

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Paulo Vicious - Paulo Vicious /​ Beer - Beer II

An­oth­er mys­te­ri­ous egg­punk bomb has dropped from… well, where in the world ac­tu­al­ly? Re­leased on a Tel Aviv la­bel, the song ti­tles, as google trans­late tells me, are ap­par­ent­ly por­tuguese. Then again, sound-wise, the clos­est ref­er­ence would prob­a­bly be the blown-out may­hem of Barcelona genre over­lords Prison Af­fair with fur­ther com­par­isons to be made to Cologne's Nuts, the ear­ly works of aus­tralian groups á la Set-Top Box, Eu­gh, Midgee, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp and, to come full cir­cle even­tu­al­ly, Tel Aviv's own crude egg­punk sen­sa­tion Vic­tor would fit nice­ly in there too. So, long sto­ry short, this is some pre­mi­um grade glo­be­trot­ting shit, re­gard­less of where these folks might ac­tu­al­ly be lo­cat­ed.

Yet an­oth­er good ref­er­ence point, then again, would be Charleston, South Carolina's Beer and, speak­ing of the dev­il, the world's most beer­est beer band has just re­leased their sec­ond ex­tend­ed play to which most of what i've just said is gonna ap­ply ver­ba­tim so i'm not gonna re­peat my­self and in­stead just gonna crank up the good shit and ad­vise you to do the same 'cos i know your neigh­bors are just gonna love it!

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MKVulture - Terminal Freakout

A dense and noisy post punk spec­ta­cle un­folds on this Rich­mond, Vir­ginia group's de­but EP, its four elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed songs mak­ing a ful­ly ma­ture and con­fi­dent im­pres­sion al­ready. At times this has a cu­ri­ous vibe of, say, Straw Man Army plus a sub­tle trace of Poi­son Ruïn while in oth­er places this shit re­minds me a lot of some of the past decade's more melan­choly and song-ori­ent­ed post punk acts in the vein of ear­ly Es­tranged, Pub­lic Eye, Crim­i­nal Code, Bruised, VHS, Waste Man as well as At­lanta heavy­weights Wymyns Prysyn and Institute/Mothers's Milk.

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