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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Metdog - Questions and Answers Regarding Computers and Screens

It's shap­ing up to be a pret­ty awe­some week for egg­punk al­ready, helped fur­ther along by an­oth­er genre fix­ture of the last cou­ple years, Melbourne's Met­dog, hav­ing just re­leased their full length de­but af­ter an im­pec­ca­ble string of EPs and sin­gles. They promised shit about com­put­ers and oh boy do we get shit about com­put­ers here, leav­ing more ques­tions than an­swers though, most of which be­gin with "What the fuck…?". Per­fect­ly un­der­scor­ing the sub­ject mat­ter we get to wit­ness the group at their most elec­tron­i­cal­ly in­clined so far, their over­all vibe here be­ing rem­i­nis­cent of a bizarre 8-bit mashup of vin­tage Aus­muteants with the dis­tinct added flour­ish of Win­dows 3.11 mi­di files.

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The Slads - Tough Times

Bril­liant, thrilling old­school ac­tion on this Philadel­phia group's de­but EP on which a hy­brid garage/​hardcore vibe á la Cut­ters gets fused with a dis­tinct Oi! ten­den­cy rem­i­nis­cent of The Chis­el, Chub­by And The Gang. Then again, there are some ocur­rences of Poi­son Ruïn-es­que riff­ing to be spot­ted as well and some­times the gui­tar leads op­er­ate in clas­sic Ra­dio Bird­man ter­ri­to­ry.

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Rude Television - I Want To Believe

Hav­ing first come to my at­ten­tion via a split tape with AJ Cortes and The Bur­glars, this group from West Palm Beach, Flori­da has on­ly got­ten stronger with every new re­lease and this one is no ex­cep­tion, de­liv­er­ing a new round of catchy, com­pact blasts in the some­what eggy realms of pow­er pop, synth- and garage punk evok­ing thor­ough­ly fa­vor­able com­par­isons to the likes of Gee Tee, Erik Ner­vous, Vaguess and Sa­tan­ic To­gas.

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Aus - Der Schöne Schein

Few groups have ex­em­pli­fied the Berlin post punk vibe boiled down to such a pure and defin­ing form as Aus, of whom we're get­ting the first new tunes in al­most four years on this new 7". On this one, the pre­vi­ous two records' rather purist, suf­fo­cat­ing bleak­ness gets opened up just a bit by way of a new­found sense of groove, a much need­ed pro­pel­lant and change of pace re­veal­ing a plau­si­ble way for­ward for a group that could, at times, feel a bit averse to change.

Warm Exit - Ultra Violence

When Brus­sels group Warm Ex­it toured Ger­many last year few of us, my­self in­clud­ed, had an­tic­i­pat­ed the kind of sur­prise we'd gonna be in for, al­though their 2022 TV /​ Ul­tra Vi­o­lence sin­gle al­ready hint­ed at their sound mor­ph­ing in­to more of a clas­sic post punk di­rec­tion. On stage though, it im­me­di­ate­ly be­came clear what a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion this group had gone through with bare­ly a speck to be found of their ini­tial sound more in line the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of quirky garage-/synth-/eg­g­punk acts, now re­placed by an in­tense and pitch-black abyss of at­mos­pher­ic post punk, which is now al­so re­flect­ed on their full length de­but, call­ing to mind a il­lus­trous and di­verse ar­ray of groups like Rank Xe­rox, Crim­i­nal Code, Diät, Girls In Syn­the­sis, Sieve­head or Neg­a­tive Space.

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