Knowso - Pulsating Gore

Cleveland's Know­so for sure have been among the most idio­syn­crat­ic and mem­o­rable groups of the past cou­ple years. Their newest full length shows them at the height of their strength once again, their amal­ga­ma­tion of post punk, noise- and math rock still com­ing across just as quirky and whim­si­cal as it is tight, rigid and an­gu­lar all the same, com­bin­ing a seem­ing­ly pro­ce­dur­al and ef­fi­cient, math­e­mat­i­cal ap­proach with an amount of fun and catchy­ness you wouldn't re­al­ly ex­pect in­side these rough pa­ra­me­ters. At this point, their sound is pret­ty much their own thing but if you ab­soiute­ly must com­pare them to oth­er groups, you might find some sim­i­lar­i­ties to stuff such as Brandy, Landown­er, Big Bop­per or maybe Nag in their more ap­proach­able mo­ments.

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Cthtr - Cthtr

Al­ready hav­ing a cou­ple EPs un­der his belt, this Whit­ti­er, Cal­i­for­nia dude's first full length cas­sette, al­so his first re­lease fol­low­ing over five years of ra­dio si­lence, im­me­di­at­ley clicks with me. That shit is right up my al­ley with its en­dear­ing­ly crude, mod­er­ate­ly psy­che­del­ic mix of garage-, post- and synth punk car­ry­ing the traits of so many house­hold names, among them the likes of Mononeg­a­tives, Use­less Eaters, Die TV, Elec­tric Prawns 2, Beef, ear­ly Pow­er­plant, Pow!, Freak Genes and Lost Pack­ages.

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Klint - Stark EP & Should Be Honey /​ Sherbet (Golden Twenties) 7"

Al­ways an oc­ca­sion of pure, un­mit­i­gat­ed joy, new songs by Schleswig, Ger­many so­lo viking synth punk war­rior Klint. The self-re­leased new Stark EP de­liv­ers six-and-a-half ex­cel­lent new blows of the equal­ly rough and noisy, weird and catchy as fuck synth punk ac­tion we all know and love. His Should be Hon­ey /​ Sher­bet 7" re­leased si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly via ital­ian garage punk in­sti­tu­tion Good­bye Boozy then goes on a thrilling ex­per­i­men­tal side quest in­volv­ing heavy use of an­cient brass and vo­cal sam­ples pulled from 1920s swing records. This is some­thing… kin­da ran­dom, baf­fling and un­ex­pect­ed for sure. Sick shit!

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Jëg Hüsker - Demo!

Ex­cel­lent new shit by a group from Karl­sruhe, Ger­many fea­tur­ing, as far as i can tell, the two mem­bers of Thee Khai Aehm. There are par­al­lels to be drawn to that group, es­pe­cial­ly con­cern­ing the heavy dun­geon-es­que vibe of which much is re­tained here as well, but over­all i'd say this group's garage- and fuzz punk sound is a dif­fer­ent kind of beast al­to­geth­er, in­volv­ing way high­er ve­loc­i­ties and more styl­is­tic va­ri­ety. The open­er has some pri­mal pro­to punk en­er­gy to it while the melod­i­cism of As Loud As Me re­minds me of ear­ly No Age or Wavves. Give Me Beat ven­tures deep in­to hard­core ter­ri­tor­ry and clos­ing track Fo­mo Boy is a force­ful blast of clas­sic dun­geon punk ex­cess. Well… if the word "clas­sic" even has any mean­ing for a genre this young. What­ev­er, there's no use ar­gu­ing with this kind of fury.

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ØL - Demo

Ger­man lan­guage "deutsch­punk" that doesn't suck still is much of a rar­i­ty, sad­ly. This thing here in­deed does not suck in the slight­est though. The de­but LP of this group from Aachen treads an in­ter­est­ing mid­dle ground, hav­ing clear echoes of some of the bet­ter and quite ob­vi­ous ger­man in­flu­ences (think the likes of Oma Hans, ear­ly Muff Pot­ter, Tur­bostaat, Oiro, Düsen­jäger…) while at the same time hav­ing a more garage-lean­ing vibe to them rem­i­nis­cent of a quite di­verse bunch of in­ter­na­tion­al acts like Cri­sis Man, Flow­ers Of Evil, Waste Man, As­cot Stab­ber, Mys­tic Inane… plus the oca­sion­al hint of Hot Snakes /​ Dri­ve Like Je­hu to boot!

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The Vortex - The Vortex

The San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia group fol­lows up on last year's kick­ass Ex­ec­u­tive Dys­func­tion EP with an equal­ly ex­cit­ing suc­ces­sor (al­beit one con­sist­ing most­ly of re-record­ings of pre­vi­ous­ly known tracks) on which once again time­less garage punk stylings meet plen­ty of old­school hard­core en­er­gy and KBD-re­lat­ed de­prav­i­ty. A fun ride through­out whose over­all vibes and oc­ca­sion­al blues- and cow­punk lean­ings this time around call to mind ear­ly Dicks, among oth­er things.

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Ambulanz - II

An ex­cel­lent sec­ond tape by this Leipzig group dab­bling in pret­ty much ex­act­ly the catchy and play­ful kind of blend in­be­tween the worlds of garage- and post punk you've come to ex­pect com­ing out of that lo­cal scene which ain't a bad thing at all - it's all qual­i­ty shit and friends of fel­low Leipzig groups á la Exwhite, Laff Box, Lassie and Ony­on will sure­ly have a ball with this one too!

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Shrudd - Microbiome /​ Bizarro

Two new EPs by some Louisville, Ken­tucky group who've ap­par­ent­ly re­leased a ton of shit al­ready but are cer­tain­ly new to me. The Mi­cro­bio­me EP de­lights with quirky and en­er­getic garage-/synth punk in the vein of Bil­liam, Spodee Boy, Gholies, ear­ly Erik Ner­vous, Spits, Why Both­er? as well as clas­sic Reatard-re­lat­ed ar­ti­facts. A nice com­pan­ion piece then is the more hard­core-mind­ed Bizarro EP dab­bling in a way rougher aes­thet­ic of fuzzed-out old­school may­hem.

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Achterlicht - Demo II

De­mo num­ber two of this Haar­lem, Nether­lands group seam­less­ly car­ries on with the fun and ex­cite­ment of its pre­de­ces­sor in the form of no-frills catchy, sim­ple and ef­fec­tive garage- and synth punk smash­ers sure to please friends pri­mar­i­ly of oth­er eu­ro acts á la Dadar, Shit­ty Life and Mi­traille.

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Gremlin - Same Fate /​ Bliss

Fol­low­ing their still fresh, sen­sa­tion­al de­but EP, this new 2-track dig­i­tal sin­gle of Cincinnati's Grem­lins can do no wrong ei­ther, Same Fate be­ing a snap­py and per­fect­ly eco­nom­i­cal garage punk dit­ty while Bliss once again taps in­to their more psych-in­fused melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties with some dis­tinct hints of Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty, Ex-Gold or Bad Sports.