This Melbourne group delivers some of the most straight-the-fuck-ahead, no-frills ancient-school '77 style (garage-) punk imaginable on their debut EP, kinda like a way, way more traditional sounding incarnation of Amyl and the Sniffers. The fact they're able to pull this thing off without sounding the least bit stale and dusty speaks for their chops as a band as much as the raw strength of their songcraft.
Having already given an excellent first impression previously on a split tape with the great AJ Cortez, this West Palm Beach dude's follow-up EP maintains the high standard of his garage- and synth punk, radiating the quirky energy of groups such as Satanic Togas, Erik Nervous, Prison Affair, Mononegatives, RMFC… while also incorporating some '77-ish power pop sensibilities akin to Tommy and the Commies and towards the end, there's also an increasingly Alien Nosejob- / Ausmuteants-esque thing goin' on.
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Wow, this group from Borée, France is juggling a shitload of different styles with striking confidence on their debut album. The thing starts out with a short, straightforward, simple blast of hardcore punk, then has them cycling through a wide array of styles including forceful postcore, hard rockin' upper-mid-tempo garage rock/-punk, groovy angular post punk and even some vaguely Pixies-esque, surf-infused oldschool 80s indie-/alternative rock. All of this they pull off with ease - there's not a single weak link on this record. Impressive shit all the way through!
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A nice little battery of vaguely egg-ish garage punk and fuzz pop combining more recent weirdness à la Print Head or Freak Genes with a good measure of Desperate Bicycles, some early Flying Nun Records vibes - especially The Clean and The Stones - a touch of C86 pop (as in Cowboys Aren't Real) or also: loads of random 80s cassette culture artifacts that might or might not have cropped up on some Messthetics/Homework/Hyped To Death compilation over the years.
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With members of Vexx, Gen Pop and Sweeping Promises among them, who’d expect anything short of sheer awesomeness from this Seattle group? Sheer awesomeness is exactly what we get, of course. These eight songs are noise pop candy of the highest caliber, taking some cues out of the playbook of vaguely surf-, more or less JMC-influenced acts such as early Primitives, Joanna Gruesome, early Wavves, Male Bonding or, most recently, UV-TV, the underlying songs being strong enough to still work if you strip away the ubiquitous layer of fuzz, as they do in the gorgeous title track, a melancholy dream pop ballad.
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Curious mixture of hardcore-, anarcho- and post punk on this Kingston, NY group’s debut tape, assembling a distinct style out of gritty KBD-drenched vibes à la Launcher, a hint of UK82 energy, plenty of Rudimentary Peni and the occasional bit of Crass.
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Heavily retro-leaning post punk, made in Berlin and sounding exactly like you'd come to expect by that fact. You might recognize a familiar voice grumbling about here, the dude having done a similar thing with his other band Maske, although the overall vibe here is even a notch more gritty, sometimes having a slightly Wipers-esque quality and, at other points, a touch of S.Y.P.H. as well as more recent phenomena like Aus, Hyäne, Die Wärme or Peter Muffin und die Heilsarmee. In other words: This might have come out sometime around '81 just as well. There's a couple of underwhelming filler tracks on here - forgivable and totally made up for by the undeniable highlights of this album. Just don’t try another attempt at funk next time, okay?
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Fuck, that shit smells… but in a good way. After their mildly disturbing one-and-a-half tapes on Impotent Fetus we finally get their first “full” length cassette from Tetryon Tapes and once again this is some joy to behold. Ultra-septic hard- and noisecore vaguely reminiscent of present-day acts like Soupcans, Stinkhole or Vulture shit but also of old pioneers of the Flipper, No Trend, Broken Talent variety. There was a time when, as a kid, folks from my church told me that listening to evil rock’n’roll music might give you a demon infestation (thankfully, the fearmongering didn’t work for long…). I don’t know what listening to C-Krit is gonna leave you with but its side effects include violent sarcasm, diarrhea and not giving a shit.
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Here we have another kickass, kinda oldschool australian garage punk artifact conjured up by some folks who unquestionably know their craft. On vocal duties we got none other than the great Jackson Reid Briggs who, free of the temptations of guitars and pedals and shit, sounds kinda revitalized here, unleashing a more nuanced performance than what we’ve been used to, while the rest of the line-up does by no means consist of unknown faces either, boasting members of Stiff Richards and Speed Week, among others. Captivating through simple but well-balanced songcraft and an unstoppable drive, this shit sounds instantly familiar yet comes across playful and versatile enough to clearly differentiate these songs from any of the aforementioned groups.
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A veritable gut punch, the debut tape of this St. Louis, Missouri group. Hardcore punk with elaborate & flexible anything-goes song structures, at times catchy and melodic, in other parts showing a gloomy post punk / death rock undercurrent and also there’s some of that oh-so-fashionable (don’t get me wrong, i totally love that) garage edge to it. You might be reminded of hardcore-era Hüsker Dü at some points, as well as recent hard- and postcore stuff such as Nopes, Pink Guitars, Cement Shoes or the colorful yet nightmarish hardcore psychedelia of Murderer.
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