Toe Ring - Footage

A won­drous and strange lit­tle EP full of oth­er­world­ly garage-/pow­er-/fuzz pop from a Philadel­phia Duo. The tape starts out as if the in­sane pop qual­i­ties of, say, Boo­ji Boys or Daugh­ter Bat & The Lip Stings col­lid­ed with the smart rhyth­mic post punk of Lithics, while the re­main­ing three songs then set­tle in­to a slight­ly more low-key kraut-lean­ing psy­che­del­ic groove, the likes of which you might sus­pect some­where in the lo-fi pop worlds of acts like Germ House, Far Cor­ners, Vi­o­lent Change, Hon­ey Radar or even ear­ly Woolen Men. Ex­cel­lent shit through­out.

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Enemic Interior - Enemic Interior

This Barcelona group plays a cer­tain breed of post punk - the catchy and melod­ic kind that has been rarely heard in re­cent months - which i'd say is rem­i­nis­cent of a rather di­verse clus­ter of genre pow­er­hous­es such as Night­watch­ers, Sieve­head, Red Dons, Crim­i­nal Code and ear­ly The Es­tranged. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly they over­lap a bit in­to hard­core ter­ri­to­ry and in these mo­ments, Acrylics come to mind.

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Soft Torture - Soft Torture

This Philadel­phia group's line-up brings to­geth­er gen­er­a­tions of punks, hav­ing Chuck Mee­han of hard­core di­nosaurs YDI among its ranks as well as mem­bers of more re­cent acts like Blank Spell, Hal­dol and De­Struc­tos. Their first EP ex­plodes right in­to your face with eight-and-a-half bursts of un­pre­dictable, chaot­ic and noise-in­fused hard-/post-/weird­core rough­ly in the ball­park of what you might've heard in re­cent years from bands like Kalei­do­scope, Day­dream or Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

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Catastrophic Dance Ensemble - Vol. 1

Here's an­oth­er fresh & tasty bite for the dis­cern­ing con­nois­seur of quirky weird-ass garage punk. Friends of Set-Top Box, R.M.F.C., Eu­gh, T.L.B.M. and Met­dog, among oth­ers, will ap­prov­ing­ly bob their heads and ex­trem­i­ties to this shit.

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Septic - Septic

This L.A. group comes right out of the or­bit of Launch­er and Co-Ed. As you might al­ready ex­pect, this is an­oth­er ex­plo­sive charge of sim­ple, raw and en­er­getic noise made up to equal parts of garage- and catchy ear­ly 80s hard­core punk en­hanced with that cer­tain ragged KBD-style ad­di­tive we've come to know and love out of this par­tic­u­lar neigh­bor­hood.

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Nuts - Living In A Vulgar Vision

Al­most two years af­ter an awe­some de­mo tape, this dude from Cologne has fi­nal­ly un­leashed up­on us his full length de­but and damn, is that an­oth­er ir­re­sistible su­per-sized buck­et of pure garage- and ***punk bliss rough­ly in the neigh­bor­hood of usu­al sus­pects like Set-Top Box, Met­dog, Prison Af­fair, Erik Ner­vous or Dee Bee Rich, among many oth­ers.

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Final Fukker - Final Fukker

An ear­ly con­tender for the loud­est record of 2022, this burst of max­i­mal­ly abra­sive noise - record­ed some­time in 2016 and now fi­nal­ly re­leased via Run­state Tapes - tru­ly has what it takes to star­tle the dead and sounds like it crawled out of a dis­gust­ing brown pud­dle of pure de­spair, its hard­core punk foun­da­tion buried deep un­der thick lay­ers of white noise and feed­back… but lis­ten close­ly and you might al­so find many un­ex­pect­ed flash­es of melody em­bed­ded deep in there.

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And also there were…

… two great re­leas­es by Zhoop and Glands, which - as hap­pens quite of­ten - fel­low blog Manieren­ver­sagen beat me to the punch post­ing. Damn you, Manieren­ver­sagen!

Nah, just kid­ding, this saves me some work. So may i sug­gest you just vis­it Arne's own lit­tle me­dia em­pire (al­ways a good idea any­way, if you ask me) to lis­ten to the good shit?

Self Improvement - Visible Damage

The de­but LP of this Long Beach group, in­con­spic­u­ous at first glance, evolves in­to a re­al treat for friends of smart, min­i­mal­ist post punk at a clos­er lis­ten. Lithics are the first com­par­i­son that springs to mind as well as post punk weirdos Pat­ti and Min­neapo­lis garage punk ge­nius­es Ura­ni­um Club, while lead vo­cal­ist Jett Witchalls con­jures up some se­ri­ous Kim Gor­don vibes here, whose 1980s out­put with Son­ic Youth might've al­so served as an in­spi­ra­tion on down­beat tracks like Shapes, as well as some bits and pieces of 70s/​80s The Fall.

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Print Head - In Motion

An­oth­er Print Head re­lease means an­oth­er per­fect storm of weird-ass ex­cen­tric, chaot­ic but of­ten un­ex­pect­ed­ly melo­di­ous garage- and post punk shit, this time around com­ing across like an odd mix­ture of con­tem­po­rary groups of the vague­ly egg-re­lat­ed va­ri­ety with the slug­gish grooves of the UV Race and old british Acts like Swell Maps, ear­ly Mekons.

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