Almost exactly six years after their debut LP, we finally get to hear some new shit from Houston's The Hammer Party which, sadly, is also group's swan song. Or rather, the band appears to have been disbanded years ago already and these are their final recordings which have been re-mixed and put up on bandcamp at long last, documenting the group at the height of their powers. On here, their songs have acquired more of an earthy and sinister quality imposing a new layer of muck even on the couple of tracks previously known from their first LP. There's no lack of propulsion and compelling hooks either, as exemplified by the the 1-2-punch of Antidepressants and E.M.B.R.Y.O. in which lots of folk-y strumming lays the foundation for an impressive explosion of catchy melodies. As before i sense a similar melancholy quality to Atlanta groups Mothers Milk, Wymyns Prysyn and Uniform while in other moments, the likes of Sievehead and early Low Life don't seem too far off either.
What's there left to say about, like, the only german-language band that matters right now pretty much? The guilty conscience of german DIY punk has released yet another batch of excellent and excentric new tracks in their one-of-a-kind fusion of equally pissed and quirky post-, garage- and synth punk, unceremoniously dumped on Bandcamp as has always kinda been their modus operandi, but also slated for a vinyl release via Phantom Records pretty fucking soon™.
Since last year's already perfectly enjoyable self-titled EP, this L.A. group or project has definitely consolidated and streamlined their operation into a decidedly more impactful, concentrated attack of electrified punk inbetween the parameters of garage-, hardcore- and eggpunk that feels to me like a weird frankenstein bastard fusing together the relentless forces of, say, Arse and 2 Stroke, the noisy fuzz-/garage punk of S.B.F. and whatever weirdness that Zhoop/Djinn/Brundle/RONi etc. guy is up to right now.
The second EP by Berlin duo Lohn Der Angst is pretty much a seamless continuation, if gradually refined, of what we've heard on their first cassette already which is a glorious celebration of repetitive synth punk that on one hand distills the core ingredients of Screamers, Units, Visitors, Nervous Gender, Minimal Man or the unavoidable DAF down to their bones, while also having a constant kraut-y motorik foundation to them over which the spirit of Conny Plank looms large, all of it consolidating into some weird sort of alternate-universe krautrock Suicide.
The New York group follows up on their brilliant 2023 demo with a no less exciting new digital single whose two songs are hardly enough to satisfy my thirst for more of their melancholia-soaked post punk blown-up into a wide open landscape of delicate and complex structural foundations under a rich surface layer saturated with colorful, shimmering texture and detail. Just as on their demo, the closest comparison i can come up with is NYC's very own post punk sensation Straw Man Army but there's more than that going on here, especially in the second track Onde Eu Estou? which is carving out its own path forward with a folky undertone kinda reminiscent of both oldschool Angst and more recent NZ group Trust Punks or their Berlin-based quasi-successor Dead Finks.
Having already tasted some of their new LP in the form of a perfect teaser EP a couple weeks ago, we finally get to hear the full debut LP by the dungeon punk wizards of Karlsruhe, Germany and oh boy, we're in for a fucking treat that combines a couple of new recordings of tunes already heard on their 2023 demo with plenty of equally strong new material into a breathless thrill ride that's further helped along by a perfectly fitting and outright filthy lo-to-mid-fi production that sounds as if the whole thing had been recorded in some fucking parking garage. There's tons of sparkly psychedelia to the garage rock of the opening track Locket, a primitive proto punk punch and simplicity in Tear it Up while tracks such as As Loud As Me and My Dawn lighten things up with unexpected flashes of melodicism, the latter of the two having a distinct vibe of early The Men to itself. Contrast to that the hardcore-meets-motörpunk attacks of Give Me Beat and All This Heat, the oldschool Sabbath leftovers fused with the space rock abandon of late Destruction Unit in Supression, which is simultaneously being embedded into some vague post punk context á la Nag. The dungeon punk hymn Fomo Boy remains every bit a destructive force as we've already gleaned from the demo and the new track Inte Mer Hem following that one has much of the same momentum and qualities. Fuck me, this thing slaps.
There are those kinds of bands lacking a rigid quality control and those that don't, wisely leaving the lesser takes on the cutting room floor. And then there's that rare third kind that's seemingly not in need of any amount of quality control 'cos pretty much anything they create seems to turn into instant gold. This new collection of unreleased shit that accumulated in the trash bin of formerly Orlando-, now apparently Portland-based garage-/synth-/eggpunk institution Cherry Cheeks makes a thorougly convincing case for them belonging into that latter category as even the scraps, odds and ends they came up with so far are the kind of material other groups should be jealous for really, making for an admittedly weirder, more cluttered and fragmented but by no means less thrilling and energizing listening experience!
The Minneapolis group's debut EP bursts onto the scene with a fully formed and -realized vision, dabbling in a lovingly oldschool and timeless set of flashbacks to the more left-field staples of '80s-'90s US postcore and -punk. Lap It Up kicks things off with some kind of '90s AmRep-meets-Touch&Go pastiche, then suddenly develops into more of a Dischord-like soundscape most reminiscent of Rites Of Spring and early Nation Of Ulysses. In Untitled / Back Inside, the likes of Mission Of Burma, Wipers, Moving Targets and Volcano Suns loom large in addition to some overtones of Bitch Magnet... before eventually seguing into some Angst- and Dinosaur Jr.-esque folk-ish strumming. Freak Disease then gets wedged inbetween grungy '90s alternative- or even outright cock rock territory and some postcore flourishes you rather might expect at the slow end of the Drive Like Jehu, Jawbox or '90s Gray Matter spectrum. Life Takes Time then has more of that distinct Burma vibe but i also can't help but be reminded of Really Red and Saccharine Trust.
This group from Newcastle, Australia delivers five first-rate new blows of electrically driven, vaguely egg-ish and noisy high-energy garage punk shit on their first EP, sure to evoke a nervous twitch or two in those already familiar with such phenomena like S.B.F., Kerozine, Factory City Children, Witch Piss, Cthtr, Feeding Tube, The Gobs or Liquid Face... 'cos this shit is every bit as good.
It may sound a bit underwhelming on paper what this Melbourne group does on their newest EP, which is a classic brand of new wave-ish post punk seemingly drawing much inspiration from some of the usual suspects such as early Siouxsie, Pylon, XTC, Delta 5 and Gang of Four, but this shit certainly gets elevated by their raw ability at crafting equally catchy, elaborate and carefully balanced tunes of their own, which most obviously will evoke comparisons to fairly recent acts of the Sweeping Promises, The Missed, Marcel Wave and Display Homes kind but i'd also say there's some of the creative chaos and big-screen drama of early Protomartyr in there, most notbly in ...In Ruins, while the melodic closing track A Fireplace evokes the melancholia of that very same group's later material.
