The Smog - First Time, Last Chance

Let me be blunt here: You guys wan­na con­vince me to pay the equiv­a­lent of ~4,60€ for a dig­i­tal down­load of on­ly two songs, those two songs bet­ter be fuck­ing bril­liant. Luck­i­ly, fuck­ing bril­liant is ex­act­ly what these these two tracks by some Tokyo group are. Ka-ching!

Mononegatives - Apparatus Division

This Lon­don, On­tario group had put out a cou­ple of al­ready quite neat EP's in 2019 but it's on­ly on their new full length de­but that all the mov­ing pieces re­al­ly click in­to place for twelve 12XU-cer­ti­fied killer tracks made up of charm­ing­ly odd, high­ly in­ven­tive and ex­quis­ite­ly en­er­getic garage-, synth- and post punk echo­ing shit like Use­less Eaters, Pow!, Ex-Cult and Preda­tor.

Al­bum-Stream →

Coach - Coach

An abra­sive yet quite melod­ic wall-of-sound piles up on this Aarhus group's de­but al­bum, a sound in­be­tween the worlds of noise pop, art- and post punk, equal­ly rem­i­nis­cent of Tek­sti TV 666 and Open Your Heart-era The Men, 80's Son­i­cY­outh-isms and some MX-80 edge. And as if all that weren't com­pelling enough on its own, the ad­di­tion of a rest­less brass sec­tion makes the whole thing out­right ir­re­sistible.

Al­bum-Stream →

VR Sex - Cyber Crimes

This Los An­ge­les group's most re­cent EP is some ex­cel­lent, al­beit dis­turb­ing shit. Gloomy post punk about rather dark sub­ject mat­ter con­cern­ing the hu­man abysses both ex­posed and en­abled by our mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy (and yes, that ex­plic­it­ly in­cludes child porn and -abuse, among oth­er things). Sound-wise, i would de­scribe this as a weird fu­sion of The Es­tranged and The Spits, sup­ple­ment­ed with some se­ri­ous death rock and synth wave ac­tion.

Al­bum-Stream →

Ghoulies - Reprogram

This week's manda­to­ry in­jec­tion of De­vo-ish garage- and synth-punk comes from some Perth based group whose quirky and catchy sounds sure­ly won't fail to more than ad­e­quate­ly re-vi­tal­ize ad­mir­ers of groups like Skull Cult, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp., Alien Nose­job, Iso­tope Soap or Erik Ner­vous.

Al­bum-Stream →

Misanthropic Minds - Welcome To The Homeland, Greetings From The Wasteland

Boom! What this cana­di­an group has spit on­to their de­but tape is sev­en min­utes of ab­solute­ly flaw­less and un­re­lent­ing, slight­ly garage- and KBD-soaked old­school hard­core fury ex­pos­ing not a sin­gle weak link in their break­neck per­for­mance.

Al­bum-Stream →

Spyroids - Passage To Hell

Oh my… it took a good two years (or rather, two some­what be­low-the-usu­al-stan­dard years) for this Los An­ge­les duo to come up with a fol­low-up to their fiendish­ly fun de­but EP. Just as back then, this is noth­ing short of an­oth­er glo­ri­ous spec­ta­cle of sleazy, stinky, for­bid­den synth-/elec­tro punk de­light, the likes of which you'll on­ly ever en­counter in the shadi­est cor­ners of Bandcamp's adult en­ter­tain­ment sec­tion.

Al­bum-Stream →

Predator - Spiral Unfolds

I've been a bit late to the par­ty when it comes to this At­lanta group which has been around for over a decade by now, with their 2018 No Face 7" be­ing my first ex­po­sure to them. Al­so, i didn't know at that time they're shar­ing mem­bers with post punk min­i­mal­ists Nag. Now that cer­tain­ly makes sense. Not on­ly is this clear­ly the same singer here, but there are al­so abun­dant son­ic sim­i­lar­i­ties to note. Preda­tor kin­da sound like the slight­ly more so­cia­ble cousin to Nag, lean­ing heav­ier in­to garage ter­ri­to­ry with oc­ca­sion­al hard­core mo­ments. I mean like… at times they al­most sound like they're ac­tu­al­ly en­joy­ing them­selves!

Hear the full thing on Band­camp →

Hideous Sun Demon - Development Hell

This Mel­bourne group's newest EP starts out quite good, then be­comes even bet­ter with every song, first sug­gest­ing kind of a mix be­tween synth-less (at first) Aus­muteants, Ex-Cult, Sauna Youth, ear­ly Teenanger… but al­so with a slight post punk edge á la Flat Worms, Con­stant Mon­grel. The lat­ter ten­den­cy (plus the for­mer­ly elu­sive synths) then kicks in­to over­drive in the record's sec­ond half and that's where things go from good to great, cul­mi­nat­ing in the epic an­ti-hymn Aus­tralia - an un­mis­tak­able fuck you to na­tion­al­ism in their home coun­try whose lyrics strike me as un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly frank and straight­for­ward.

Al­bum-Stream →

OK Satán - Fatal Insomniac

I know you've all been wait­ing for this. The sec­ond dis­patch from Copen­hagen garage-/hard­core punk duo OK Satán has ar­rived, fill­ing us in on sev­en epic new sto­ries from their mag­i­cal world lim­it­ed on­ly by an ever-ex­pand­ing tech­ni­col­or hori­zon, deal­ing with im­por­tant and con­tro­ver­sial top­ics such as their names, your very prob­lem­at­ic face and them not giv­ing a shit. An­oth­er bril­liant, mul­ti-lay­ered mas­ter­piece!

Al­bum-Stream →