Wet Specimens - Haunted Flesh

Wet Spec­i­mens' cur­rent EP - their third al­ready - turns out to be a mas­sive son­ic as­sault made of un­com­pro­mis­ing break­neck hard­core punk with traces of post-/dark punk, bear­ing some sim­i­lar­i­ty to what we've heard in re­cent years from bands like Acrylics, Pol­i­cy, Anx­i­ety or Im­pul­so.

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Warp - Traffic Control

Warp hail from San Fran­cis­co and have mem­bers of - among oth­ers - Flesh World and Blank Square among their line­up. Their de­but al­bum is al­ready kick­ing butts in a ful­ly con­vinc­ing fash­ion and de­liv­ers an adorably ex­cen­tric sound rough­ly in the realm of fuzz- & garage punk, hard- & post­core which comes across just as un­pol­ished as it's in­ven­tive. The whole thing is some­what rem­i­nis­cent of bands like Vexx or Dots, as well as the oc­ca­sion­al faint echo of Sur­fa Rosa-era Pix­ies. Qual­i­ty stuff!

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Hamer - Hamer

Whoa… three years af­ter i first no­ticed this band from leeds and a quite charm­ing, chaot­ic ear­ly EP of theirs, i hon­est­ly didn't ex­pect their de­but al­bum to blow my socks off the way it did just now. In­stead of the EP's re­laxed DIY-Vibes you now find your­self in the mid­dle of a fe­ro­cious high speed trip whose rough co­or­di­nates hov­er some­where be­tween fuzzed out space-, psych- and garage punk. Sure, these Songs won't win any awards for their orig­i­nal­i­ty but to­tal­ly make up for that by de­vel­op­ing in­to a blast so po­tent and rest­less it doesn't give you a sec­ond to think about such bull­shit any­way. I'm re­mind­ed of bands like De­struc­tion Unit, Wash, Flat Worms, Drag­gs or even japan­ese genre vet­er­ans High Rise.

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Spray Paint - Into The Country

For the austin noise rock­ers with that dis­tinc­tive no wave edge, the past three years were marked ex­clu­sive­ly by sev­er­al col­lab­o­ra­tion projects, re­sult­ing in one al­bum, an­oth­er EP and two 7"s, all of it first rate stuff. Now we get a new "reg­u­lar" al­bum, al­though the record­ings al­ready date back to the year 2016. Ac­cord­ing­ly, these songs sound more like the log­i­cal evo­lu­tion from their last LP Feel The Clamps, re­leased that same year. As al­ways with this band, there's no rush to rein­vent them­selves. In­stead, their sound is evolv­ing grad­u­al­ly and dili­gent, re­veal­ing on­ly a few new facets at a time. Most no­table this time is a more min­i­mal­ist ap­proach to their com­po­si­tions as well as the in­creas­ing use of drum ma­chines and synths. And as al­ways, the re­sults are quite thrilling.

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Uranium Club - Two Things At Once

Rarely in re­cent years has a band of its genre carved out and ex­pand­ed up­on their own niche in such a quick and en­dur­ing man­ner, has be­come a sig­nif­i­cant in­flu­ence on seem­ing­ly every cool new garage crew in such a short time span, as every­ones fa­vorite cor­po­rate en­ti­ty from Min­neapo­lis. Seek­ing to ex­pand their cus­tomer base, the Min­neapo­lis Ura­ni­um Club Band has part­nered with a well es­tab­lished brand to bring you their lat­est piece of mer­chan­dise. As we've come to ex­pect of them, it's a thing of beau­ty and el­e­gance, tak­ing you on an un­ex­pect­ed­ly epic jour­ney in two acts and sev­en min­utes that feel - as al­ways - way too short.

Bigpig - Demo

Al­though not ex­act­ly brand new stuff, i to­tal­ly missed this nice De­mo by St. Louis, Mis­souri Band/​Project Big­pig. The mu­si­cal com­pass clear­ly points to­wards garage punk and oc­ca­sion­al­ly a bit of elec­tro-/synth punk. Give it a spin if you ap­pre­ci­ate stuff in the vein of Dig­i­tal Leather, ear­ly Erik Ner­vous, Pow­er­plant, Gior­gio Mur­der­er or Boo­ji Boys.

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Nick Normal - Windows Painted Shut

Portland's Nick Nor­mal al­ready made a most wel­come splash in the form of a hand­ful of rather Lo-Fi sound­ing EPs in re­cent past. Not on­ly has the dude now found a per­fect home in be­tween all the oth­er whacky moth­er­fuck­ers re­leas­ing their stuff via Dis­con­tin­u­ous In­no­va­tion Inc, but we al­so get to hear his mu­sic for the first time in a son­ic pre­sen­ta­tion that takes at least some ad­van­tage of the au­di­ble range. Oth­er­wise it's busi­ness as usu­al, which in this case means a shit­load of off-kil­ter fun halfway be­tween post- and garage punk. Add to that a hint of new wave and you might be re­mind­ed of Andy Hu­man or Erik Ner­vous, al­so you might draw some par­al­lels to Aus­muteants or Use­less Eaters.

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