It took the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania group a few years to tie up the loose ends and finish the production of this LP but here it finally is, giving us more of their synth-, garage- and post punk that will once again elicit comparisons to Digital Leather - especially the similarity of the singer's voice to DL's Shawn Foree always strikes me as uncanny - although Deletions at this point sound more like a cruder, yet simultaneously pretty straightforward and catchy-as-fuck version of that. In the second half things lean heavier towards the post punk, slightly goth end of things, bearing some similarity to, say, Powerplant, Isotope Soap, Why Bother? or early The Faint as well as some flourishes of Devo and Desparate Bicycles… even a touch of Morricone in Diffuse and Confuse. Not every single effort on here pays off equally well but when they hit the spot, they do it with bravado.
…now that's kind of an insane move, dumping four to six LPs worth of material in a single album on bandcamp. Didn't see that coming at all, good thing we like insane shit here at 12XU HQ. With this album the group from Moffat Beach, Australia seriously earned the title "The Guided by Voices of space egg punk". Amazingly, most of this stuff is pretty freakin' awesome too, although a fair bit of fat and redundancy sure could've been trimmed off this 2-hour release for an even stronger 80-minute album to emerge in the process. Their high egg-factor mixture of Psychedelic-/Space Rock, Post- and Garage Punk might draw comparisons to the likes of Mononegatives, Neo Neos, Liquids, The Gobs, Set-Top Box, Print Head or Useless Eaters in its more high-energy moments while in the more relaxed and/or downbeat songs, groups like Die TV, Cool Sorcery, Snooper might come to mind or even an extra Lo-Fi version of the Woolen Men!
Following up on their already quite awesome 2019 demo, Austin group Dregs shift their sound a good bit away from a more garage- and fuzz punk leaning sound, further towards a harder to pin-down mix of influences on the fringes of 80s-to-mid-90s hard- and postcore, among others suggesting the likes of X (US), Dicks or Flipper at some points, postcore groups like Gray Matter or Drive Like Jehu at others while more recent bands like Vexx, Cel Ray, Gen Pop or Little Ugly Girls wouldn't sound too far off either.
Apparently, formerly New Orleans-based group Waste Man have relocated to New York City recently. Sound-wise though, they stay true to themselves on their newest EP, by which i mean they stay unpredictable as ever and keep the listeners on their toes every second in their very own mixture on the intersection of Post Punk, Postcore and slight touches of Americana (the latter are less obvious here though…). Especially notable this time is the six-minute slow-burn track White Horse that plays out kinda like a fusion of early Shellac, Slint, Jawbox & Fugazi.
This group from Portarlington, Australia creates a droning, sprawling and nonetheless absolutely ripping soundscape that combines the traits of such timeless greats as Wipers, 80s Sonic Youth, U-Men or Live Skull, just as much as a fuzzy clump of AUS and NZ groups like The Gordons, Fungus Brains, X and Feedtime.
The newest EP by Pittsburg band Illiterates, following up an already pretty fucking good 2021 record, is nothing short demented and fun oldschool hardcore perfection, kinda making a point of inventing nothing new here while never droppig the ball for a second either - this is one tight, fun and, well… dumb as fuck blast of a record.
More quirky garage punk insanity from that Barcelona group who already made an excellent impression with previous EP two years ago. Somewhat more focused and confident sounding on this one, this is another delightful blast of high-percentage egg-ness in a similar vein to, say, R.M.F.C., Set-Top Box, Nuts or Spain's own wonders of the Prison Affair, Finale and Beta Maximo variety.
Beautifully shambolic chaos operating somewhere around the weirder fringes of hardcore and garage punk. When in hardcore mode, i'm most reminded of Cells and other hardcore-leaning projects of Connie Voltaire while on the garage side of things, i'm thinking of stuff á la Liquids, early Erik Nervous or - more recently - Print Head and Scab Breath.
New stuff from Gee Tee or Vee or whatever, this dude's shit is all good! On this LP, he's holding a nice balance between the power pop tendencies of his recent Tee Vee Repairman records and the somewhat more garage-leaning projects of his á la Satanic Togas, Research Reactor Corp. and Set-Top Box, making for another fine batch of fuzzed-out garage pop tunes, among them some of his most infectious ones so far, that's for sure.
Tempe, Arizona group Soft Shoulder have been at it for way over a decade now and still seem as lively and productive as ever, having churned out a steady stream of singles and EPs released digitally and as limited lathe cuts the past year. Their newest LP presents them as focused as they haven't been in a long while though, their quirky-as-fuck mixture of post punk and noise rock bursting with energy as catchy grooves somewhat reminiscent of The Fall from the late eighties onward collides with a decidedly no-wave school of noise and dissonance.
