Oh look, one of my favorite pieces of punk rock vaporware finally got released! How long has it been… two years at the very least since this thing has first been teased in form of the (digital) Uncontrol single. Ultimately it was worth the wait though as the australian group's first LP packs the same kind of savage garage punk assault we've witnessed on their previous EPs while expanding on it further, carrying an unexpectedly melancholic vibe throughout, best exemplified by the melodic pop smasher Strange Motel while Work and Military Boy remind me of Jackson Reid Briggs & The Heaters both in terms of vibe and energy levels. This is also required listening for fans of shit like Civic, S.U.G.A.R., Lysol, Split System, Mini Skirt, Institute and Living Eyes.
A new LP by Italia 90, best kept secret of contemporary british post punk, who so far have managed to completely avoid as well as outlive the hype cycle some of their peers have been riding hard over the past few years. Hard to believe at this point that this is actually their first full length release. Overall, they're staying true to themselves here without making things too easy either for themselves or the audience, striking a delicate balance between catchy tunes á la New Factory, Tales From Beyond and more cumbersome sonic assaults like Magdalene and Golgatha. Otherwise, a slightly Wire-esque opening track gives way to a more familiar soundscape owing a lot to the classics of, among others, Swell Maps and Membranes, the occasional hint of Crass. Or alternately, you might also draw some comparisons to more recent acts like Exek, early Protomartyr.
This Greenville, South Carolina group kicks up an excellent racket located somwhere inbetween the gears of garage punk, post punk and postcore bearing some similaritiy to more recent stuff á la Big Bopper, Mystic Inane, Dollhouse, Cutie, Wymyns Prysyn, Crisis Man… just as much as to classic pieces by the likes of Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, Nation Of Ulysses, Rites of Spring or Gray Matter.
The noise on this debut EP by New York (?) group Factory City Children comes accross like a somewhat blackened variant of garage-/electro punk noisemakers á la S.B.F., Stalins Of Sounds, Kid Chrome and The Gobs with a smidge of Sick Thoughts thrown in for good measure. Having been previously released pretty much under everyone's radar as a tape, Toxic State Records now has it either as a 7" or a way overpriced digital download, well knowing we'll pay the ten bucks anyway because we're all addicted to the shit. Capitalism fuck yeah!
There's really no other way to put it… on their latest output the group from Wollongong, Australia leans in quite heavily on the ancient blueprint established primarily by bands like Mission of Burma, Moving Targets, Volcano Suns which, if you ask me, should be more of a thing anyway so yeah, this is good stuff.
I didn't really expect this to happen, close to a decade after their last recorded sign of life, yet here we are beholding the wonders of a new Strange Attractor LP. This is a smasher from start to finish in their trademark style loading up some of the most ancient possible ingredients of garage punk with a raw and primal, quirky and unkempt energy that is very much of their own, non-stop cranking out those infectious hooks with frightening ease and efficiency.
Having made somewhat of a splash with their unpredictable 2019 demo and a more conventinally hardcore-leaning EP in 2021, the Richmond, Virginia group is shaking things up once again with their first full-length effort, significantly slowing things down and seemingly taking plenty of cues from left-field 80s acts on the experimental intersection of hardcore punk and (proto-)noise rock in the vein of, among others, Flipper, No Trend, Spike in Vain or Broken Talent, while also not entirely dissimilar to more recent groups like Soupcans, Vulture Shit, C-Krit or Stinkhole.
It took the Bristol group just shy of a year to come up with the newest installment in their, so far, absolutely spectacular and flawless run of (digital) singles. I'm glad to announce that i've got nothing new to say about this one - these two tunes are yet another masterclass of melodic post punk and power pop songcraft with clear echoes of Buzzcocks, Television Personalities, Mekons and many more artefacts of predominantly british DIY punk history.
This neat little EP by St. Louis, Missouri dude Nick G and friends delivers seven blasts of dark yet melodic, heavily song-based post punk - admittedly not a terribly original thing at this point but not too predictable either, solidly constructed throughout. A definitive treat for fans of stuff á la Criminal Code, Public Eye, VHS, Sievehead or Bruised… with occasional flashes of Trauma Harness or The Estranged to boot.
A thoroughly high quality new batch of 7"s and even a CD from the ever reliable italian garage punk institution Goodbye Boozy Records. Tee Vee Repairman is yet another project of Ishka Edmeades who you might also know from acts such as Satanic Togas, Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp., Gee Tee, Remote Control, Mainframe… this dude seems to be in pretty much anything out of the Warttman orbit and beyond that. Let's just say dude's been's a constant fixture on this blog in recent years and will sure crop up many more times because everything he touches tends to become instant garage punk and power pop gold. A different beast altogether is the 7" by Wayne Pain & The Shit Stains, a simple & stupid attack of decidedly oldschool fuzzed-out garage punk with that classic rockabilly edge to it. Speaking of rockabilly… Qinqs have a touch of that going on too, although in their case it reeks less of The Cramps and more of The Fall - The Great White Wonder might as well be called How i re-wrote Elastic Man - as well as more recent occurrences á la Shark Toys, Ex Cult, Parquet Courts or The UV Race. The newest tape by the mysterious Zoids then is another endearingly eccentric treat of minimalist electro-/space-/garage punk transporting more than just a little bit of a Suicide-meets-Metal Urbain / Dr. Mix and the Remix vibe. Also: Yeah, fuck vinyl 'cos the future belongs to the compact disc bro. Dadgad's tracks then serve as the perfect transition between the aforementioned electric space punk stylings and the opposite half of a 7" featuring - yet again - that dude known as Zhoop… or was it Feed? Djinn? Brundle maybe? I don't care really it's all good shit!
