Hardcore punk from Los Angeles that has more than enough neat tricks up its sleeve and musical meat on its bones to keep listeners on their toes at all times, delivering a good deal of fresh and creative sonic stimuli while at the same time lovingly pummeling us into submission with an unrelenting and tight-as-fuck wrecking ball of a performance that doesn’t take any fucking prisoners. Ouch that hurt. More of that good shit please!
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These folks based in Biel, Switzerland have created a true slow burn-type of a record here via the local imprint Chrüsimüsi Records that frequently takes its sweet time to get to the point but pays off handsomely when you stick with it. The sluggish crawl of an opening tune Different Times immediately reminds me of the dusty, desert-flavored americana rock of Weak Signal, which then gets transformed into very much of a post punk context in the following tune Bubbles while songs like Peace Of Mind have some obvious Velvet Underground energy flowing through them and a undercurrent of oldschool art- and glam rock that’s also ever-present in The Candidate. At other times, i’m frequently reminded of Berlin’s folk-ish Post Punkers Dead Finks, the earlier work of London’s Witching Waves, a decelerated variant of The Cowboy or Flatworms, the earthy garage rock of Honey Radar or the spiky art punk of Far Corners and Germ House… even the first Peace de Résistance LP may at times resonate with this.
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This new tape by London group Botox does absolutely nothing new but what it does, it gets absolutely right, distilling a strong and primitive concoction out of ’77-, KBD- and garage punk that’s like 35% fuzz and 45% attitude with the remaining 20% consisting of a thin remnant layer of tried-and-tested oldschool punk tropes and formulas that do their job just fine here in what must be one of the most frugally effective blasts of minimalist punk i’ve heard in a while.
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Punk’s dungeon era shows no signs of slowing down yet, newest evidence being this tape by a dude from Santa Fe, Argentinia – first self-released on his bandcamp this summer – which is now being reissued via the ever-busy niche label Grime Stone Records and blends in seamlessly with their roster in creating a sound that juxtaposes the most basic and DIY true- and black metal spoofs with some mid-to-late eighties-style punk moshing and tons of cute and goofy eggpunk fun and melodicism. Also, over on the guy’s bandcamp, you’ll find even more of that same greatness in the form of a new Split EP with Corazón Sombrío, which, as the artwork suggests, seems to be the inverted, extra black-hearted mirror version of that same dude? Anyway, this is compulsory listening for any serious dungeon afficinado.
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Strange beast, the debut EP of this group with members scattered across Australia and the USA (Sydney, Portland and Melbourne, more specifically), on which everything just feels a bit off… in a good way! Right frome the Intro there’s an unmistakable Mission Of Burma- and Moving Targets vibe goin’ on and echoes of further ’80s oddities of the Really Red, Angst and Saccharine Trust variety. Also, there’s some undercurrent of Sonic Youth-esque guitar harmonies and ’90s Postcore elements á la Unwound, Drive Like Jehu or later Gray Matter work in unison with their more melodic counterparts like Chavez and Polvo, two Bands whose work also echoes heavily through the even stronger second half of this Record from Closer oneward, where their whole sound veers a lot closer towards melodic Seam- and Superchunk-infused Indie Rock with some additional traces of No Age and Swervedriver maybe? Anyway, this is some thorougly enjoyable shit.
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Here’s yet another vaguely hardcore-adjacent oddity by a group from Athens, Georgia whose music seems to bridge the gap between pitch-black mid-’80s hardcore and 90s sludgy AmRep noise rock as well as the latter genre’s various proto stages that came before. Namely, i’m reminded quite a lot here of eighties Lo-Fi noise rockers Drunks With Guns but the obligatory Flipper and No Trend references apply just as well while in their more uptempo hardcore parts, there may be the occasional oldschool death rock vibe creeping in. This is so fucking up my alley!
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This Philadelphia group’s debut tape is kind of a rarity in this day and age as a post punk-adjacent record that stubbornly resists classification into any specific preexisting sub-niche, but you all know i’m gonna try anyway, right? The folk-ish americana feel of the opening track Full Speed Ahead (ironically one of the slower tunes here) evokes the widescreen drama of a Dead Finks record while the following three tunes retain much of that quality but also exhibit plenty of markedly different vibes not entirely dissimilar to the work of such present-day post punk staples like Tube Alloys, Corker, earlier Pyrex, Marbled Eye and, most of all, VR Sex, whose somber and dark energy may be the closest match of the bunch overall, but where that group’s output was always marked by a layer of artificiality and clinical detachment, these tunes feel a lot more rustic, grounded and thoroughly lived-in.
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Marseille post punkers Catalogue have been around roughly as long as this blog and so far have been a constant and reliable presence that pops up every now and then with a new batch of tunes that, at this point in time, you may describe as pleasantly old-fashioned with their borderline motorik electric beats, fairly straightforward song progressions, vicious grooves and catchy hooks. And while it should be obvious they’re not gonna reinvent the wheel in 2025, i gotta say that newest EP of theirs once again presents them from their best side with a sound very much of their own that still doesn’t feel like they’re repeating themselves, still able to elicit new facets and quite a bit of variety from their well worn-in genre formula.
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Chicago’s Omniwhores have been fucking around in the noise rock-, post- and art punk niches for many years now but never have they hit the spot for me as much as on their newest EP Sucker Face, on which they arrange their moving parts like the monotonous electric beats, buzzsaw guitars, sharp basslines and a battery of weird-ass samples it appears – all of which have been present on previous releases – in a way that comes together in a much more organic and seamless way, a mixture that mainly reminds me of such ’80s-to-’90s noisemakers as World Domination Enterprises, Braniac, Royal Trux and Butthole Surfers in one way or another.
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Australia’s garage punk whizz kids are at ist again with a new EP which presents them going all-in on the monotonous acid-rockin’, psyched-out side of their sonic spectrum, though you can make a clear distinction here between the first two tunes, having a more minimalist formula and darker tone reminiscent of groups such as Mononegatives, vintage Oh Sees and Pow!, and the following two tracks, which i’m gonna say are the real jewels on here (though the other two are perfectly accomplished pieces in their own right) and add a more melodic, albeit deeply melancholic vibe to the mix through which flows what you might describe as a classic dreamy synth wave quality. Good shit, as always.
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