Turbogoblin RX - Mammon Machine

A cute 'lil hap­py pill of an EP by some Ade­laide dude, span­ning a quite ver­sa­tile range of garage punk made up of bits and pieces rem­i­nis­cent of acts like Strange At­trac­tor, S.B.F., Use­less Eaters, R.M.F.C. as well as a very slight hint of Ura­ni­um Club… all of that gets com­pact­ed in­to five as­s­kick­ing gems plus in­ter­ludes.

Al­bum-Stream →

Black Mold - Landscape Of Pain

A bleak mix of post punk, death rock and an­ar­cho punk with a gen­er­ous dose of Flip­per-es­que dis­so­nance is what we get on this Gales­burg, Illi­nois project's cur­rent long­play­er, charm­ing­ly crude at times and pre­sum­ing a high tol­er­ance of dig­i­tal clip­ping on the listener's part. Oth­er­wise this stays well in­side the genre's usu­al pa­ra­me­ters most of the time yet avoids be­com­ing too repet­i­tive and pre­dictable. Fans of Dis­joy, Pad­karos­da or Clock Of Time will sure­ly get a kick out of this.

Al­bum-Stream →

Nylon & Operants - Split

A kick­ass new split EP com­bin­ing the forces of two New Jer­sey groups i wasn't aware of be­fore. Ny­lon strike all the right chords with me by way of a garage-/post punk hy­brid sound rough­ly in the neigh­bor­hood of ear­ly Teenanger, Pub­lic Eye, Vin­tage Crop and Mar­bled Eye while Op­er­ants play things a bit more straight, first set­ting off a garage banger of the Ex-Cult, Civic, The Liv­ing Eyes or Sauna Youth va­ri­ety, fol­lowed up by a slight­ly more post punk-lean­ing, synth-heavy track giv­ing off a strong­ly muteant smell.

Al­bum-Stream →

Liiek - Deep Pore

An­oth­er rock sol­id batch of rhyth­mic post punk gym­nas­tics by some usu­al sus­pects of the Berlin scene. Sound-wise it won't get more Berlin-es­que than this and you al­so might call Li­iek a bit of a one-trick pony, how­ev­er, that par­tic­u­lar trick still works ad­mirably on me and has nev­er been done with such pre­ci­sion en­gi­neer­ing by this group be­fore. Think of a mix be­tween Pi­geon, Diät, Neg­a­tive Space, In­sti­tute and Nag, boiled down to their raw es­sen­tials. Blah blah "con­cise vi­sion" or some­thing, i guess…

Al­bum-Stream →

Onan Servo - Visit Funnytown

A cu­ri­ous lit­tle beast, this cas­sette by some NY dude brought to us via Portland's Spared Flesh Records. Dis­joint­ed and frag­men­tary at times, yet rarely de­void of a catchy melody. There's cer­tain­ly a bit of a no wave in­flu­ence in there but most of the time i'd say there's a weird and chaot­ic transcon­ti­nen­tal mashup at play here with clear echoes of ear­ly british post punk, specif­i­cal­ly of Wire, Swell Maps, The Fall, Ear­ly Mekons… col­lid­ing with de­cid­ed­ly amer­i­can folk and roots el­e­ments as well of ran­dom anom­alies straight out of the 1980s cas­sette cul­ture both sides of the pond. I guess ad­mir­ers of Australia's Wire­heads will al­so get a kick out of this and it ap­pears the man in charge here has al­so had a hand in Hobo­cop, which makes per­fect sense to me as well.

Al­bum-Stream →

Verspannungskassette #26 (C-90)

Safe­ty Net Be With You
Suc­cess The Fool
Ner­vous Trig­gers Ra­di­a­tion Suit
Dudd Dilem­ma I'm No Pho­ny!
Sil­i­con Heart­beat X-22
Fi­nale Mi Cam­bio Climáti­co
Cher­ry Cheeks Trau­ma Bar
Ma­teo Man­ic Es­ca­la­tor To A Black Hole
Smirk Cop Caller
Met­dog Bins At Barkley Square
Pinch Points Rea­sons To Be Anx­ious
Liq­uid Lunch Dirty Hands
Letha Run­nin'
Rude Tele­vi­sion Death of Me

Strange Colours Say What You Want to Say
Rik and the Pigs Off/​On
Pack Rat Next Time Hit Me
Re­pul­sion Switch Berlin
The Mon­sters I Love You
Schizos I'm Al­ways First
Zhoop Fight­ing For Con­trol
Sem­tex 87 Robbed You
Body Cam Hit And Run
Peo­ples Tem­ple Peo­ples Tem­ple
Ztuped I Can't Stand the Light
Im­ploders Beat­in' On The Brain
Hot Load Di­vine Train­wreck

Hon­ey Radar Medi­um Mary Todd
Hun­gry Man Same Mis­take
Big Heet Oc­to­ge­nar­i­ans
Chris­t­ian Fit­ness Guild­ford Spe­cif­ic
Art Halk Pavil­lon
Al Pa­ci­nos Sis­ter I Can Tell You're Not From Round Here
Tom­my Cos­sack Down On The Ground
Tics Dope­head
Traps PS Relics
Alien Nose­job Cru­sad­er of Coles

Mys­tery Girl Love­line
In­ve­cil Las cu­carachas vue­lan
Mononeg­a­tives Ter­mi­nal Voic­es
Pleas­er The Dream
Stalled Minds Led By In­stinct
Sew­er Brigade Barcelona
The Chis­el What Was Mine
Glaas Easy Liv­ing
Gy­rate Sick, the Bet­ter
Ug­ly Twin Let You Down

Mateo Manic - Time Don't Matter In Dark Matter

Garage-/synth-/elec­tro punk from Cleve­land, Ohio that carves out its own lit­tle place in the cur­rent land­scape of sim­i­lar groups by way of a cer­tain psy­che­del­ic haze, kin­da like a mix be­tween The Spits, Sil­i­con Heart­beat and Smirk, ob­served through some dense Chrome- or Met­al Ur­bain-es­que fog. Or you might de­scribe it as some kind of garage punk in­car­na­tion of Murderer's hal­lu­cino­genic cow­punk night­marescapes.

Al­bum-Stream →

People's Temple - Demo

This De­mo of by a NYC group is an ex­plo­sive rip­per that doesn't even try to squeeze any new nu­ances out of a style of ul­tra-old­school hard­core punk that could plau­si­bly have orig­i­nat­ed from any point in time for the last 4+ decades, in­stead shred­ding through that very old for­mu­la as force­ful as it's ever gonna get with con­vic­tion, per­sis­tence, un­err­ing aim and pre­ci­sion.

Al­bum-Stream →

Liquid Lunch - Come Again

This Min­neapo­lis group's de­but EP de­liv­ers four first-rate bangers made up of medi­um-fi­deli­ty DIY garage punk con­sis­tent­ly wan­der­ing on the genre's weird­er side and thus in the good com­pa­ny of groups like Sa­tan­ic To­gas, Alien Nose­job, Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp., R.M.F.C. or Erik Ner­vous.

Al­bum-Stream →

Ztuped - Are You Stupid?

The 2019 de­mo by this Wash­ing­ton, D.C. group had its very own thrills al­ready, but their de­but 7" on 11 PM Records is a dif­fer­ent kind of beast al­to­geth­er, way more fo­cused in its vi­sion and ben­e­fit­ing from in­creased pro­duc­tion val­ues. The open­ing track Blood Runs Through is the prime ex­am­ple here for what makes them spe­cial - a gen­er­al catchy­ness and sense of melody rarely heard in con­tem­po­rary hard­core punk col­lides with straight­for­ward riffs that of­ten seem to orig­i­nate from the old­school "heavy" met­al play­book rather than clas­sic hard­core, wo­ven in­to slight­ly ec­cen­tric song struc­tures that al­ways have a sur­prise or two up their sleeves. At their best, they kin­da come across like an un­like­ly fu­sion of Cü­lo and Naked Ray­gun.

Al­bum-Stream →