Once again Barcelona's scene is killing it! Plataforma manage to do just that thanks to a beautifully rough, DIY-as-fuck sound in the realm of dark-/post punk with a healthy dose of goth/death rock doom & gloom. Crisis come to mind as well as the early 2010's Kopenhagen scene - think Lower and early Iceage - and some more recent stuff like britain's Disjoy.
Album-Stream →
While their last EP Fan The Flames didn't appeal to me as much as i hoped for, their newest 7" shows London's Girls In Synthesis at their best. Just like before, their sound is a skilled balancing act on the threshold between post punk and noise rock, thus operating in much of the same realm as Bands like USA Nails, Tunic or John (timestwo), among others. The definite highlight here is Smarting with its kinda Big Black-esque way of guitar shredding.
This band from Richmond, Virginia gives us another ten minutes of pissed off and exquisite no-frills garage punk just dripping with loads of raw hardcore energy.
Album-Stream →
Barcelona's Lux already have a demo and a promising debut album under their belt, but with this recent EP their sound really clicks into gear, in which some of the more excentric strands of 80s post- and hardcore punk - Man Sized Action and The Proletariat come to mind - collide with distinctive goth/deathpunk bass lines. You might also be reminded of more recend bands like Street Eaters or the potent cowpunk propulsion of Murderer.
Album-Stream →
Three short bursts of quite charming Lo-Fi garage punk by some dude or band from Melbourne, moving on a scale between dangerously catchy power pop melodies and determined hardcore attacks. Friends of acts like Booji Boys, Datenight, Erik Nervous or Neo Neos will certainly appreciate this.
This Toronto/Vancouver based group featuring members of Damagers, among others, gives us yet another one of those fuzzed out, deliciously explosive hardcore-/garage punk mixtures, at times evoking comparisons to Vertigo, Fried Egg, Kaleidoscope or Cülo. Excellent stuff!
Album-Stream →
Five short and fun blasts of off-kilter genre blurring rumble - part garage-/fuzz punk, part hard-/weird-/noisecore, part KBD style strangeness. Somewhat like a mix of Lumpy & The Dumpers and Murderer, this shit might also contain traces of Flipper and No Trend.
Album-Stream →
Not too long after a rather synth-heavy tape by that guy who recently seems to be involved in pretty much any other Berlin band, we get a small encore exhibiting a more guitar-centric sound, shifting the sonic coordinates closer to the garage. The overall vibe here kinda reminds me of early Erik Nervous.
The Nico Missile is another one of Ricky Hell's many pastimes. There are few surprises here, instead you get more of his familiar trademark of quality. If you know some of his other Bands like Fascinating or Ricky Hell And The Voidboys you kinda know what to expect: Garage-edged Fuzz Punk and Noise Pop somewhere in the Neighbohood of No Age, Terry Malts, Tiger! Shit! Tiger! TIger! or Male Bonding. What more could you want?
Album-Stream →
Although other british bands of their genre enjoyed much more media attention than london art-/post punks Italia 90 have in recent years, few other bands, in my humble opinion, embody so much of the soul and rebellious no-bullshit DIY attitude of the scene, a bitter and emotional indictment of a society collectively shrugging off its own guilty conscience. It's about time this Band gets noticed a lot more. On their third EP -just like on its predecessors - i hear strong echoes of old post punk greats: Crisis, Membranes, Swell Maps and early Mekons for example. Simultaneously Italia 90 keep expanding on their sonic spectrum. Usually when punks go slow, this tends to result in a horrible trainwreck. But surprisingly, the slowest, most subdued moments are the clear highlights of this record. In Open Veins, the gentle performance collides with the disillusioned and angry charges delivered by its lyrics. This combination reminds me a bit of recent Protomartyr, while the closing track Against The Wall has a subtle psychedelic note in common with Wire's Chairs Missing album.
Album-Stream →