The Tampa, Florida group had a neat little demo out late last year already and their newest EP now too sound's like they mean business with six fresh attacks of rabid and primal hardcore punk built on top of a strong fuzzed-out, KBD-ish garage punk foundation, the singer's bitten dog vocals almost channelling the insanity of that classic Lumpy & The Dumpers- and Fried E/M era it's main perpetrator would apparently like to disassiciate from but i'm not gonna let him. Once a Lumpy, forever a Lumpy.
On the excellent demo tape by this group from Shrewsbury, UK, proto- meets garage punk and occasional flashes of NWOBHM-style solos, Stooges meet Saints meet Discharge but also plenty of more recent acts of the Punter, Puffer and Split System variety. A perfect storm of simplicity, raw energy and immediate catchyness.
Hey folks, it took me a bit to finally get that latest batch of blog posts out but just be aware that even when there's nothing happening on the public-facing end of this blog, there's always work already going on in the background - so many feeds to get through, so much shit to listen to, sort and curate, mixtapes to be recorded, digitized and timestamped, the actual writing of the posts and their translation (english to german usually 'cos that's somehow easier for me), audio to be edited for the radio stream, technical maintenance to be done for my various web projects and presences... heck, even the sloppy proofreading and final publishing of the blog posts takes a couple of hours usually.
I'm doing it all 'cos i love doing most of that shit. And now there's also that radio show... yeah you got that right, roughly seven years after i axed the monthly 12XU Radio show, that old bastard just got reanimated, the first edition is in the can already and the show will air every four weeks on the still new-ish and exciting local community station Radio Makro. It's gonna be german-only for now 'cos ya know... one thing at a time, though from the March episode onwards i'm also planning - as i feel would be appropriate for a bilingual blog - to poop out an unpolished, low-effort english language edition that'll premiere either on mixcloud or the 12XU stream or, probably, both, not too long after the initial Radio Makro broadcast so stay tuned for that shit too and mark in your calender the 18th of February when the first new episode premieres at 18:00 Berlin time or 17:00 UTC.
Oh, and you've probably already realized there's a new Mixtape too 'cos you're looking at it right now so there's that. I'm still unsure if i'll keep those tapes going as ususal or if i'll just start doing fewer of them or maybe just stop them altogether when my tape deck bites the dust or i run out of my current stash of tapes to record on... still plenty of 'em left though. Just gonna have to see how easily i'm gonna keep up with the workload.
Tracklist
The UTI’s 2079 Harry W Pizza Party Crack Park Short Circuit Ø Shoot! Ty H.O.V. Power Pants Whatever It Takes Problem Addict Frog Guy The Meccaniks Can't Stop Playing Atari Puke Pisstols Death Comes Today The Moids Maitland Man Bungee Jumpers Bolt Social ills Never Recover Youth Avoiders Short Fuse Forma Nola Erortzen Den Luxury Apartments London Fields Rifle Bastards
Coffer At Long Last The Bored & Ignored Dog Litter Gary and the Shearstons Gnangara Road Attention Deficit 80mg 2 Freedom Tylenol Tight Crying Form L.I.F.E. / BRAINdead Flower Power Water Torture High Ideals Burning Youth Feeble Minds Desensitized Invisible Hand Nuclear War Post Community Cranberry Attest Relentless Ultimatum Don't Look Up Nourishment The Sand Erodes Cries of Agony Rites ov the Absvrd Jester
Tracklist
Anytime Cowboy Misery Goose Eggs The Whistleblower (I Never Told You Anything You Didn't Already Know) Hot Face Red Fuzz Game Show Models Opposable Man Zulo Vergüenza Dr. Dence Healthy Human Winky Frown Houseplant Graveyard Lovebomb Dog Only God Forgives Dupont Daisies Завірюга Цифровий Шум Balaclava Dramatic Exit
DBR Pool RRSATZ Radical Banal Stepmother New World Sweet Reaper Meemees Bull Shannon Dragon Boy Spent Film Mercy Killed Cryogenic Division (Oh My) Quick Death Wristwatch Goat Sex Mex No Money Doe St Figure It Out The Clubs Ship Of Fools Sargent Baker Nothing To Me
Well, it took like a year longer than promised but better late than never i guess, here's finally a new LP of Stockholm's synth punk bulwark that's been around for roughly a decade already. So they've got nothing to prove at this point anyway and simply deliver yet another brilliant collection of spaced-out garage punk delicacies filled with their trademark Devo-isms and bookended by a couple of somewhat John Carpenter-esque instrumentals to underscore the pervasive cinematic qualities of this record, another killer one at that.
Here we have a marvellous debut LP from a Berlin-based group that - after a post punk-ish instrumental intro reminding me in equal parts of The Estranged and oldschool west coast punk of the Adolescents, Germs and Agent Orange variety - mostly settles into a heavily Spits-indebted, occasianally somewhat Ramones-ish garage punk sound enriched with a certain space punk ingredient reminiscent of such groups as Corpus Earthling, Silicon Heartbeat, Stalins of Sound, Zoids and Mateo Manic or, fairly recently, Shrudd, Zulo and Electric Prawns 2, although the aforementioned post punk vibes also return occasionally in tunes like Freiheit and Vittima. Seamlessly glued together by rock-solid songwriting qualities throughout, this makes for a flawless all-killer record getting the optimal bang for the buck out of a time-tested oldschool formula.
On their second album, this grop from the small town of Torquay, Australia - just a stone's throw from Geelong and still within comfortable driving distance from Melbourne - sets off ten punchy instances of dead-aim Garage Punk of the almost stereotypically australian-sounding variety that seems equally indebted to Saints, Birdman and New Christs as to some classic AC/DC-style shredding and regarding more recent happenings, the likes of Split System, Pist Idiots and the earlier works of Civic heavily suggest themselves here as comparisons or, in a way, this may also kinda be the record those disappointed by the shockingly lifeless latest Mini Skirt LP would have wished for. This is some completely old-fashioned Rock'n'Roll that largely plays by the established rules but makes it all work thanks to a neverending stream of catchy hooks and determined performances.
Once again a real knockout tape brought to us by the reliable New York purveyor of varyingly punk-related eccentricities, Fuzzy Warbles Cassettes. The opening track No Kill Means immediatelty radiates kind of an art punk vibe á la Television-meet-Ruts or more recently, Peace de Résistance or later Institute. Soft Change then takes a way more abstract, minimalist post punk route, quite cold and rigid but kinda funky at the same time. Cave One is a relatively straightforward, but by no means dumb, scrap of catchy garage punk and so is All Skill Levels with its equally post- and proto punk-ish vibes and an additional layer of dissonant noise. Great Pastures compresses some of these same traits into an unexpectedly catchy and compact little package of tangentially Sonic Youth-esque buzz. Anticev then surprises with a lot of a surf rock feel. And so it goes on... this is an eclectic grab bag of a record that pulls a new surprise out of its hat at every corner and quite woundrously doesn't drop the ball even once but rather feels weirdly coherent and methodical in its shapeshifting approach.
This London group recorded their debut LP in a single day at Abbey Road. Does that actually matter all that much? I don't think so but anyway, this thing sounds kinda neat, unexpectedly raw and unpolished. Right out of the gate, Defenestration greets us with a melodic and slightly folk-ish post punk vibe somewhere inbetween the worlds of Mission Of Burma, Sebadoh, Volcano Suns, Angst, Polvo or Medications, followed by a somewhat Wire-esque post punk exercise with hints of mid-2000s Indie Rock in Sinnes, the latter of which places this among my least favorite things on here along with the somewhat sleepy and undercooked Cruel Tutelage. Thankfully, Liar then picks up speed again in a mix of oldschool garage punk and a Mudhoney-esque Fuzz Punk-/Neo-Grunge vibe, some of which also resonates through the straightforward punk smasher Bumble Been before Red Fuzz leads into the overall much stronger secod half of the album with its catchiest pop tune so far. Pink Liquor then is a compact no-frills burst of noisy garage punk excellence and Automated Response sounds like yet another early Wire tribute right out of the Pink Flag Playbook, a much more well-balanced one this time though. Cavern Killer adds a bit of a rather contemporary sounding post punk and noise rock vibe to the mix before I Love You ends the record with a flawless oldschool oddity of the heavily '77 and KBD-influenced variety.
This Cleveland, Ohio group weaves compact and simple gems of moderately spaced-out, egg-ish garage- and synth punk into a neat little package of catchy delirium that reminds me of a quite colorful bunch of groups á la Metdog, The Gobs, SGATV, Sex Mex, Hyperdog, Beta Máximo or Apero and this shit is every bit as good as any of these.
If there ever was such a thing as a covid bump for any artist, that must've been the case for Brooklyn healthpunk one-man-band Dr. Dence, although they already predated the pandemic by a good bit and certainly are still kinda topical with America going through a whole new wave of public health insanity. Anyway, the dude's newest EP presents him in what may be his best form yet, every one of these four slightly oldschool egg-ish smashers being a rock-solidly engineered burst of expertly shredding no-frills catchy garage punk goodness.
Here's yet another new nicho for you that's so top fucking secret you can find it on bandcamp! On the successor to last year's Dining Nothing / Sin Agenda Para La Muerte single, the group from Rosario, Argentinia delivers more of that same greatness drenched in the murky waters of eighties post-, garage- and art punk with an additional layer of fuzzy psychedelia on top that makes this record a neat companion piece to that recent Zulo EP which, coincidentally, has been released just a couple weeks prior on the very same local boutique label, Fake Sex Tape.
