LXRP Artifacting Hyperdog Smartphone Bront Don't Wash it Too Hard Fen Fen Shellshokt Snarewaves Impulse Control Cool Sorcery Fast Cars Winky Frown Upside Down Frown Music for Microwaves Offline Ack Attack Bag Fries Top Secret Nicho Dining Nothing
Revanche Plus rien Dog Lips Human Hybrid Tee//Vee Power Sits Over The Blood Road Train Wide Load Osis Flies Clean Needle Idiot Box Folding Chair S.C.M. Surto Coletivo Suco de cü Segundos Auxilios Oso siamés
Tracklist
O-D-EX Talents Zulo Teenage medicine Dragnet Shadowboard Normativ Positive Sanction Bronco Libre Le tunnel Gripper Hold On 1-800-Mikey Lost In Translation
Bachelor Pad POSIWID Bemnoz Tromper Le Sort Monda It Won't (I Would Do Anything) Shooting Losers Make It Away R.M.F.C. Ecstatic Strife Yuasa-Exide Wrong End Vaguess Look Away
Ever since i first stuck my nose in their immense output sometime last year, New Jersey group Monda have proven their worth as not only one of the most productive, but also most consistent purveyors of catchy and fuzzed-out delicacies sitting somewhere inbetween garage punk, oldschool indie rock, noise- and power pop. One other thing you're quickly gonna notice about them is that they really like to rearrange the sonic furniture a bit between releases to keep things fresh and exciting which, among other things, has led to a heavily spaced-out, psychedelic-leaning stretch in their discography most noticeable in and around 2024's Ponderous Leviathan LP. Their newest one now sees them kinda going back to the basics and once again they're getting all of them so fucking right, channelling some pronounced '50s-'60s bubblegum pop vibes just as much as 'eighties Flying Nun and Sarah Records-type art-/indie pop artifacts and various C86-style oddities in a flawless string of strikingly simple but lovingly crafted new tunes that just hit their marks dead-on without exception.
Detroit garage punks Fen Fen have never disappointed me and they won't on their newest LP either. After their sound seemed to get ever more elaborate and artsy with every previous release, culminating in the almost postcore-adjacent aesthetics of last year's National Threat LP, this new one feels like a bit of a reversal of direction, reconsolidating their sound with a razor-sharp focus on their garage punk roots in a super compact bundle of eight concise and straightforward yet unshakably engineered '77- and proto punk-infused garage punk nuggets.
Is it the third Dragnet LP already? Time flies man. For some reason (time & energy, usually) i've never given them the full blog post treatment here but i'm also gonna say they've never before sounded quite as tight, well-rounded, caffeinated and to-the-point as the Melbourne group featuring members of Vintage Crop, Gonzo and Teen Line among others does on their newest record. There's on one hand that slight Uranium Club-esque vibe to it that also pervades much of the Vintage Crop discography but there's just as much of a distinct quirky synth-driven, eggpunk-ish action going on that sits somewhere inbetween oldschool Ausmuteants, US bands like Smirk, Cherry Cheeks and Australia's own Ghoulies, Aborted Tortoise and Electric Prawns 2.
I didn't expect the latest LP of this Portsmouth, New Hampshire group to hit this hard - what an impressive qualitative leap from pretty much anything they've done before! Right out of the gate the opener Brain Feeder establishes a propulsive force in which weighty grooves and glittering melodic textures collide in a mix of post-, garage punk and a slight hint of postcore. For the remainder of the record, the formula gets further explored and expanded upon and their driving energy certainly gets plenty of reinforcement out of deliberate build-ups and carefully set-up dramaturgy in their sometimes rather simple but oftentimes quite intricate, always perfectly balanced song architectures.
The debut EP of this Boston, Massachusetts band outright wallows in an unapologetically old-fashioned puddle of oldschool punk, hard- and postcore with a slight garage edge that calls to mind many of the more left-field and eccentric acts of both the early D.C. postcore era with bands like Gray Matter, Government Issue, Embrace, Rites of Spring, Fire Party and just as many west coast acts like Really Red, Tragic Mulatto, early Saccharine Trust, balanced out with some lighter, straightforward rocking and energetic moments that evoke a bit of a classic Germs and Adoloscents energy.
Okay here's yet another of these francophone (though in this case seemingly not french) Oi!-infused garage punk groups and i have nothing new to add here but also no complaints whatsoever 'cos the quality is right up there with the genre's best and friends of shit á la Telecult, Stalled Minds, Distance, Nightwatchers, Litovsk or most recently Laxisme are gonna have a ball with this one as well.
Now that's some tasty shit coming our way from this indonesian dude or group, four completely blown-out bursts of Lo-Fi fuzz and noise existing somewhere inbetween the parameters of spaced-out art punk of the MX-80 and Chrome variety, japanese psych- & garage punk akin to 80s High Rise or whatever Les Rallizés Dénudés bootleg you've got laying around, spiced-up with a healthy dose of sleazy motörpunk. Neat!
Gripper from Philadelphia have crafted a delightful debut EP here that in a way channels all of the unabashedly hard-rockin' fun and power pop hooks of the early Sheer Mag singles, leaving out most of the southern rock flourishes but getting all the basics right in a flawles set of two incredibly infectious and catchy pop nuggets and two equally rippin' and appropriately sleazed-up garage punk gems.
After six years silence, out of the blue comes the second 7" of this Antwerp, Belgium group via the local garage punk powerhouse Belly Butten Records. And oh boy, this is some heavy duty shit channeling an aesthetic that seems just as influenced by smart artsy garage punk groups á la Uranium Club, Vintage Crop, Reality Group as by the sprechgesang and eleborate arrangements of US postcore phenomenon Straw Man Army, even if lyrically this shit is a lot more lighthearted here, in-tune with the overall musical vibe. To round things out, there's also a distinct touch of Tyvek or UV Race progressively creeping in over the course of these four tunes. I think this is just a perfect little 7". So ready for the next one in another in six years.
First-rate new catchy garage punk shit from Sydney that cycles through quite a few different styles in its four songs with POSIWID and the opening tune What A Time To Be Alive coming across a bit like a mix between the fuzzy power pop of Sex Mex and the quirky synth-enhanced egg-ish action of Ghoulies while the synth punk of The Game recalls oldschool Digital Leather material and more recent stuff like Spyroids and O-D-EX. The closing track B-52's Tattoo on the other hand sounds like something right out of the warped mind of Texas garage punk eccentric Trashdog. Oh wait, there's yet another dog band i'm thinking of here... Oh right, that's Melbourne's wonderfully trashy garage-/synth punk explosion Metdog!
New shit from Mark Ryan (of Marked Men, Mind Spiders and Radioactivity fame) and his current electro-/synth punk outfit O-D-EX (or is it just Odex now?). After one short- and one long-playing release from last year - each of 'em sporting more of a minimalist and cold synth wave aesthetic - this new EP sees the duo of Ryan and Micah opening up their tunes towards a comparatively warm, melodic and overall more tangible direction that indeed sounds like a perfect middle ground between the group's aforementioned previous releases and the considerably more garage-leaning Mind Spiders records.
Top Secret Nichos are my favorite kind of nicho, i'll have fries with that thank you! Dining Nothing, is that so? Okay, maybe not then. Anyway, sin and muerte are pretty much on my agenda too along with beer, smut and Satan. Gotta love these dudes from Rosario, Argentina. Naturally their music kicks ass too! This is some excellent oldschool noise-infused post punk evoking bits and pieces of such groups as Nag, Impotentie, Labor and the early works of Institute, Low Life or Constant Mongrel, with the addtion of maybe a hint of combustive garage punk á la Jean Mignon especially in the aforementioned Dining Nothing.
Winky Frown have been kind of an oddity right from the start even in the - by definition - quite odd eggpunk genre in that their songs on one hand seem to perfectly fit in with a number of thoroughly established eggpunk formulas yet never fail to surprise and transcend the genre's limitations, putting a lot more effort, ideas and songwriting finesse into their tunes than you'd usually expect. Their new digital 2-track single has yet another surprise in store for us when we're greeted with a slow-jam tune kinda channelling a lost artifact of Chairs Missing-era Wire in turn channeling a lost artifact of Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd and the best thing is that shit fucking works! The second tune Upside Down Frown then is closer to the sonics we're used to from the group, which is to say: another marvellously crafted high-momentum electrically driven garage punk smasher that unrelentingly builds up towards a massive payoff.
