To be quite honest, the discography so far of this french-german group who've been goin' for over a decade by now has been a bit of an unfocused mess at times with more recent releases often missing the determination and never quite reaching the heights of their 2019 War On Words Vol. 1&2 tapes so i didn't expect a whole lot going into this. I'm all the more pleasantly surprised now 'cos on this new one, Warm Swords sound like they mean fucking business more so than ever before, keeping their eccentric ideas and eclectic influences but shaping them into way more tangible, compact and structurally sound little units that are a lot easier to make sense of. The opening salvos of Mirror and Parasite are solid examples of borderline egg-ish art-, synth- and garage punk already but it's with the hypnotic spaced-out post punk of the third tune Friction when the real meat of the album kicks in and just won't ever drop the ball for the rest of the LP, all the while entering different territory with each following tune like the new wave-ish power pop vibes of Save Your Mother, the oldschool Useless Eaters-isms of C-Side, the laid back folk-ish jangle excess of Shortcut Through The Mountain, some lost-in-space claustrophobia in The Anarchist Threat ... the delights and surprises never cease on this overflowing bag of treats . At this level, i'm truly stoked for the next ten years of Warm Swords.
This Bay Area-dwelling group entered the scene with a bang when their 2021 debut cassette dropped and their second LP Instant Pop Expressionism Now! then only further affirmed them as a driving force in the current art punk landscape, which is not all too surprising really once you notice we're dealing with folks who, mainly in the previous decade, have been dabbling about in groups like The World, Andy Human and the Reptoids, Rays and Violent Change. Their third longplayer out via Siltbreeze Records now feels a lot more rustic and brittle than their predecessor, relying heavier on odd iterludes while going lighter on immediately catchy hooks and moments but it's exactly that kind of frugal stinginess that actually makes this record all the more enchanting and rewarding by adding a certain layer of early The Fall-esque repitition that really starts to kick in during In Any Case, and a signature refusal to serve the listener any easy payoff or comforting resolution to the built-up tensions, dissonant loops and patterns. The dub flourishes and techniques in Where The Dream Dwells then have more of a Swell Maps feel to them and maybe, in more recent years, the early works of Exek. Flash #1 on the other hand seems to give extensive tribute to Wire as it could well fool you into thinking you're listening to an excellent Pink Flag outtake, with a bit of a Television and Fall vibe tacked on for good measure, after which Embankment Terror ventures even further into the more pop-oriented side of that early Wire era. So yeah, once again this sounds like a representative round-trip through much of old british DIY- and art punk at times with groups like Mekons, Desperate Bicycles, Membranes, Television Personalities and the aforementioned Swell Maps and Wire coming to mind but at the same time, these tunes have a lot in common with a newer breed of art punk acts aswell in the vein of Cuticles, Famous Logs In History, Onan Servo, Toe Ring and Germ House just to name a couple of 'em.
Already having an awesome cassingle and an equally excellent EP under their belt, their newest EP shakes things up a good bit for the San Francisco group with the opening tune Billy 3 having an unexpected melodic foundation, A Million Knots allowing some '80s Sonic Youth vibes in its verses. Their cover of The Nerves' Hanging On The Telephone is doing a flawless job too. Previously more interested in complex interlocking art punk arrangements that reminded me of groups like Patti, Reality Group, earlier Fugitive Bubble, the two original tunes on this one are hinting at a more streamlined and focused way forward for the group and i'm all here for it.
One of hard-/postcore's most incorruptible acts of recent years returns with yet another kickass record that doesn't sound like much else these days, apparently still not feeling any urge to significantly polish up their sound which of course doesn't mean there hasn't been tons of growth and refinement to their music along the way, which more than ever feels like a comprehensive round-trip through a decent stretch of the more out-there and weird fringes of artsy early eighties punk and hardcore history. This shit is just about the roughest-sounding material these Olympia, Washington based folks have done in a while, yet there's always a strikingly purpusefully crafted quality to their sonic chaos, the kind only a group as wildly superior and creative as Fugitive Bubble can pull off so consistently and effortlessly.
In the current, heavily consolidated and codified eggpunk era, the third EP of NYC's Raybees doesn't exactly break the genre mold on a surface level, but stil sticks out by at least bending the rules a decent bit, elevating what at first glance could have been yet another average artifact of the Prison Affair school with a more cluttered production aethetic and what sounds to me like some truly fun pots-pans-and-washbasket style bedroom drumming laid atop the otherwise kinda standard vintage electric beats. There's a genuine sense of joy and a creative spark emanating from these songs which the genre is often lacking for me more recently and it certainly helps that there are some heavy-duty songwriting chops on display here too, especially in the increasingly synth-dominated second half with tunes like Knife Fight and the closer Victory March having more than just a little of an oldschool Digital Leather feel to them.
So let me try to get this right. It appears this new-ish Soft Shoulder LP ain't so much a compilation of stuff released on various lathe-cut EPs and -singles over the past couple years rather than a collection of songs recorded years ago that deliberately first got put out in that piecemeal way starting in 2022, but was intended from day one to eventually make up a full LP, which we now have in front of us. Phew, that sure is some kind of clunky roundabout way of doing things and i'll say it's just fitting for one of the most intentionally clunky, roundabout types of bands of our time, one that's been around way longer than this blog, is probably gonna outlast it too and has never failed to amaze with their cluttered and messy, though also totally unmistakable, singular vision of vagely The Fall-inspired, No Wave-informed post punk and noise rock. And you know what? I think it's the greatest thing the (in its current incarnation) one-man-band from Tempe, Arizona has ever done even after the knockout double whammy of 2023s Smile Building's Exit and It’s A Small World After LPs, as i'll say these new old tunes hit even harder in their collected, re-sequenced new form - so much creativity and brilliance concentrated into a dense 21-song 45-minute record that refuses to get tedious for even a second and the added punch and clarity of a stellar new mastering job also sure contributes a good bit to making this thing gel together and rise way above just the sum of its parts.
Austin, Texas group Guiding Light already had a pretty exciting, if still kinda messy debut EP out via Stucco / Down South Tapes in 2024, who are now also responsible for the cassette release of their first full length record (viny is availablel via Post Present Medium), on which they up their game in pretty much every aspect of their sound as the the folk-ish strummy melancholia of Shackled By Lust makes immediately clear and even though that tune ain't fully representative of the rest of the album, it keeps on resonating as a thoroughly impressive opening salvo nonetheless. That greatness persists all throughout the record where their folk- and cowpunk-adjacent strummery somewhere inbetween the likes of Angst and Volcano Suns keeps colliding with eighties Post Punk right between the chairs of, say, Burma, Saccharine Trust, Man Sized Action and early Minutemen, though spiked with occasional bits of Flying Nun Post Punk Psychedelia, catchy Jangle Pop guitar leads and -harmonies, though if instead you feel like naming more recent Folk-/Cowpunk/Post Punk hybrids á la Leche, Cardi O., more recent Rolex or Optic Nerve, i'm gonna say you're right on the money too. Can't miss this one if you're into any of that shit.
After an already quite thrilling demo tape in 2023, the group from Oslo, Norway finally makes good on the promise and impresses with their fully realized vision three years later on their first longplayer, wildly elaborating on their eclectic sound that incorporates such things as a bit of the frantic and anxious early Iceage energy unravelling here, a touch of early Poison Ruïn high-stakes dungeon punk drama, coupled with a momentum somewhat reminiscent of Stay Home-Era Hank Woods & The Hammerheads and there's also plenty reference to be found of another New York Band Hank Wood has been in, the existential psychedelic cowpunk nightmarescapes of Murderer. Further i'm reminded of that unpredictable recent Forcer LP, the epic frankenstein song constructs of the 2020 Tom Lincoln solo album und its sort-of full band incarnation / successor Metho, whose line-up including the great Jackson Reid Briggs then again leads me to the realization that tunes like Trollmandens lærling also have quite a bit of a Split System energy to them. So yeah, what this band is pulling off here covers a lot of ground and whatever these dudes touch seems to turn into pure gold instantly, while the more garage-like mid-fi production values of the previous EP give way to a more hard- and postcore-infused vibe with slightly metal-infused overtones on this, matched up with just the right kind of vicious, unrelenting performance here to make that shit stick. This record is a wildly creative grab bag brimming with pure wonder and breathless ecstasy.
Buffalo, New York duo Ismatic Guru are a rare breed of a post punk act that not only constantly keeps raising the bar and refining their craft with every release over the span of six EPs so far - roughly one every year since 2021 - but in the process has carved out a pretty singular, unmistakable niche for themselves, sticking out even in a genre landscape that's about the most crowded and diverse it has been for decades i'm gonna say say. Made up of their trademark angular, funky-to-math-y rhythms and playful grooves, plenty of kraut-y peculiarities, a bit of colorful, kaleidoscopic psychedelia and a strong dub-ish undercurrent, this one's yet another half-notch about anything they're done before. Having ironed out the initial kinks of their art early on in their discography, they sound just insanely confident by now and almost as if can't do no wrong at this point. If you're into art punk shit that's equally quirky and classy, lively and intricate, you can't ever skip a new Ismatic Guru record.
Just about half a year after their brilliant previous Weston-le-Clay EP, its successor sees the Warford, England group once again upping their game in terms of both variety and compact-/catchyness of their, at times, subtly math-infused post punk, most significantly expanding on the more midtempo-ish section of their stylistic repertoire and as expected, that shit works just admirably here 'cos this dude (or these dudes?) clearly has the creative juice and raw musicality to pull that shit off. Just as before, smartypants contemporary post punk influences of the Landowner variety loom large over this one too, just as do ancient british DIY art punk staples from a quite diverse sphere inbetween, say, Mekons, Blurt and Television Personalities, though at the same time, Aidmoozic sound very much like themselves here more than ever. The seeds of this greatness were already noticeable on their two 2024 EPs, but Aidmoozic play on a whole different level in 2026 and i'm gonna say that in these short few recent months, Aidmoozic have catapulted themselves onto the cutting edge of contemporary art punk with razor-sharp, though seemingly effortless, precision.
