Finally, here's the debut album of Cleveland, Ohio art punks The Carp, a group comprised of folks also connected to acts like Perverts Again, Knowso and Cruelster. With most of these songs already having made an appearance on their 2022 demo, here they're given some final polish here with the increased production values adding plenty of punch, while their sound overall kinda bridges the gap between the sonic traits of Knowso and Cruelster, combining the elaborate yet rigid structures of the former with the straght-ahead fun and energy of the latter, with even a bit of a cowpunk vibe á la Murderer in The Old Ways.
What's there left to say about, like, the only german-language band that matters right now pretty much? The guilty conscience of german DIY punk has released yet another batch of excellent and excentric new tracks in their one-of-a-kind fusion of equally pissed and quirky post-, garage- and synth punk, unceremoniously dumped on Bandcamp as has always kinda been their modus operandi, but also slated for a vinyl release via Phantom Records pretty fucking soon™.
The second EP by Berlin duo Lohn Der Angst is pretty much a seamless continuation, if gradually refined, of what we've heard on their first cassette already which is a glorious celebration of repetitive synth punk that on one hand distills the core ingredients of Screamers, Units, Visitors, Nervous Gender, Minimal Man or the unavoidable DAF down to their bones, while also having a constant kraut-y motorik foundation to them over which the spirit of Conny Plank looms large, all of it consolidating into some weird sort of alternate-universe krautrock Suicide.
The New York group follows up on their brilliant 2023 demo with a no less exciting new digital single whose two songs are hardly enough to satisfy my thirst for more of their melancholia-soaked post punk blown-up into a wide open landscape of delicate and complex structural foundations under a rich surface layer saturated with colorful, shimmering texture and detail. Just as on their demo, the closest comparison i can come up with is NYC's very own post punk sensation Straw Man Army but there's more than that going on here, especially in the second track Onde Eu Estou? which is carving out its own path forward with a folky undertone kinda reminiscent of both oldschool Angst and more recent NZ group Trust Punks or their Berlin-based quasi-successor Dead Finks.
The debut EP of this NYC dude is drenched in the weirdest of eccentricities from start to finish and reeks of the more insane branches of early hardcore punk and proto-noise rock á la Flipper and Broken Talent, combined with tons of random early eighties cassette culture artifacts from that age of untamed creativity that just didn't give a fuck 'cos few people were listening anyway. Also at play here is some sort of cowpunk vibe most notably in the double attack of The Carnal Boogie and No Singing No Dancing, some bananas flashes of rockabilly and '50s bubblegum pop in The Night Is Here and Four Kinds Of Lonely. This shit is off the rails and it's a beauty to behold.
The follow-up LP to the unwieldy two hours, 69 tracks long 2023 opus Prawn Static For Porn Addicts by Moffat Beach, Australia group Electric Prawns 2 is yet again a quite generous affair in the context of the current garage-/eggpunk-adjacent wave, spanning 15 kinda eclectic, genre-hopping tunes that once again prove the impossible-to-contain, wildly creative drive of this group. The opening track Reaction sparkles with that vaguely familiar vibe of neon-glow psychedelia you might expect of a Mononegatives or Pow! record, plus a hint of Isotope Soap, maybe? What follows then is a nonstop fireworks of all-killer-no-filler tunes showcasing a great stylistic variety and, at one point or another, reminding me of a bunch of like-minded groups á la Ghoulies, Billiam, Nick Normal, Alien Nosejob, Erik Nervous or Busted Head Racket, to name just a few. The most incredible thing about this record comes right at the end though, in the form of the closing track Who I Am in which a sense of widescreen drama akin to The Wipers' Youth Of America or God's garage one hit wonderMy Pal gets condensed into an ultra-compact hook-fest á la Split System. Holy fuck, what just happened there?!
Here's yet another little treat of fine egg-related fun by an Ottawa, Ontario act, sounding kinda simple and by-the-numbers at first glance but revealing a great deal of substance under the hood once you listen a little more closely. This shit strikes me a bit as if the smartass quirky post punk pieces of Landowner got crossbred with the no-frills punk attack of that Zhoop/Nightman/Brundle/RONi/etc. dude and subsequently genetically adapted to survive and thrive by the twisted rules of a badly eggpunk-infested environment.
A kickass new EP by this Sydney group delivers the goods of rough-ass rowdy punk rock weaving elements of Wipers-esque post punk, fuzzed-out garage punk, some Hot Snakes-infused rocket-powered postcore and just a little hint of first-gen aussie punk into an overall pattern that reminds me of a whole bunch of female fronted punk greats of the past decade-plus, among whom range such wild and deranged creative forces as Vexx, Fugitive Bubble, Warp, Dots, Gen Pop, Warm Bodies and Skin Tags.
An incredible debut by some NYC group, oscillating somewhere around the rough parameters of hardcore, fuzz-, art- and post punk. Not least because of these psychedelic synth stylings i can't help but think of the hallucinogenic cowpunk nightmares of another awesome New York City act, Murderer, while in their mellower and catchier moments this surely has a similar quality to past-decade fuzz punk greats á la Feature or Slowcoaches.
This spectacular new split LP finally brings us new material of two Los Angeles Groups - both of 'em stubbornly refusing to conform to the established rules and conventions of hardcore punk - after a couple years lacking any "proper" release from both groups.
Rolex come across as powerful as ever in their unpredictable and inventive-as-fuck postcore attacks which on one hand contain echoes of a couple of fairly recent acts like Mystic Inane, Big Bopper, Brandy, Launcher and early Patti, while also being moderately indebted to the likes of Minutemen, Dicks and early Saccharine Trust (whose first LP Surviving You, Always is in desperate need for a reissue goddammit... a criminally overlooked classic of early postcore, years ahead of the curve if you ask me). Add to that occasional flashes of cowpunk, infused with some Lumpy & The Dumpers-style mayhem channeled into an off-the-rails vocal performance and the result is pure weirdcore bliss, leaving no doubt they remain the rightful rulers of their particular subgenre for now.
Grimly Forming's side then mounts a way rougher, yet no less smart and unconventional attack on the senses, counterbalancing unrelenting force with plenty of elaborate structures to build on and a healthy dose of garage-y undercurrent to keep things going smooth and fun all the way through.
