Not too long after their brilliant debut EP we already get to hear the first full LP of this Minneapolis group which still delights with a pleasantly old-fashioned genre mixture that primarily appears to take inspiration from the more left-field and melancholy edges of '80s -'90s post punk, hard- and postcore history, although the influences are a lot more varied here with the opening song Hello World having a strong '90s Dischord vibe somewhat reminiscent of the likes of Jawbox, Crownhate Ruin, Bluetip, Smart Went Crazy or Kerosene 454 while Tectonic Plates comes across like a curious mixture of Rapeman, Brainiac and Mule. Kick Geneva and Steve remind me a lot of Angst and Moving Targets, BDFI has some Butthole Surfers-esque doominess and it's not before the second-to-last track, the instrumental What Happens Next and the subsequent Mantle, that those Mission Of Burma influences - which were more strongly present on the EP - kick into full gear once again. Anyway, through much of the record, there's a slightly folk-ish undercurrent goin' on aswell that further calls to mind such eighties US groups like The Proletariat, Volcano Suns, M.I.A. and My Dad Is Dead.
That Evinspragg record has garnered the most publicity of the newest Inscrutable Records batch for several reasons, some of them justifiable, others more annoyingly drama-related. But to be perfectly honest, that one is a bit too ambitious for its own good in my humble opinion and a bit of a mixed bag which starts out incredibly strong, then kinda fizzles out towards the end and i actually feel much more drawn towards the label's other two releases among which is this full-length debut by Johnny Skin. On it, they create a dreamy, melancholy and super-catchy melange blending the yearning vibe of '50s-'60s bubblegum pop ballads with rudimetary, minimalist lo-fi vintage electronic drum beats and synths in a fashion that's gonna draw inevitable comparisons to Suicide and Métal Urbain, interspersed with a bunch of more noisy and dissonant no wave-ish tunes more in the vein of noisy synth punk pioneers á la Primitive Calculators or Nervous Gender and the experimental, psychedelic sounds of Theoretical Girls, Chrome or MX-80.
This group from Olympia, Washington has always been an exquisite thrill ride with their two previous EPs and an LP, all of which came out via the reliably excellent cassette label Impotent Fetus. Following a vinyl reissue of said LP via Sorry State Records, that very same label now presents us with their second album and as expected, their hyperactive mix of art- and garage punk, hard- and postcore is yet another delightfully overwhelming assault on the senses equally unpredictable, smart and elaborate, somewhat reminiscent of old left-field hardcore acts like Tragic Mulatto (most strikingly in Failed Experiment), Really Red and Saccharine Trust on one hand but just as related to more recent phenomena like Mystic Inane, Warm Bodies, Launcher, Vexx, Rolex, Cucuy or Big Bopper.
These croatian punks didn't take long to completely win me over with their joyous and odd garage punk mixture of cowpunk-y X (US) and Gun Club vibes, Angst-ish folk punk sprinkles and tons of early Minutemen-esque, freewheeling anything-goes funky post punk weirdnes that also calls to mind a wild bunch of contemporary acts like Ismatic Guru, Patti, Tyvek, Print Head and Shark Toys, while the the sort-of-theme-tune Dad Joke almost feels like an authentic throwback to old DIY brits á la Mekons, Television Personalities and Desperate Bicycles.
I can't ever have enough snooper tunes in my life so this new tour EP is more than welcome even if it feels like a little bit of a cheat, consisting only like 60% of actual new songs while the other 40% are made up of two rather inessential instances of experimentation and fucking around. The two "actual" tunes are high-octane rippers though, driven by electric beats a bit like we've kinda already heard in the track Subdivision from their 2022 Town Topic EP, although the energy level here is almost brutal in direct comparison, catapulting their sound into some straight electro punk territory with the songs themselves striking me as pretty classic, first-rate Snooper material. Now if these folks just could make up their minds to actually play a show or two in the western parts of germany on their next tour, that would make me a very happy boy. There are egg punk afficinados living in places other than Berlin, you know...
Now that's some first rate shit, the second LP of this group based in the little town of Domodossola in Italy's Piedmont region. On it, they create a thorougly captivating high-energy sound between the worlds of garage- and art punk that appears to be just as much inspired by oldschool KBD-style oddities as by way artsier post punk acts like Mission Of Burma, Volcano Suns and Moving Targets, held together by the nuts and bolts of unwavering song construction. In tunes like Ping Pong, Punching Me and Licking Nipples we also get some brief little hardcore attacks. I gotta say, should it actually be the case that, as according to the title, these dudes suck, then i love everything about the way they do it, sucking in all the right ways for my deranged tastes.
While their debut LP from 2023 had the character of a colorful grab bag of different styles and flavors, the sophomore album of this Cincinnati, Ohio group featuring members of, among others, The Drin, The Serfs, Vacation and Crime Of Passing, comes across as a good bit more homogenous with the common thread here being a comparatively sleazy, hard-rockin' garage punk sound occasionally bordering on dungeon- and motörpunk territory with strong similarities to the likes of Cement Shoes, Golden Pelicans, Cheap Heat, Pïss Bäth as well as AUS/NZ groups like Hög, Polute, Split System or maybe Alien Nosejob's sleaze rock record Stained Glass a while back, yet there is still plenty of nuance and variety crammed into in these tunes regardless. Currency has a strong feel of classic Saints, Radio Birdman and Scientists while Afraid of Guns melds propulsive power pop harmonies with psychedelic undercurrents and textures. Speaking of which, the band members' connections to The Drin and The Serfs become quite obvious for a change in the spaced-out, kraut-ish Gears Never Dry. Quite Nice and to a lesser extent, What Have I Done radiate a hazy, cowpunk-ish heartland rock vibe, Nie Wrócimy has a bit of an MX-80-esque proto-/art punk bent to itself and i totally shouldn't fail to point out the four bonus tracks of the digital edition, among which the record's most catchy, power pop-ish tunes Error, Flowers and the Wire-esque Ffion deserve special mention.
The newest release on the consistently brilliant Total Punk sublabel Mind Meld is yet another stunning achievement from the outer fringes of the garage punk-related universe created by a Sydney group featuring members of Shrapnel, Gee Tee and Satanic Togas among their ranks, although of these, Shrapnel are the obvious comparison for these elegant and accomplished compositions of timeless, jangly-ass power pop and art rock with vague and fleeting echoes of The Soft Boys, The Bevis Frond and Television among many others, in addition to a diverse cluster more recent shit by the likes of Treehouse, Honey Radar, Good Flying Birds, Kitchen's Floor, Chronophage or Violent Change.
Following a short fuck-around phase as evidenced by their first EP, New Jersey group Nylon really kicked into gear with their tracks on a split EP with Operants and another strong, subsequent 2-track single. On their newest one, they once again raise the bar for their own mix of egg-ish garage punk and angular post punk which never before came across this confident and effortless, calling to mind a bunch of similar agents of chaos such as early Skull Cult, Pressure Pin, Trashdog, Checkpoint, Titanium Exposé, Reality Group, Patti, Big Bopper and Belly Jelly.
These New Yorkers' new longplaying cassette is quite a stunner, showing incredible growth from its already thorougly enjoyable predecessor, 2022's Fancy! EP. While that one still had a kinda cute power pop and new wave-ish quality to itself, this one manages to come across as simultaneously more abstract and more mature. Less Television Personalities and more eighties The Fall in its minimalism and repetition, yet at all times feeling very deliberately put together, this further channels the aesthetic traits of old british DIY á la Desperate Bicycles, Membranes, Swell Maps or early Mekons, while a thick load-bearing layer of melancholy interconnects some of the album's most memorable tunes and reminds me quite a bit of a certain strain of aussie groups like Wireheads, Kitchen's Floor and the more downbeat moments of Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Another decent reference point would be yet another not-so-famous famous group - Philadelphia's Famous Mammals - along with a number of other US-based shambolic post- and art punk acts like Society, Germ House, Spiral Rash and Toe Ring.
