2026 is the year i'm finally coming to terms with the fact that egg punk has clearly peaked sometime over the last couple years and at this point, much of it feels kinda gentrified and overdone and i'm basically waiting for the next creative explosion in punk to emerge from some other unexpected niche. Just for the record, i'm not suddenly losing interest in, or even hating on the genre. This ain't another eggpunk sucks manifesto, haha. The beautifull mess we've retroactively come to assign the egg punk label to has been an endless well of joy and creativity that helped keep garage punk fresh and thrilling for the last decade-plus and the whole thing probably ain't going anywhere in the forseeable future. Also, if you're old enough to have seen a couple of subgenres rise and decline over the years, you know that no genre ever really dies anyway - eventually everything's always gonna re-emerge in some mutated form. The main thing that's changed for me in recent years is merely a sense of complete oversaturation and the fact that that certain strains of the genre appear to have very much consolidated themselves into a set of easily quantifiable, infinitely reproducible standard formulas - akin to some shallow instagram "aesthetic" - that has lost much of its novelty over time and if there's ever been a punk subgenre in danger of a hostile AI slop takover, that would probably happen to egg punk first with its increasingly generic-feeling library of tropes and set pieces. Anyway, all i'm saying is i'm rapidly losing patience and tolerance for the less inspired, middle-of-the-road strains of the genre and everyone's just gonna have to do a little more than just faithfully reproduce an established genre pattern to gain my attention going forward.
In that slowly declining landscape, a new Cherry Cheeks LP just came along and i'm actually positively struck by how admirably the group's sound has held up over the years (actually im gonna say that quite a lot of the genre's veterans' and forerunners' output still sounds pretty freakin' fresh to my ears to this day), though weirdly they're also exactly the kind of group whose past output is now in constant danger of retroactively fitting that aforementioned standard formula a bit too closely and thus being drowned out by the sheer forgettable mass of what i'd now call MOR eggpunk releases. The curse of being ahead of the curve i guess... What has always kept them afloat has been their excellent songwriting ability though and on this new LP, they not only fully lean into that strength, they even considerably up their game with an all-killer set of insanely catchy and addictive noise- and power pop tunes while also ever-so-slightly roughing things up on the production front with an overall just slightly more organic and propulsive drive that just about does its part to let their sound shine in 2026, even though it ain't exactly on the cutting edge of anything in this day and age. Let me put it like this: If you wanna ride the 12XU eggpunk coaster from now on, you need to be at least this tall. Also: In the end it's always about the songs, stupid. And these just fuckin' rip.
Damn, has it really been close to five years since we last heard from these spanish egg-/garage punk veterans? Anyway, this new EP shows the group in top form once again, the opening tune Almas Perdidas transporting a kind of intricacy and elegance you'd rather expect from, say, late-career Fugazi than anything coming out of the current eggpunk circuit, easily transcending the band's humble beginnings, though they ain't doing anything to betray or obscure their roots either, the thrilling polyrhythmic playfulness of Pues pues pues pues being yet another impressive example of fusing fun, egg-ish quirks and whims with a healthy dose of subtle postcore smarts before Yo Yo leads the EP to an insanely satisfying conclusion with another energetic, comparatively straightforward but by no means simplistic punk smasher. This may easily be the most well-balanced and elaborate thing Finale have done so far.
Some dude from Bloomington, Indiana has created an insanely appealing debut mini-LP here, standing with one leg in egg-ish garage- and the other in DIY art punk territory, with the egg-ishness getting increasingly toned down over the course of the record which really helps these tunes evade the looming eggpunk fatigue that even someone as historically sympathetic towards the genre as me often struggles to overcome in recent times. Well, this record does avoid most of the genre's clichés, common piffalls and shortcomings and indeed its much rawer sound compared to many contempory acts rather reminds me of the earlier 2010s formative era of the genre and specifically the Bloomington connection would suggest the likes of Skull Cult as a primary inspiration. Anyway, add to that a number of killer tunes á la 5:43 p.m., Giving Up and OCD and you get a debut that manages to punch leagues above its weight and really stands on its own in an overcrowded genre landscape.
The restless Leipzig scene is at it again with this neat new tape of moderately egg-ish garage punk goodness that fits neatly inside established genre parameters but excells nonetheless by the sheer strength and consistency of its underlying song material as well as a sleazy hard-rockin' edge and a healthy propulsion that reminds me of older shit roughly in the vein of early Kid Chrome or S.B.F.. This shit ain't trying anything new but it strikes all the right nerves with me and the thing is just packed with hits, plain and simple.
This South Carolina group's previous This Has To Be Hell EP didn't quite cut it for me yet but this more consistent and fleshed-out successor now is sure worth a post here, a kinda weird bastard inbetween somewhat eggpunk-ish synth squeaks and fuzzed-out space punk of the Corpus Earthling and Zoids variety with nothing terribly new or smart happening here but their staunch dedication to its simple formula just sells this shit for me.
Billiam, busy as ever, has just recently blessed us with a new lathe cut 5" on Low Ambition Records and there's also a new LP waiting to drop sometime via Erste Theke Tonträger. Before that though, we get this neat odds-and-ends compilation of outtakes, compilation tracks, alternate versions… you know the drill. Some of it you may have heard before in one form or another, some you probably didn't but one thing's for sure: Many players in the current garage punk field would be willing to sell their kidneys for these quality scraps and leftovers conveniently compiled on yet another kickass LP.
Snarewaves' discography can feel kinda confusing and overwhelming with tons of releases so far that may suddenly appear and then disappear again at any given time, have tracks added to or trimmed off them and most recently there's also been that throughline of "haven't i heard this song before" and "is this just a reissue or a re-recording?". So yeah, that kind of situation is often the point where i choose to temporarily check out of the whole thing and take a step back while waiting for something more definitive and permanent to emerge out of it. Here we have just that kind thing in the form of a new EP via the reliable purveyor of maybe a bit too boldly premium-priced egg-ish punk quality, Nashville-based tape label Knuckles On Stun - an artifact that will probably just stay the way it is this time. Some of these tunes you may have heard before in one form or another too, but does that even matter at this point? It's good shit as usual and i still don't know of any other band that sounds even remotely like Snarewaves.
Here are two new kickass artifacts of egg-ish garage punk delight. The first one is by Triple Ente of Alicante, Spain. It would be pure understatement to say the spanish scene has become an indispensible force in that whole genre clusterfuck and Triple Ente have been taking part in that from early on. So they don't need to prove anything by now but nonetheless they won't half-ass a thing on their newest LP, which delivers 14 new smashers of a heavier garage punk-leaning variety that already feels pleasantly oldschool by now in the eggpunk context, more reminiscent of the genre's early wild west days.
Relatively new in the game then are Philadelphia group Dasgüt who at times lean into an even more oldschool-ish garage punk energy like in the heavily Gun Club-esque opening tune Dasgüt, before more of the expected eggpunk insanity kicks in with tons of weird ideas and irresistable hooks strewn all throughout this record. Like that Triple Ente record, this one avoids some of the genre's most pervasive clichés by staying 100% free of synths, electronics or pronounced lo-fi bedroom recording aesthetics, instead boiling things back down to a lean core of catchy, fun and offbeat garage punk joy.
Damn, has this band from Alicante, Spain upped their game since their promising but still inconsistent 2024 EPs! This is a make of Garage- and Eggpunk that on one hand operates very much inside the templates set by predominantly spanish groups á la Prison Affair, Sprgrs, Finale, Pringue or US-based acolytes Beer, but does so with a raw and propulsive force missing from many lesser players in the subgenre and these dudes also got the catchy-ass tunes to match the breakneck energy of their performance.
I don't have that much insightful to say about this nice EP other than this Boise, Idaho group dabbles in a certain sub-niche carved out previously by groups like Prison Affair, Beer and maybe Set-Top Box, playing out kinda like an extra-crude version of that particular stretch of the eggpunk landscape and succeeding exactly because of that dissonant crudeness, even if it ain't adding anything new or novel to the mix here.
