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.
The Debut LP of these portuguese fellows delights with a flawless blend of synth-enhanced garage punk that on one hand often feels like a welcome throwback to an earlier, late-2010s era of electrified, egg-ish punk delirium of the Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp. variety with additional touches of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Kid Chrome’s heavy-duty riffing, while all the same feeling stylistically equally well-connected to somewhat more recent artifacts by the likes of Beef, The Gobs, Kerozine, Factory City Children and, most of all, 3D and The Holograms. So, certainly not reinventing the wheel here but nonetheless this is fun and well-executed shit that any genre aficinado shouldn’t miss out on.
Brilliant garage-/egg-/synth punk fare on this neat debut EP by some Montreal-based dude or group that i completely missed when it was first released as their contribution to Demo Fest 2025. Now here’s my second chance and damn, this is some good shit right here! The toy keyboard-meets-hammond-organ sound of the first two tracks brings me right back to some earlier days of (proto-) egg madness and particularly of those Mark Cone records from 2016/’17 respectively, while the next pair of tunes has a bit more of an electronic, industrial yet still absolutely playful feel somewhere inbetween the worlds of, say, Beef and R. Clown, before the closing track, a Violet Femmes cover tune, quite plausibly gives away one of the primary inspirations for this whole mess.
