Nasty World - Demo /​ Lohn der Angst - Lohn Der Angst

If noth­ing else, it's at least been a great few days for friends of old­school synth punk ac­tion in­clud­ing not on­ly a cou­ple of es­sen­tial The Steves reis­sues via Iron Lung records but al­so these two beau­ties from Oak­land and Berlin re­spec­tive­ly. Nasty World kin­da go about their stuff like it's 1981 or some­thing, con­jur­ing up a vibe kin­da like a wild mix­ture be­tween Scream­ers, De­vo, Units, Vis­i­tors, Ner­vous Gen­der or Min­i­mal Man but al­so not quite dis­sim­i­lar to more re­cent shit of the Iso­tope Soap, Pow­er­plant, Lost Pack­ages or Freak Genes va­ri­ety. All of that could equal­ly fit the de­scrip­tion of that Lohn der Angst record but in their case, i'd add a good deal of Prim­i­tive Cal­cu­la­tors on top as well as a cou­ple of ger­man in­flu­ences rang­ing from an­cient DAF to more re­cent acts like Puff! and Pisse, as well as some dis­tinct kraut-/mo­torik vibes in tracks such as Warteschleife and Grelles Gesicht.

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Lost Packages - Model Distortion Business Casual

Though large­ly re­flect­ing on cur­rent themes of our so­ci­ety be­ing over­whelmed with the tribu­la­tions and chal­lenges our ever chang­ing hi-tech world keeps throw­ing at us, the sounds on this NYC artist's most re­cent cas­sette feels more like a flash­back to the abra­sive, con­fronta­tion­al ear­ly days of late '70s /​ ear­ly '80s synth- and elec­tro punk, noise and pow­er elec­tron­ics ex­per­i­men­ta­tion in the vein of shit á la Prim­i­tive Cal­cu­la­tors, Ner­vous Gen­der, Scream­ers, Units or Min­i­mal Man - a noisy bas­tard more con­cerned with over­whelm­ing the sens­es than with nu­ance or fi­nesse while still com­ing across sur­pris­ing­ly catchy and hyp­not­ic most of the time.

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Klint - Adrenaline

Late­ly it ap­pears as if bare­ly ever a cou­ple of weeks go by with­out a new re­lease by synth punk sen­sa­tion Klint from Schleswig, Ger­many. No in­tro­duc­tions nec­es­sary at this point i guess! Fol­low­ing the pret­ty rough split EP with Re­pul­sion Switch, here we get an­oth­er strong batch of tunes pre­dom­i­nant­ly on the rather catchy, of­ten vi­cious­ly dance­able end of the spec­trum.

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Repulsion Switch & Klint - Split

An­oth­er beau­ty from ital­ian pow­er­house la­bel Good­bye Boozy Records. You might re­mem­ber Buenos Aires group re­pul­sion switch from their 2019 de­mo and a bunch of EPs they put out since then. Here, we've got eas­i­ly their strongest batch of tracks so far of their re­fresh­ing­ly sim­ple yet equal­ly ex­plo­sive, garage-fla­vored old­school hard­core sound. An­oth­er known quan­ti­ty here at 12XU head­quar­ters is synth punk gu­ru Klint from Schleswig, Ger­many who takes charge of side b here with his usu­al work­man­like pre­ci­sion, cu­ri­ous ex­pe­r­i­man­ta­tion and a new cou­ple of tunes most­ly on the rougher edge of the spec­trum, per­fect­ly com­ple­ment­ing the RS tracks.

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Channel 83 - Artificial Unintelligence

Fun­ny what a few years of egg­punk-re­lat­ed in­san­i­ty do to your brain. When Chan­nel 83's pre­vi­ous EP dropped in 2019, i con­sid­ered this shit to be pret­ty far out there and to­tal­ly bonkers while in '23, i can't help but think they fit right in with the cur­rent wave of quirky syn­th­punk acts. I don't con­sid­er that a bad thing at all though. These new songs rip!

C57BL/​6 - LP 1

It's been a whop­ping five years since we last heard of this Los An­ge­les group. Their first LP (duh!) is a bit heav­ier on the hard­core- and garage punk side of things af­ter their old­er shit had been lean­ing stronger in­to its synth-/elec­tro punk ten­den­cies. Those re­lent­less­ly bru­tal elec­tric beats are still front and cen­ter here though, giv­ing es­pe­cial­ly the epic open­ing shot Open World kind of an in­dus­tri­al-tinged, cursed Aus­muteants-meet-Big Black vibe… with ad­di­tion­al over­tones of Cri­sis Man maybe?

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3D & The Holograms - 3D & The Holograms

Not a Warttman re­lease but still a pleas­ant­ly fa­mil­iar sound of mild­ly egg- and elec­tri­fied garage punk per­pe­trat­ed by some of the usu­al sus­pects who al­so gave us the likes of Re­search Re­ac­tor Corp., Sa­tan­ic To­gas and The Gobs. Twelve rest­less caf­feine pills you might com­pare to any of these bands, but which al­so wouldn't seem out of place next to groups á la S.B.F., Cosas Ile­gales, Witch Piss or Ghoulies.

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Gurk - First

Our week­ly dose of egg­punk in­san­i­ty comes cour­te­sey of some mys­te­ri­ous Stock­holm act, way too short but po­tent and catchy as fuck nonethe­less. Friends of shit á la Nubot555, Egg Id­iot, Prison Af­fair, Set-Top Box, Nuts and Pringue, among oth­ers, will sure­ly ap­prove of this.

Cosas Ilegales - Vol. 2

Af­ter the more vi­cious at­tack of their 2020 de­but al­bum, Mex­i­co City group Cosas Il­le­gales take a sharp turn to­wards a more melod­ic, some­what egg­punk-re­lat­ed ap­proach to their elec­tri­cal­ly dri­ven garage punk. As be­fore, groups such as S.B.F., Race Car and Kid Chrome might serve as use­ful com­par­isons but as of late, i'd add stuff like Prison Af­fair and Set-Top Box to that list as well as a spoon­ful of Met­al Ur­bain /​ Dr. Mix and the Remix.

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Factory City Children - Factory City Children

The noise on this de­but EP by New York (?) group Fac­to­ry City Chil­dren comes ac­cross like a some­what black­ened vari­ant of garage-/elec­tro punk noise­mak­ers á la S.B.F., Stal­ins Of Sounds, Kid Chrome and The Gobs with a smidge of Sick Thoughts thrown in for good mea­sure. Hav­ing been pre­vi­ous­ly re­leased pret­ty much un­der everyone's radar as a tape, Tox­ic State Records now has it ei­ther as a 7" or a way over­priced dig­i­tal down­load, well know­ing we'll pay the ten bucks any­way be­cause we're all ad­dict­ed to the shit. Cap­i­tal­ism fuck yeah!

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