Absolutely fucking brilliant shit once again arriving at our shores courtesy of Total Punk Records! Glittering Insects feature members of GG King, Predator, Wymyns Prysyn and Uniform (the atlanta group, not the NY industrial punk/-metal duo) and of these, it bears the most similarity to the latter two groups with the melancholy arrangements strongly echoing that distinct Uniform vibe. Overall the combination of gritty abrasive textures, the aforementioned sense of melancholy, a songcraft that comes across as sad and unwieldy yet melodic and catchy at the same time, reminds me a lot of australian noise-/indie rock gods Kitchen's Floor, the scuzzy post punk of City Yelps or, in its most catchy moments, the noise pop of early Treehouse. An exceptionally immersive and epic experience best taken in as a whole - a rare thing these days.
Still having compared their last digital single mainly to the established Mission of Burma formula, i'll expand that assessment to a more nebulous triangle of Burma, Wipers and Sonic Youth in face of the newest tracks by the Wollongong, Australia group - an aesthetic hovering inbetween the worlds of post punk, noise rock and fuzz punk which you might as well compare to more contemporary groups like early No Age or recent italian sensation Orrendo Subotnik.
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.
Synth punk maestro Klint doesn't need an introduction here at this point, i guess. His half of this awesome split cassette gives us another three artifacts skimmed off the top of that bottomless pit of pure creativity that dude seems to magically conjure up as soon as someone allows him to plug a cable into anything. Orrendo Subotnik from Pisa, Italy then craft a very different, yet no less exciting soundscape. Having sent some shockwaves already with their ultra-rough second tape last year, their sound comes into much sharper focus here. A weird mixture that is, charging up the noise pop and fuzz punk of acts like early No Age, Male Bonding or Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, noisy and darkly melodic post punk á la Die! Die! Die!, Piles or Times Beach, with a decidedly hard-/postcore kind of energy and a sense of widescreen drama you might expect of Lower or early Iceage… among tons of other stuff i've yet to unpack.
Just another quick roundup of noises and disturbances out of the extended hardcore orbit. Starting off the batch with Sex Hater of Kansas City, who will surely please admirers of chaotic and downright filthy hardcore shit in a similar vein to groups á la Total Sham, Fried E/m or Launcher.
Speaking of filth, Clinic from Fresno, California dial that certain aspect even further - their latest EP feeling like one single murky puddle of primitive anger and deep despair, not entirely dissimilar in some places to the early Beast Fiend EPs.
pH People, a group of unknown origin, then slow the tempo down considerybly while by no means lacking energy - their tape on Urticaria Records is a potent mixture from the fringes of harcore punk and (proto-) noise rock with clear echoes of mostly older stuff á la Flipper, Spike In Vain, Noxious Fumes or Broken Talent.
And lastly, there's one for the dungeon dwellers among us in the form of Philadelphia's Alien Birth who deliver an oldschool metal-infested beast kinda like a mix between a more primitive Poison Ruïn and Golden Pelicans going all in on their sleaze rock leanings.
This montreal group's debut EP delights with a batch of fairly melodic, simple-and-effective little smashers in the realm of garage pop, fuzz- and post punk reminding me of a particular cluster of groups from a few years ago including acts such as Feature, Negative Scanner, Slowcoaches and UV-TV. Also, in Get Loose, there's a distinct Wire vibe at play here and y'all know i'm a sucker for that kind of shit.
A neat and explosive little package, this EP by some Norwich, UK dude coming across like a healthy middle ground between garage groups roughly adhering to the Sauna Youth, Ex-Cult, Tyvek or Sweet Reaper formula and the fuzz punk sytylings of early 2010s groups á la Wavves or Male Bonding.
Clamm's follow-up to their already strong 2020 debut Beseech Me is a massive leap forward for the melbourne group and a stunningly confident achievement. Their garage punk driven forward with unrelenting force is somewhat reminiscent of last-decade acts like Ex Cult and Sauna Youth or of more recent stuff in the vein of Flat Worms, The Cowboy or their local contemporaries Hideous Sun Demon. Apart from that, their songs often have a slight psychedelic nudge to them not unlike Destruction Unit or Hamer while, in other places, there is some dark post punk undercurrent present reminding me of Constant Mongrel or early Low Life.
As coincidence would have it, here's yet another group of somewhat fuzzy whereabouts although the available evidence generally points toward Pennsylvania this time. On their most recent full-length effort, a warbly blown-out lo-fi acoustic intro gives way to a knockout punch of a post punk blast that sounds a bit as if the hallucinogenic haze of groups á la Piles or Die! Die! Die! entered the pitch black worlds of Nag. Other times we get somewhat more conventional yet nonetheless ass-kicking flashes of oldschool doom- and sludge-leaning AmRep-style noise rock colliding with the spaced out acid punk excess of, say, Destruction Unit, Hamer or Super-X.
From some uncertain place in Bavaria, Germany comes this beauty of an EP meddling in a fittingly nebulous, fuzz-laden genre spectrum between garage- and acid punk, psych- and space rock. A required listen for, among others, connoisseurs of noise in the vein of Destruction Unit, Osees, Super-X, Hamer, Ounce, Faux Ferocious or Draggs.
