Glittering Insects - Glittering Insects

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.

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Chimers - Turn On The Lights /​ Closure

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.

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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Klint & Orrendo Subotnik - Split

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.

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Sex Hater /​ Clinic /​ pH People /​ Alien Birth

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.

Private Lives - Private Lives

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.

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Cold Comfort - Maximum Effort

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

Clamm - Care

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.

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Ra!d - Ra!d

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.

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Phaselicker - Phaselicker

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.

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