Daughter Bat and the Lip Stings - Secret Tape

This Syd­ney group has nev­er dis­ap­point­ed and nei­ther do they on their newest top-se­cret EP, so se­cret in fact, that even the song ti­tles shall re­main a mys­tery for the time be­ing. What i can tell you though is that this thing once again fuck­ing slams - an­oth­er per­fect run of lo-fi pow­er pop, garage-, fuzz- and egg­punk. Just don't tell any­one, okay?

ALF - The Demo

Ex­cel­lent new rough and noisy shit from this Perth, Aus­tralia group op­er­at­ing on the in­ter­sec­tions of garage- and hard­core punk with an added dis­tinct old­school KBD-Vibe not en­tire­ly dis­sim­i­lar to the likes of the Liq­uid As­sets, Frea­kees, Li­po­suc­tion, Launch­er or Mys­tic Inane. An EU edi­tion of this beau­ty is promised to drop pret­ty soon via Good­bye Boozy Records!

Al­bum-Stream →

Neo Neos - Act - VII

Just as i think i'm done blog­ging for the week and while i least ex­pect it, a new Neo Neos record ma­te­ri­al­izes pret­ty much out of thin air! Now that's al­ways a ma­jor event in the 12XU mi­cro­verse any­way but the oc­ca­sion is made all the more spe­cial as this is the first new re­lease in a cou­ple years (not count­ing the Hard Dri­ve Ex­per­i­ments out­takes comps) by garage punk over­lord and al­ter­nate-di­men­sion gui­tar god Con­nie Voltaire. This shit has me feel­ing right at home from the start, un­mis­tak­ably Neo Neos in all its de­praved glo­ry and ab­solute­ly up there with the best of his ma­te­r­i­al. In case you pre­fer slabs of PVC, Un­der The Gun Records has you cov­ered with a new LP com­pil­ing this thing on one side as well as the 2018 opus Get The Neo Neos on the oth­er.

Al­bum-Stream →

Metal Guru - Metal Guru

Their re­cent split tape with Dadgad was plen­ty of fun al­ready and their newest EP, mark­ing the Ro­man group's (for­mer­ly known as the garage one-man-band Mus­tard) de­but as a full band line­up, di­als up the good­ness to ridicu­lous lev­els with an over­all vibe that you might com­pare to the best mo­ments of fair­ly melod­ic garage punk acts á la Liq­uids, Boo­ji Boys or Erik Ner­vous, with some added psychedelic/​british in­va­sion Vibe akin to, say, the Res­onars in the clos­ing track Samu­rai.

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

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.

Al­bum-Stream →