After six years silence, out of the blue comes the second 7″ of this Antwerp, Belgium group via the local garage punk powerhouse Belly Butten Records. And oh boy, this is some heavy duty shit channeling an aesthetic that seems just as influenced by smart artsy garage punk groups á la Uranium Club, Vintage Crop, Reality Group as by the sprechgesang and eleborate arrangements of US postcore phenomenon Straw Man Army, even if lyrically this shit is a lot more lighthearted here, in-tune with the overall musical vibe. To round things out, there’s also a distinct touch of Tyvek or UV Race progressively creeping in over the course of these four tunes. I think this is just a perfect little 7″. So ready for the next one in another in six years.
First-rate new catchy garage punk shit from Sydney that cycles through quite a few different styles in its four songs with POSIWID and the opening tune What A Time To Be Alive coming across a bit like a mix between the fuzzy power pop of Sex Mex and the quirky synth-enhanced egg-ish action of Ghoulies while the synth punk of The Game recalls oldschool Digital Leather material and more recent stuff like Spyroids and O-D-EX. The closing track B-52’s Tattoo on the other hand sounds like something right out of the warped mind of Texas garage punk eccentric Trashdog. Oh wait, there’s yet another dog band i’m thinking of here… Oh right, that’s Melbourne’s wonderfully trashy garage-/synth punk explosion Metdog!
New shit from Mark Ryan (of Marked Men, Mind Spiders and Radioactivity fame) and his current electro-/synth punk outfit O-D-EX (or is it just Odex now?). After one short- and one long-playing release from last year – each of ’em sporting more of a minimalist and cold synth wave aesthetic – this new EP sees the duo of Ryan and Micah opening up their tunes towards a comparatively warm, melodic and overall more tangible direction that indeed sounds like a perfect middle ground between the group’s aforementioned previous releases and the considerably more garage-leaning Mind Spiders records.
Top Secret Nichos are my favorite kind of nicho, i’ll have fries with that thank you! Dining Nothing, is that so? Okay, maybe not then. Anyway, sin and muerte are pretty much on my agenda too along with beer, smut and Satan. Gotta love these dudes from Rosario, Argentina. Naturally their music kicks ass too! This is some excellent oldschool noise-infused post punk evoking bits and pieces of such groups as Nag, Impotentie, Labor and the early works of Institute, Low Life or Constant Mongrel, with the addtion of maybe a hint of combustive garage punk á la Jean Mignon especially in the aforementioned Dining Nothing.
Winky Frown have been kind of an oddity right from the start even in the – by definition – quite odd eggpunk genre in that their songs on one hand seem to perfectly fit in with a number of thoroughly established eggpunk formulas yet never fail to surprise and transcend the genre’s limitations, putting a lot more effort, ideas and songwriting finesse into their tunes than you’d usually expect. Their new digital 2-track single has yet another surprise in store for us when we’re greeted with a slow-jam tune kinda channelling a lost artifact of Chairs Missing-era Wire in turn channeling a lost artifact of Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd and the best thing is that shit fucking works! The second tune Upside Down Frown then is closer to the sonics we’re used to from the group, which is to say: another marvellously crafted high-momentum electrically driven garage punk smasher that unrelentingly builds up towards a massive payoff.
Brilliant new shit on Berlin’s noise boutique Flennen Records by a group most likely based in Leipzig though i’m not entirely sure of that. This being another way above-average example of german-languange garage punk after that recent Ronny Spoiler single, i increasingly get a feeling there’s something bigger brewing over here. Quite fittingly, their ever-so-slightly egg-leaning make of catchy garage goodness strongly reminds me of a colorful bunch of other german groups like Bremen’s Wax Minds, Nuts of Cologne and Benzin from Berlin, but let’s not overlook some striking similarities to bands of their (likely) Leipzig neighborhood with acts such as Exwhite, Ambulanz, Laff Box and Autobahns all scratching one or the other somewhat similar itch.
You can’t ever go wrong with a new EP by Drew Owen’s Sick Thoughts who have been a crucial joint in the american garage punk backbone for well over a decade now! Accordingly their new EP is yet another souvereign and self-assured blast of top-notch garage punk songwriting and effortless high-energy performances with quite a bit of variety as exemplified by the equally Buzzcocks-informed and new-wave-ish vibes of the title track, the hardcore attack of Just Die Fast, a sleazy hard-rockin’ acid rock flourish in The Doom, the linking element of it all being a super catchy power pop-ish ’77 vibe running all the way through these tunes.
I’m a bit short on time this week so here’s just a quick digest of quirky punk releases with varying degrees of egg-ish-ness of which these three particularly stuck out to me. For starters, there are the comparatively rough sounds of Athens, Georgia group Mr. [Redacted] whose tunes rapidly alternate between the parameters of a hard-/art-/weirdcore sound not entirely dissimilar to groups like Judy & The Jerks, Warm Bodies, Sniffany & The Nits, and the more egg-intensive sounds of early Snooper, Print Head, Awful and early Skull Cult. If you’re more interested in classic egg punk territory, you may get tons of enjoyment out of the new Tape by Lovebomb from Hildesheim, Germany (man, the krautwürstle are really punching above their weight this week, aren’t they?), wo deliver a densly packed bundle of snappy textbook eggpunk goodness most similar to shit á la Prison Affair, Beer, Winky Frown, Molbo and Goblin Daycare. If you prefer it more weird and Lo-Fi, try the new one of Leipzig (again!) group TTTTurbo whose recorded output’s overall aesthetic is the sonic equivalent of an n-th generation document that’s been xeroxed a couple times too many – beneath a thick layer of burnt monochrome pixels and copy-of-a-copy xerographic grime there’s plenty stuff left to the imagination but nonetheless you can’t escape the ridiculous appeal of the catchy bubblegum pop nuggets buried in there.
Quirky LoFi-ish toy synth punk goodness from Cleveland, Ohio dude Emmett O’Connor who may already be a familiar figure to some as a member of Archie and the Bunkers and MK Ultras. Now on this solo longplaying effort he’s creating a warm, rich and full sound out of minimal means, poured into a number of strikingly simple but infallibly excellent power pop tunes that often have the feel a slightly sedated, toned-down and bedroom-dwelling budget version of Digital Leather’s most catchy pop moments.
With the recent Cruelster LP still quite hot out of the oven, here’s the newest artifact of another Nathan Ward-fronted group already, the significantly more angular and methodical yet unmistakably related Knowso, whose recent Optimism / Foot Of Pride cassingle had also landed just mere weeks ago. As usual this shit is operating pretty much on the bleeding edge of repetitive post- and art punk weirdness, performed by a bunch of flawlessly rotating, well-greased man machines. Really i can’t think of many other bands able to present such rigid and choppy compositions with such a frictionless drive and unbroken momentum. That’s not to say their music weren’t also catchy as fuck most of the time and especially in the second half here, tunes like Consumer Talk and Panopticon show them expanding on their melodic undercurrents for some of their most immediately striking and accessible tunes so far.
