A ridiculously impressive debut LP from this Tokyo-based group that unleashes a perfect storm of melodic but equally prouplsive noise pop and garage punk with an unpredictable, freewheeling creative energy at its core with no two songs sounding quite alike but everything feels as if made of one piece nonetheless, cycling through nine iterations of catchy noise that kinda alternates between the more straightforward sonic spaces of, say, Dark Thoughts, Sonic Avenues, Bad Sports or early Terry Malts on one hand and the way more incalculable and freakish bursts of melodic ruckus most recently heard from Eye Ball and The Dumpies on the other side of that equation.
Considering the rave reactions i've heard so far about this Melbourne group's shows, their good-not-great 2024 debut EP so far had convinced me that their probably incredible live sound has been struggling a bit to translate into recorded form. Well, i can certainly say that this is less of an issue for much of their new mini LP which makes an overall much stronger impression for their sparkling sound that at times kinda reminds me of the psychedelic and variably surf-infused garage rock of Crsytal Stilts and Disappears mixed with a hint of early No Age and maybe White Fence, in addition to the eccentric monotonous fuzz escapades of City Yelps and the ethereal, abstract post punk melancholia of Kitchen's Floor and Mother's Milk... A quirky mixture that is for sure but it works quite admirably. Even when the band runs an acute risk of overstretching their most airy qualities in the record's slow middle stretch, the bet pays off and shit just refuses to come apart, however precarious it might look at first glance..
The Des Moines, Iowa group already have an EP and a pretty neat first LP under their belt but i don't remember them ever ripping as hard as they do now on their sophomore album, sporting a sound that in parts feels pleasantly antiquated at this point, kinda as it these guys got stuck in a time loop around the mid-aughts to early '2010s garage punk era and they have the bottomless well of catchy-ass tunes and explosive performances to make that shit stick.
Right away the debut EP of this group based in Eugene, Oregon radiates a vibe reminding me of a number of short-lived noisy and melodic punk groups from the early 2010s like Milk Music, Fins and Dharma Dogs as well as the fairly recent bands Jolana Star and Psychic Dogs who seem determined to revive that timeless sound of borderline post punk-ish catchy punk tunes paying tribute to the eighties Homestead, SST Records and Touch & Go eras. So now you can add Liquid Cross to that list but also, there's a notable hint of early-days Protomartyr present here, most notably their second and third LPs, in no small part due to the singer's voice channeling a weary and melancholic quality quite similar to Protomartyr's Joe Casey.
Manchester's Gold Cup have already accumulated a number of notable EPs over the past couple years but in my book they really struck yellow for the first time with their newest golden shower of hits that is their fourth EP, walliowing in a sleazed-up hard-rockin' garage punk sound that seems to channel kind of a Golden Pelicans energy while in tunes like opener Zero Percent and closing tune King Crab, they refine the formula with faint echoes of oldschool AmRep-Style noise rock and a subtle hint of 90s postcore. Stuck On Repeat on the other hand is a catchy-as-hell borderline powerpop-ish tune of the highest caliber and The Piss Has Been Taken reminds me of another quite yellow jet of a band, Australia's own Pist Idiots.
Awesome new shit from Basque Country-based label Mendeku Diskak. First off there's a new EP of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania group Iron Breed on which they serve four delicious treats of catchy garage-flavored Oi! shit with an oldschool strummy power pop-ish quality to boot. The debut EP of Gare Du Nord, a group of somewhat nebulous international origin then feels a bit like the more rough and old-fashioned flipside to that same thing as they churn out no-frills catchy tunes with both a distinct '77 and eighties europunk flavor, kinda as if the current breed of french and belgian garage/oi!/post punk groups went all-in on their original inspiration.
For the last three years or so, Sprgrs of Granada, Spain have been an ever-present mainstay at the upper-mid tier of contemporary eggpunk groups and while they seem seem perfectly content with that status, reproducing the genre's basic ingredients with workmanlike consistency, it should also have become abundantly clear that these dudes came to stay and ain't going anywhere anytime soon. I'm fine with that, as there's still pleny of fun to be had with their music even if the day may never come on which they finally transcend the genre's self-imposed limitations. It's a very burger-and-fries type of record and sometimes you're just craving for ecactly that kind of musical junk food..
These australians' 2023 mini-LP was tons of weird-ass dungeon- and fantasy-themed fun already and their newest longplayer has an even stronger batch of headsplitting tunes made up of elements of garage-, synth- and post punk that right out of the gate delights with a distinct flavor of vintage Useless Eaters and Ausmuteants action in the opening track Pillager, complemented with a note of psych-/acid Punk á la Pow! in Moneyman while Big Hat - one of two holdovers first heard on their 2021 Mammon Machine EP - has a bit of a Strange Attractor vibe and Dopaminer may easily fool you into thinking it's an exceptionally strong Why Bother? tune. Further, i can imagine friends of the likes of slightly more dungeon-flavored like Curta'n Wall or Oslo's own eggpunks Molbo getting a kick outta this shit.
This is a great week to channel your inner basic punk bitch as at least three out of the four records i'm posting today aren't exactly gonna win any awards for innovation and originality but make up for it by sheer competence in songwriting and determined sledgehammer performances. And so does this new Citric Dummies Record (which is exactly as much a split record as Zen and the Arcade of Beating Your Ass was a Hüsker Dü record and Die Nasty had any Rikk Agnew on it), which pretty much perfects the group's formula combining lots of Dead Boys energy with some Rocket From The Tombs and Death-informed proto punk flourishes, some pre-Rollins Black Flag- and Bad Brains-ish early hardcore punk to a highly flammable concoction that, despite inspiring all that retro name dropping, manages to feel weirdly contemporary.
Fuck yeah it's yet another Imploders record free of big surprises but also free of disappointments. As before they seem to lean entirely on oldschool hardcore bits and tropes, none of which wouldn't have existed already by 1983 at the very latest. The shit just works 'cos the Toronto group knows one or two things about robustly constructing a catchy tune and hammering it home in a powerful precision attack.
