Just as its two predecessors, the newest EP by New York's Jean Mignon is yet another delightful attack of catchy and mean garage-/proto punk goodness in which a good deal of primitive '77 energy is getting poured into a rather timeless sound of blown-out garage punk insanity which, in tunes like Won't Put Him Down, is sure gonna strike a chord with admirers of, say, Kid Chrome or that recent Elvis 2 LP.
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Almost ten years after their last recorded sign of activity, the 2010s San Francisco garage punk mainstays Useless Eaters are getting the band back together and sound more determined and explosive than ever before, as i was already lucky to witness on occasion of their absolutely unreal and intense Cologne gig earlier this year. Now on their first new recorded artifact - available digitally already with a 7" release expected sometime via Goodbye Boozy - they're killing it once again, in some way continuing the spaced-out, kraut-y and post punk-ish psychedelic leanings of their most recent couple of releases pre-hiatus, propelled forward in an insanely tight, dense and unrelenting performance in which every little detail seems to fall perfectly into place with sleepwalking ease and certitude. Awesome to have them back!
This Sydney group delivers five delicious new bursts of Spits-ass catchy garage punk with an additional hint of Lost Sounds or maybe some incarnations of Sick Thoughts. Nothing more than that, nothing less, and what can i say... that shit still rips like it's two-thousand-and-change.
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Kickass electro punk from Portland, Oregon that stikes a perfect balance of abrasive crunch and catchyness. Right away this shit kinda strikes me as a less choppy version of Lansing, Michigan group Snarewaves, especially similar in their overall Lo-Fi Amiga 500 tracker-ish sample punk aesthetic but just as well i'm reminded of Germany's own synth punk sensation Klint and somewhat older phenomena like North Carolina sample punks ISS and Berlin's Heavy Metal.
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Another utterly puzzling burst of lo-fi hardcore noise is coming to us from an Orlando, Florida group who already had a decent Demo out via Bellicose Records, but this new one on Drunken Butterfly Records is even more up my alley with its completely blown-out and unpredictable make of hardcore punk insanity that, below the rough and grimy surface, has a good deal of an oldschool garage-, proto- and KBD punk undercurrent going on.
This new collection of alleged b-grade material from one of Melbourne's prime instigators of noisy garage-/hardcore punk chaos is yet another solid proof that you can't ever go wrong with this group, as for much of this EP i absolutely can't see why these tunes wouldn't have made the cut for a "regular" release. Well, one man's trash is another man's treasure i guess and i'm just having a glorious time diving into in this neat little dumpster of leftover scraps.
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Now these chaps are from Spain yet their sound rather makes me think a whole bunch of predominantly french bands, their sound sitting inbetween the coordinates of post punk and -core, melodic garage punk and Oi!, calling to mind the likes of Youth Avoiders, Telecult, Nightwatchers, Bleakness and, most recently, Distance or the french-singing Leipzig, Germany group Laxisme. It would thus be easy to dismiss this as yet another artifact of a recently quite ubiquitous subgenre but that would be kinda unfair and discounting what a massive fireworks of powerful hooks this way-above-average record is setting off from beginning to end.
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This Montreal group's previous two EPs were already each a fat bucket chock-full of sleazy-ass rock'n'roll bliss and now they really hit it out of the ballpark with their first full-length effort, on which they considerably expand their stylistic color gamut and dial up the catchyness to eleven of their already dangerously combustive recipie made up of garage punk, hard- and postcore elements, a slight hint of Oi! and lots unapologetic dabbling in sweaty '70s hard & heavy dad rock territory while in tunes like Never Enough, there's an undeniable hint of roots-y folk- and cowpunk going on aswell. Immediately this shit strikes me a bit as a significantly dumbed down version of that recent Punter LP and further reminds me of a colorful bunch of sleazecore acts á la Cement Shoes, Golden Pelicans, Flea Collar, Cülo, Cutters, Polute and Chain Whip.
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Melbourne's Metdog have absolutely cemented their status as one of the major players of the contemporary garage-/synth-/eggpunk scene with last year's pretty fucking gaga full length Questions and Answers Regarding Computers and Screens. For their newest LP though, they dial down the overall weirdness ever-so-slightly, which i'm gonna say is actually for the better as i think another iteration of that '90s PC- / early web-themed insanity and ultra-cheesy general MIDI-esque sonics certainly wouldn't hit quite as hard the second time around. Instead we get a somewhat more streamlined and straightforward bunch of alarmingly catchy garage tunes that still let their freak flag fly aplenty, just in case you were worried things might get even remotely too serious here. Anyway, it's certainly their most substantial release so far, supported by a matching growth in the songwriting department without giving up too much of the group's overall playfulness and unpredictability.
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There's more going on under the hood than first meets the eye on this Budapest group's debut cassette whose eight tunes on one hand - especially in its first half - channel some vaguely oldschool-ish KBD- and garage punk vibes with alternating flourishes of Gun Club and Wipers, counterbalanced by a bunch of way more contemporary sounding elements on which groups of the current anarcho-/postcore-axis á la Straw Man Army and Fantasma have surely left their mark while at many other points, a certain breed of art punk melancholy akin to, say, Kitchen's Floor and Uniform (Atlanta, not NYC) also shines through.
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