More quite old-timey, fuzzy (garage-) punk goodness by a group from Oslo, Norway that sorta plays out like an incarnation of early Sick Thoughts or Bart and the Brats suffering from a total amnesia regarding anything that’s been happening after, like, ’82. And this shit works, simply because the underlying tunes never drop the ball even once and the excellent quasi-cover of Devo’s Mongoloid just feels perfectly logical and natural to be included here.
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This Thunder Bay, Ontario group delivers a thoroughly convincing debut EP here on which they mix a substantial garage vibe with postcore of the old Drive Like Jehu-/Hot Snakes school to an explosive result that most of all reminds me of old Atlanta greats Wymyns Prysyn in addition to a couple of more or less related phenomena from recent years á la Rifle, Dollhouse, The Hammer Party, Mutual Jerk, Postman, Nag and Kids Of Zoo.
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The Leipzig scene strikes again with this neat little tape of timeless shambolic DIY punk that seems to channel the rough aesthetics of S.Y.P.H., yet successfully transfers them into a contemporary context adjacent to stuff like Narkose, Maske, Die Verlierer or very early Pisse. Also, there’s a quite unlikely undercurrent of The Gun Club here running through tracks such as Relax Like A Puu and especially Copy Man with its unexpected slide guitar stylings.
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Here’s a new short-playing dose of madness from that Lansing, Michigan one-man-band and who would have guessed – it’s yet another delightful attack of chaotic synth-/electro-/sample punk so blown-out within an inch of its life it leaves me wonderin’ whether i’m hearing a guitar or just a mutilated synth in the opening track. Thus, high quality new fodder for friends of other disconcerting noises á la Beef, ISS, Heavy Metal, Klint, Spyroids, R. Clown or Kerozine.
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The artwork appears to not very subtly hint at a dungeon-related thing and this almost sounds plausible with the riff-heavy opening track, though after that, the spanish group’s newest EP settles into that familiar sound of dreamy, egg-ish noise pop and synthpunk we all know and love them for, albeit with a few unexpected nuances like the aformentioned opening, occasional emo-ish sprinkles, some hints at straightforward, classic indie rock and moments channeling some C86-by-way-of-early shoegaze kind of aesthetic in El Valle De La Muerte and the closing track Sesos En Bandeja.
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These New Yorkers’ new longplaying cassette is quite a stunner, showing incredible growth from its already thorougly enjoyable predecessor, 2022’s Fancy! EP. While that one still had a kinda cute power pop and new wave-ish quality to itself, this one manages to come across as simultaneously more abstract and more mature. Less Television Personalities and more eighties The Fall in its minimalism and repetition, yet at all times feeling very deliberately put together, this further channels the aesthetic traits of old british DIY á la Desperate Bicycles, Membranes, Swell Maps or early Mekons, while a thick load-bearing layer of melancholy interconnects some of the album’s most memorable tunes and reminds me quite a bit of a certain strain of aussie groups like Wireheads, Kitchen’s Floor and the more downbeat moments of Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Another decent reference point would be yet another not-so-famous famous group – Philadelphia’s Famous Mammals – along with a number of other US-based shambolic post- and art punk acts like Society, Germ House, Spiral Rash and Toe Ring.
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On their debut cassette carrying the quality seal of the ever-reliable Detroit label Painters Tapes, what this Ohio group pulls off here is nothing short of some top-notch weapons-grade guitar-less synth punk excellence that kinda bridges the gap between oldschool ’70s-’80s acts like Nervous Gender, Units, Visitors and Screamers on one hand and some more recent, varyingly egg-ish groups running the gamut from the unpredictable, hyperactive approach of, say, Checkpoint, Titanium Exposé, Pressure Pin to the more minimalist attacks of Beef, Busted Head Racket and some shit right inbetween those worlds like Quitter, Slimex, Isotope Soap, earlier Freak Genes or Billiam’s synth punk project NTSC>PAL.
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I didn’t ever think i’d need another instrumental surf rock record in my life, a genre that seemingly never expanded its stylistic vocabulary too much since its ’50s/60s gold rush or, even worse, often feels kinda like a dumbed-down, ultra-codified and risk-averse retread of its initial phase. This group from La Cisterna, Chile, however, pulls off that miracle of getting me invested in another surf-ish LP with a sound that makes me feel like goin’ surfin’ in… well, fuckin’ hell i’d say, tackling the genre from an angle of noisy, goth-infused post punk and death rock that infuses tons of energy and much needed fresh air into its ancient ways and in contrast to so much instrumental rock’n’roll (surf or otherwise) feeling in desperate need of a vocal line to bind together the moving parts, the arrangements on this record are perfectly capable to stand on their own – the dramaturgically dense compositions and guitar leads, brimming with energy, are masterfully telling their own stories, no words needed here.
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An insanely fun debut EP by this St. Louis, Missouri group that sounds like… no one group in particular really, which in our heavily genre-codified times may be among the best compliments you can make. Rather, this is some freewheeling choose-your-own-adventure-style shit mixing-and-matching an abundance of synth-enhanced garage punk influences with varying degrees of egg-ishness into a super catchy, coherent whole that at different points may call to mind the likes of Skull Cult, Print Head, Warm Bodies, Rearranged Face, Snooper or Wax Minds.
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This group from Bordeaux, France at first glance appears pretty much in line with that omnipresent background hiss of french groups playing rather basic, mildly Oi!- and Post Punk-infused catchy punk hymns but damn, do these folks just hit the bullseye with their debut EP, getting pretty much the optimum bang out of a subgenre as restricted und ubiquitous as this. Friends of such groups as Telecult, Litovsk, Bleakness or Nightwatchers absolutely shouldn’t miss this one!
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