Mitraille - Mitraille

The Bel­gian garage punks' first full length re­lease is hands down their strongest ef­fort so far, a bot­tom­less well of de­ment­ed fun some­where in­be­tween more straight­for­ward garage fare á la Sick Thoughts, Shit­ty Life, Dadar and the ever-so-slight­ly more eleborate/​artsy Ex-Cult, Tyvek or Shark Toys va­ri­ety.

Al­bum-Stream →

Beta Máximo - Spain Vice

Span­ish garage pop­pers Be­ta Máx­i­mo al­ready left a rather pos­i­tive im­pres­sion on me with their cou­ple of fair­ly re­cent EPs but with this one, they're fi­nal­ly nail­ing it if you ask me, strik­ing a per­fect bal­ance be­tween snap­py garage punk and surf-in­fused pow­er pop - kin­da like a some­what less eggy, less lo-fi in­car­na­tion of Barcelona group Prison Af­fair.

Al­bum-Stream →

Fen Fen - 3 Songs

The first few noisy ar­ti­facts of this De­troit group - a kick­ass EP's worth of stand­alone tracks un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped on their band­camp page - span a gamut evok­ing some of the best ref­er­ences on the in­ter­sec­tion of garage punk and post­core, rang­ing from straight­for­ward garage R'n'R acts á la Sick Thoughts, ear­ly Video & Teenanger, to the ex­plo­sive genre bas­tards of Cri­sis Man, As­cot Stab­ber and Flow­ers Of Evil, not to men­tion some un­mis­tak­able Hot Snakes kind of vibe all the way through.

Swordbreaker - Demo

A new en­try in­to the young dun­geon punk mi­cro­genre com­ing our way from me­dieval Utrecht. That means com­pe­tent new fod­der for con­nois­seurs of D&D-savy im­agery and themes, of heavy ar­mor and blunt weapons as well as a small but ex­pand­ing round­table of skull­crush­ers á la Poi­son Ruïn, Bloody Keep, Weenog, Steröid or who­ev­er else has re­cent­ly been busy unit­ing the aes­thet­ics of garage punk with those of old­school black- and/​or su­per-an­cient "heavy" met­al.

Al­bum-Stream →

Everyone Is Alone Sometimes - Everyone Is Alone Sometimes

Pointy Sticks, the un­ex­pect­ed­ly melod­ic open­er of this Char­lotte, Car­oli­na group's de­but cas­sette, kin­da sounds like what i'd ex­pect if weirdo garage punk out­fit Print Head were to record a hard­core record. The rest of the tape re­mains beau­ti­ful­ly ec­cen­tric too, mix­ing old­school hard­core thrills with catchy garage hooks and, at times, the odd old­school hard rock or doom riff, the lat­ter sug­gest­ing stuff like Para­noise as a com­par­i­son. Oth­er times, you might liken them to some Con­nie Voltaire hard­core project or the re­cent Hip­py­fuck­ers de­mo, all of that steeped in a rough fi­deli­ty akin to any ran­dom Deluxe Bias or Im­po­tent Fe­tus re­lease.

Al­bum-Stream →

Lamictal - Doctor's Orders

Speak­ing of eggs… here's an­oth­er batch of short and sweet smash­ers in the realm of oc­ca­sion­al­ly hard­core-in­fused garage- and post punk that at one point or an­oth­er kin­da re­sem­bles a cu­ri­ous mix­ture of Big Bop­per, Feed/​Zhoop/​Djinn, S.B.F., Pat­ti and Landown­er.

Al­bum-Stream →

Prison Affair - Demo III

An­oth­er tape by Barcelona's best ad­dress for daz­zling­ly up­beat and catchy garage punk de­liv­ers yet an­oth­er ul­tra-com­pact pay­load of low-fi­deli­ty, high-eggi­ness tran­scen­dence, no amount of tape hiss be­ing able to drown out that con­stant bar­rage of ul­tra-po­tent and high­ly in­fec­tious pop hooks bear­ing some vague sim­i­lar­i­ty to acts like R.M.F.C., Nuts, Set-Top Box, Dee Bee Rich or Erik Ner­vous.

Al­bum-Stream →

The Blinds - Endless Fascination

This Mel­bourne group's 2017 de­but EP still res­onates with me as one of the most unique ex­pe­ri­ences in the garage-/post-/art punk spere of its time. Al­most five years hav­ing passed since then, it's no sur­prise their fol­low-up EP show­cas­es a some­what more stream­lined yet still am­bi­tious and sur­pris­ing grab-bag of songs which con­tin­ue to draw plen­ty of in­spi­ra­tion from both Chairs Miss­ing-era Wire and ear­ly, Syd Bar­rett-era Pink Floyd, this time lean­ing in heav­ier on the spaced-out post punk side of things, al­so sound­ing not quite un­like a more eleb­o­rate ver­sion of B-Boys or Go­tobeds. Then at their most melod­ic and straight­for­ward, Else­where is the kind of an­themic old­school in­die rock smash­er rarely en­coun­tered these days.

Al­bum-Stream →

Crisis Man - Asleep In America

An­oth­er pow­er­ful punch in the nuts from that Cal­i­for­nia su­per­group shar­ing mem­bers with the likes of Acrylics, Pub­lic Eye, Vi­o­lent Change and Cer­e­mo­ny. Here, they de­liv­er their most com­pact and vig­or­ous set of new tunes so far, hav­ing fine-tuned their for­mu­la of equal parts hard­core- and garage punk for max­i­mum im­pact, fus­ing the un­re­lent­ing force of Acrylics and Bad Breed­ing with the abra­sive garage qual­i­ties of, say… ear­ly Teenanger or Video.

Al­bum-Stream →

Klint - Dance

This dude from Schleswig, Ger­many al­ready made an ex­cel­lent first im­pres­sion a cou­ple weeks ago with his de­but 7" on Good­bye Boozy. The art­work sure sug­gests some dun­geon syn­th/-punk affin­i­ty, al­though sound-wise - lack­ing the lat­ter genre's ob­vi­ous black- and/​or old­school "heavy" met­al el­e­ments - i'd rather com­pare this shit to re­cent de­vel­op­ments on the in­ter­sec­tion of garage-, synth- and elec­tro punk and as­so­ci­at­ed acts of the Mononeg­a­tives, Pow!, Liq­uid Face, Ghoulies or Slimex va­ri­ety.

Al­bum-Stream →