The Vortex - Executive Dysfunction

This San­ta Ana group emits short and noisy KBD-soaked ar­ti­facts, equal parts old­school garage- and hard­core punk with the oc­ca­sion­al touch of Gun Club. The over­all im­pres­sion ain't too far off Neo Neos or any of mae­stro Voltaire's var­i­ous hard­core projects, ear­ly Erik Ner­vous and maybe some hint of Launch­er, meshed to­geth­er with some beau­ti­ful ac­ci­dent of the kind that might've just as well oc­cured on some ran­dom Deluxe Bias or Im­po­tent Fe­tus re­lease.

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Pressure Pin - Superficial Feature

The busy Mon­tre­al scene has yet an­oth­er head-scratch­er in store for the dis­cern­ing con­nois­seur of weird-ass garage-/post-/egg-/AD­HD-punk and oh boy, is that a de­light­ful and quirky, dis­joint­ed-as-fuck mess of an EP scav­eng­ing bits and pieces from all the right phe­nom­e­na of con­tem­po­rary punk ec­cen­tric­i­ty in­clud­ing acts such as Print Head, Re­al­i­ty Group, Pat­ty, Slimex, Big Bop­per or Skull Cult.

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Exwhite - Estray

I'm kin­da blown away right now by the strength of that lat­est EP by a group prob­a­bly based some­where around the Leipzig/​Berlin/​Halle ax­is of garage- and post punk. What we get is sim­ply first rate melod­ic garage shit record­ed in ap­pro­pri­ate­ly rough fi­deli­ty, sim­ple and stu­pid, stun­ning­ly ef­fec­tive and com­plete­ly en­dear­ing. A feast for ad­mir­ers of, say, Boo­ji Boys, Sweet Reaper, Telecult… even some hint of Ra­dioac­tiv­i­ty /​ Marked Men is ev­i­dent here.

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Total Sham - Life as a Total Sham

Gear up for some com­plete­ly un­san­i­tized, garage-in­fest­ed old­school hard­core may­hem, just as rough as it's catchy and fun, on this EP by a Kansas City group that ap­pears to con­sist of the same folks oth­er­wise known as Dye. Fans of groups á la Fried E/​m and Mod­ern Needs are sure­ly gonna ap­prove of this, as will those of slight­ly more garage-lean­ing bands like Launch­er, Liq­uid As­sets or Mys­tic Inane.

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Priors - NEWNEWNEW

A yum­my new EP by Mon­tre­al punks Pri­ors de­liv­er­ing three new in­fec­tious smash­ers start­ing off with some garage-meets-hard­core en­er­gy akin to sped-up Use­less Eaters or Mononeg­a­tives, fol­lowed by a su­per ef­fec­tive midtem­po post punk stom­per with a hint of Wire. The clos­ing track, then, has a bit of a Scream­ers and De­vo vibe to it and al­so bears some sim­i­lar­i­ty to more re­cent stuff by Iso­tope Soap.

Steröid - S.M.O.K.E. Show

Okay, so it ap­pears egg met­al is a re­al thing now? Kin­da makes sense if you think about it, like the cutesy, garage band-fu­eled lo-fi flip­side to the cur­rent dun­geon punk craze. This shit sounds a bit as if if a par­tic­u­lar­ly lo-fi in­car­na­tion of Sheer Mag at their se­mi-re­cent hair met­al piv­ot had kept at least a healthy min­i­mum of self aware­ness.

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Vision 3D - Hypnose

Pret­ty fuck­ing amaz­ing shit, the sec­ond long play­er of this group from Tour­nai, Bel­gium. Right out of the gate i'm re­mind­ed of so much good stuff both an­cient and con­tem­po­rary on the in­ter­sec­tion of art-, post- and garage punk, round­ed out by a dis­tinct­ly dis­so­nant no wave-ish, noise rock-y edge. Some­times they sound a bit like as if the amer­i­cana-in­fused post punk of Angst were to col­lide with the sim­plis­tic beat of Man Sized Ac­tion and a good mea­sure of ear­ly The Fall strum­mi­ness. Oth­er mo­ments, i imag­ine to hear echos of Mem­branes, Gor­dons or Swell Maps, while you might just as well draw com­par­isons to more re­cent acts such as Hon­ey Radar, Toe Ring, Lithics, Germ House, Shark Toys and Sub­tle Turn­hips.

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Bloody Keep - Bloody Keep

Now what kind of black death is this shit sup­posed to be again? The Band­camp-bred dun­geon punk (micro-)genre rarely fails to amaze when its over-the-top ab­sur­di­ty col­lides with such top-notch per­for­mances and qual­i­ty songcraft re­peat­ed­ly. What kin­da starts out like an old­school black met­al-in­fused bas­tardiza­tion of Chub­by and the Gang and ear­ly Sheer Mag sub­se­quent­ly throws quite a bit of (neo-?)folk punk RNA in­to the mix, dares to build up kin­da elab­o­rate and flex­i­ble song struc­tures while nev­er ne­glect­ing its pop qual­i­ties, mak­ing for a both dread- and joy-in­duc­ing sound­track for a doomed hu­man­i­ty on its way to­wards the new post-apoc­a­lyp­tic dark ages.

Erik Nervous - Halfass

An­oth­er re­lease by Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan garage punk lu­mi­nary Erik Ner­vous is al­ways a rusty buck­et full of of pure joy to be­hold. Large­ly de­liv­ered with a bor­der­line-hard­core en­er­gy lev­el (hal­fass my ass!), this EP is with­out ques­tion among his most di­rect, com­pact and stream­lined batch­es of tight-ass smash­ers to date. Oh, and what would an Erik Ner­vous re­lease be with­out the promise of a yet-to-be-record­ed va­por­ware song that might or might not crop up at some point?

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Society - All Flies Go To Hell

Four-and-a-half fun litte strum­ming ex­cer­cis­es of the heav­i­ly pro­to punk in­spired kind, done by a dude who al­so hap­pens to be a mem­ber of Toe Ring. Sounds a bit like a mix of Peace De Re­sis­tance, Woolen Men and Hon­ey Radar with a hint of Mod­ern Lovers on top.

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