Physicalist is a new group from Vancouver i presume, centering around Dave P of the local power pop sensation Night Court whose catchy qualities are also present on this record of otherwise pretty different sonics, an infectious blend of hard-, art- and postcore with a distinct garage punk edge and melodic overtones which overall reminds me of a bunch of groups like Mystic Inane, Rolex, Launcher on the more hard-/artcore side of things and The Dumpies, Sauna Youth and Eyeball on the catchier, pop- and garage leaning side.
I don't have that much insightful to say about this nice EP other than this Boise, Idaho group dabbles in a certain sub-niche carved out previously by groups like Prison Affair, Beer and maybe Set-Top Box, playing out kinda like an extra-crude version of that particular stretch of the eggpunk landscape and succeeding exactly because of that dissonant crudeness, even if it ain't adding anything new or novel to the mix here.
Rough-ass KBD-infused oldschool garage punk shit that sounds to me as if the early works of Strange Attractor got fused with the primitive-as-fuck aesthetics and raw energy of early The Dogs or American Muscle, albeit with an altogether more solid and reliable bunch of tunes to draw from than what the aforementioned two acts had to work with in their earliest days. This shit kicks some serious ass, plain and simple.
The trajectory Brooklyn punks Shop Talk have taken over the years has certainly been among the less likely ones, having first come to my attention with their self-titled 2016 debut mini-LP, still featuring what i'd describe as a more leaned-back garage punk style very much of its time, somewhere inbetween equal parts Gun Club and contemporary acts of the time like Woolen Men and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. After that, it took them like seven years before their next release, 2023's incredible The Offering EP which saw both a thorough overhaul and significant maturation of their sound defined by catchy-ass '77-ish hooks rarely heard in such a rousing manner since the glory years of Dickies, Buzzcocks and Adverts, which would already be more than enough for them to perfectly stand out from the pack but it's actually only half of their appeal here and wouldn't be complete without the equally melodic, elaborate guitar work of front man Jon Garcia and his vicious yet soul- and tuneful singing. A winning formula to which they've stuck ever since and now their second or first longplayer, depending on how you count, feels like the logical culmination of all those years of infectious songcraft, half of it consisting of new material and the other half of kickass new recordings of some of their greatest hits so far, stretching back as far as their aforementioned debut record. The result sounds like a million bucks and as far as straightforward but elegant punk rock with a clear vision goes, i doubt you'll get to hear much better this year. An instant classic if i ever heard one.
The Debut LP of these portuguese fellows delights with a flawless blend of synth-enhanced garage punk that on one hand often feels like a welcome throwback to an earlier, late-2010s era of electrified, egg-ish punk delirium of the Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp. variety with additional touches of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Kid Chrome's heavy-duty riffing, while all the same feeling stylistically equally well-connected to somewhat more recent artifacts by the likes of Beef, The Gobs, Kerozine, Factory City Children and, most of all, 3D and The Holograms. So, certainly not reinventing the wheel here but nonetheless this is fun and well-executed shit that any genre aficinado shouldn't miss out on.
More excellent hardcore shit from this Dartmouth, Nova Scotia group on what i consider their most appealing release so far, mixing some classic early eighties hardcore attack with lots of garage-y hooks, '77- and KBD-era melodicism. If the likes of Jacket Burner, Buck Biloxi or Bart And The Brats were to record a hardcore punk record, this is just about what i'd imagine it to sound like.
Oh hey, right on time to that other dog-themed group, here's new shit from the only band in the world not called The Dogs and while Dog Lips of Portsmouth, New Hampshire may have had some similarity to that group around the time of their first EP in 2022, they've already evolved away from that with their previous Danger Forward LP at the very latest, on which they dabbled in more of a Post Punk sound, though not without some distinct hints and flashbacks towards their garage punk past. Their newest one then feels like a straight continuation of that stuff at first but also keeps morphing and evolving their style of quite catchy post punk that more often than not reminds me of such groups which started out in the past decade like Flat Worms, The Cowboy, early Protomartyr, Plax or Speed Week.
After a number of EPs which at first may have come off as all vibes and attitute with rather little in terms of substance, that thing has gradually improved over time and now i'll say the welsh group has just released what may count as their most substantial release so far with their newest EP via Gob Nation, which i'll also admit i like quite a bit more than most of the other only bands called the dogs. This is no more and no less than an all-killer batch of simple but dead-on-target '77-ish, sleazed-up garage punk tunes making you wanna smash some shit.
Quality hardcore shit courtesy of a Tokyo group which blends some distinctly '90s school of post-thrash-era (not the website, haha…) hardcore riffing with a particularly japanese-sounding melange of NWOBHM-infused garage-, speed- and motörpunk… you could almost say right in time for that new Guitar Wolf record just to remind us in what corner of the world this particular sausage has been made particularly tasty and consistently for many, many years now.
Brilliant garage-/egg-/synth punk fare on this neat debut EP by some Montreal-based dude or group that i completely missed when it was first released as their contribution to Demo Fest 2025. Now here's my second chance and damn, this is some good shit right here! The toy keyboard-meets-hammond-organ sound of the first two tracks brings me right back to some earlier days of (proto-) egg madness and particularly of those Mark Cone records from 2016/'17 respectively, while the next pair of tunes has a bit more of an electronic, industrial yet still absolutely playful feel somewhere inbetween the worlds of, say, Beef and R. Clown, before the closing track, a Violet Femmes cover tune, quite plausibly gives away one of the primary inspirations for this whole mess.
