This Varese, Italy group follows up a fun demo from two years ago with an even stronger digital two-track single. Go Skate evokes the pounding electro punk aesthetics of, say, Spyroids, Freak Genes, O-D-EX or the most recent Shrudd EP. H82W8 then has more of a fluffy garage pop vibe much in the vein of groups such as Slimex, Daughter Bat and the Lip Stings, Ghoulies, Gee Tee and Busted Head Racket, among many others.
Following a couple of exceptionally enjoyable EPs, this Los Angeles group stays a delightfully quirky enigma on their first full length record, whose often minimalist yet always playful and elaborately constructed bursts of chaos consistently find new ways of wiggling their way out of established genre tropes and conventions and as such, remind me of a whole bunch of different things at different points. What i can say though is that this shit certainly shares a common spirit and tons of that same unshackled creativity with other hyperactive agents of distraction like Reality Group, Patti, Skull Cult, R.M.F.C., Big Bopper, early Uranium Club, Print Head, Subtle Turnhips, Shark Toys, Pressure Pin and Meal.
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Louiseville, Kentucky group Shrudd has been around for a couple years already but only really started to strike creative gold with last year's Bizarro and Microbiome EP's, the former dealing with more hardcore-adjacent sounds while the latter dabbled in a kinda familiar garage-/synth punk territory, an aesthetic that also dominates their newest EP on which they considerably elevate the weirdness factor, veering into more of a pronounced eggpunk direction evoking the likes of Prison Affair, Victor, Set-Top Box or Paulo Vicious in equal measure to contemporary synth-/electro punk acts á la Isotope Soap, Freak Genes, Spyroids and Powerplant.
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A fucking dream team of the current eggpunk wave joins forces on this new split EP in the form of two very unique and distinct groups, which have both already left quite a mark on the scene in just a couple years. Heck, you actually and reasonably might consider both groups' sounds as having kickstarted their own little egg-subgenres. Altogether, this is a killer collection of hits, as you already might have suspected!
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Here's yet another quality artifact of a smartypants garage-/post punk hybrid that does nothing too new or groundbreaking yet delights with plenty of well-constructed odditiy, just the right amount of randomness coupled with an abundance of super-catchy hooks. All of that puts them roughly in the neighborhood of, say, a slowed-down Uranium Club, Vintage Crop, Dumb, Aborted Tortoise, Lithics or Pinch Points.
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Now that's an impressive debut LP by this London group, who've apparently been around for many years already but took until now to come up with a full length record. Right out of the gate, the opening tracks has some vibe á la early Saccharine Trust with a touch of Flipper. Outsude Looking In kinds plays out like a forgotten Wire track colliding with the likes of Volcano Suns, Mission af Burma in addition to more recent stuff by Institute, Peace de Résistance. Animals Eat For Free then starts out loosely resembling eighties The Fall before taking a quite melodic turn in the chorus. And so it goes on, this eclectic and testeful war chest of ideas and influences, among which you might also consider X (AUS), Membranes, Cravats, Fungus Brains, early, pre-dub-influence Swell Maps and many more old DIY (post-)punk greats, just as much as contemporary groups like Shark Toys, The Cowboy, Society, earlier Sleepies, weirdo frenchies Subtle Turnhips, other London groups like 2010s garage powerhouse Sauna Youth - of whom i'm reminded mostly in the more straightforward second half of this record - or maybe Tense Men, whose swan-song album, released post-breakup in 2018, bears some striking similarities to this thing. There's absolutely no room for boredom inbetween these endless flashes of unhinged inspiration and creativity.
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The excellent debut by this group from Jackson, Mississippi delivers a couple fun and deranged little bangers made up of rocket-propelled, garage-enhanced, fuzz-infested hard- and postcore shit that's shure to get the approval of seasoned connoisseurs in the realm of other more-or-less recent quirky hardcore phenomena á la Fried E/m, Mystic Inane, Crisis Man, Rolex, Headcheese, ALF and so many more!
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What new things are there to say about yet another Gobs EP? It's the motherfuckin' Gobs for fuck's sake and few other bands have perfected the formula for blown-out and dumb lo-fi fuzz punk insanity, equally unrelenting and catchy, as well as this Olympia, Washington group. A league of their own, really.
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Fun little treat, the debut single of this group "from the northern americas". Kick You sounds like the best of Radioactivity, Sonic Avenues and Cheap Whine welded together, then given a distinct pop punk bent. Violins then lets a substantial hardcore salvo segue into a strange amalgamation of Surfa Rosa-era Pixies and early Mudhoney, spiced up with slightly psych-leaning vocal harmonies. Tasty!
New Orleans garage punk dude D. Sablu did make a quite positive impression already with a string of demos and tapes in 2020-2022. On his full-length debut via Yes We Cannibal though, his artistic vision comes into much sharper focus, spanning a good deal of variety in his sound from the slightly noise rock / post punk-leaning opener Bomber Stomp to straightforward garage punk smashers like Too Much Of The News and the Dead Boys-infected tune Stuck In A Rut, altogether having a bit of a Kid Chrome, Sauna Youth or Teenanger vibe to them, sometimes veering into straight up harodcore punk territory while detonations á la Scandalous and World Peace go all-in on that tendency. Whatever shit D. Sablu touches turns into pure gold or at the very least copper on this album. In some ways this thing also positively reminds me of the most recent EP by Jean Mignon.
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