Now that's some wild shit from Tübingen, Germany. Breakneck speeds meet extremely catchy hooks and melodies, coming together in a buzzsaw audio aesthetic that sits uncomfortably wedged right inbwteween the sonic worlds of equally melodic and eccentric hardcore acts such as Hippyfuckers, Everyone Is Alone Sometimes, Pink Guitars and the more garage-/egg-leaning high-speed punk attacks of The Gobs, Exwhite, Spewed Brain, Witch Piss or 3D & The Holograms.
Yeah, it's yet another record by that ominous figure which i'm just gonna call "that Indiana dude" from here on 'cos he also goes by a ton of other pseudonyms which i'm not gonna bore you with this time. You know what to expect and he delivers once again - that means more of these minimalist but precise and deadly blows on a sliding scale between hardcore- and garage punk. If anything's changing with this dude's music, it's that his records just keep getting better!
This group based in Alicante and Valencia, Spain (previously also known as Disli on their first EP) certainly has upped their game on their newest EP via Flexidiscos, on which comparatively simplistic bursts of hard- and postcore alternate with more elaborate post punk constructions - you never know what's gonna happen just one song later. All the while, songs like the über-hymn Glamur Interior skillfully counterbalance that trait with plenty of catchy melodic undercurrent and there's even a touch of Wire-esque psychedelia on the closing track Calambre Exquisito. The opening track, on the other hand, has a bit of a Sauna Youth vibe to it while overall, you might catch some echoes of bands like Pyrex, Waste Man, Sievehead, Tube Alloys, Corker, Rank/Xerox or Criminal Code.
This chilean group or solo project just put out a kickass EP mande up of simple and effective shit-fi garage punk rippers that kinda appear predestined for a release on Goodbye Boozy (not saying that's gonna happen, only that it should) where it would fit comfortably inbetween the collected insanities by the likes of 208, Zoids and Silicon Heartbeat.
Painters Tapes has never disappointed and neither does their newest release, the debut Cassingle of this duo delivering two of the most explosive lo-fi rippers of classic oldschool Detroit-style garage punk i've heard in a while. Nothing more, nothing less.
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.
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.
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!
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.
