Insane Urge - My America

This group's sec­ond cas­sette on Im­po­tent Fe­tus or Down South Tapes or what­ev­er it's called this week, con­sid­er­ably one-ups their pre­vi­ous one in terms of undi­lut­ed fury while car­ry­ing across all the traits we've come to ex­pect from that label's out­put - rough and grimy as fuck yet un­ex­pect­ed­ly catchy at the same time. A per­fect storm of garage- and KBD-in­fest­ed hard­core prim­i­tivism.

Al­bum-Stream →

Piss Shivers - Piss Shivers

A bril­liant new re­lease brought to us by Gim­mie Records, the record la­bel ex­ten­sion of the fab­u­lous Gimme Gim­mie Gim­mie blog-/zine em­pire. Piss Shiv­ers are a Bris­bane duo whose de­but LP kicks up a high­ly flam­ma­ble fuss lo­cat­ed vague­ly in­side the Garage-, Post Punk and Post­core co­or­di­nates, some­times re­mind­ing me of a Cri­sis Man-meet-Hot Snakes hy­brid while at oth­er points you might be re­mind­ed of ear­ly Teenanger, the pitch-black post­core dystopias of Video, VHS or the fu­ri­ous anger of Wymyns Prysyn. Fur­ther i'm re­call­ing the likes of Xe­tas, Gaffer, As­cot Stab­ber and Bat­piss… maybe a bit of Zhoop/​Djinn/​Feed en­er­gy aswell in the more prim­i­tive, straight­for­ward mo­ments.

Al­bum-Stream →

G.U.N. - G.U.N.

I hadn't heard from these Nashville folks for a long time af­ter their promis­ing de­mo in 2019. Well, they're back now and their sound's more fu­ri­ous than ever, brew­ing up a per­fect storm of garage-in­fused hard­core punk with hints of, say, Acrylics, ear­ly Elec­tric Chair, Launch­er, Liq­uid As­sets, Mys­tic Inane, Ce­ment Shoes and Cri­sis Man be­ing just a few of the things that pop in­to my head at first glance.

Al­bum-Stream →

ALF - The Demo

Ex­cel­lent new rough and noisy shit from this Perth, Aus­tralia group op­er­at­ing on the in­ter­sec­tions of garage- and hard­core punk with an added dis­tinct old­school KBD-Vibe not en­tire­ly dis­sim­i­lar to the likes of the Liq­uid As­sets, Frea­kees, Li­po­suc­tion, Launch­er or Mys­tic Inane. An EU edi­tion of this beau­ty is promised to drop pret­ty soon via Good­bye Boozy Records!

Al­bum-Stream →

Snooper - Super Snõõper

At first glance i couldn't help but feel a bit dis­ap­point­ed by the lack of new ma­te­r­i­al on the Nashville group's de­but LP but then again, i can't say these new record­ings of songs most­ly known from pre­vi­ous EPs don't slap - they kick some se­ri­ous ass, trad­ing in some of the pre­vi­ous re­leas­es' sham­bol­ic quirk­i­ness for a bit more of a hard­core edge and while i've re­al­ly grown fond of the EPs' Lo-Fi aes­thet­ics, there have al­so been some ex­am­ples on these that nev­er quite clicked with me in their ear­li­er ver­sions and its those songs that gain the most on this LP which is like­ly al­so a clos­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the group's cur­rent live sound, their shows hav­ing gained kind of a leg­endary rep­u­ta­tion at this point. Can't wait to see these folks tour Eu­rope.

Al­bum-Stream →

Night Punch - Where Sins Bloom So Does Death

On their kick­ass de­but LP, Ham­burg group Night Punch present a tight-as-fuck melange of slight­ly goth-lean­ing, hor­ror-themed garage-, synth- and post punk that some­times cranks its tem­po up in­to hard­core spheres, oth­er times be­ing rem­i­nis­cent of a ba­sic Spits for­mu­la spiked with plen­ty of sur­pris­es and un­ex­pect­ed flour­ish­es for an over­all equal­ly quirky and dark aes­thet­ic which is sure to please dark punk-, death rock- and dun­geon afic­i­na­dos all the same. Fur­ther pos­si­ble ref­er­ences would be a num­ber of garage- and synth punk acts like The Gobs, Liq­uid Face, Shrinkwrap Killers, Bro­ken Prayer, Droids Blood, Iso­tope Soap, the un­fil­tered thrust of Exwhite, maybe even a hint of Acrylics in the rougher patch­es.

Al­bum-Stream →

Warp - Automatic Gratuity

I'd al­most for­got­ten about this San Fran­cis­co group yet here they are fol­low­ing up their im­pres­sive 2019 de­but al­bum with a new EP show­cas­ing their quirky and in­ven­tive sound on the fringes of noise rock, hard- and post­core in a shape both rougher and more re­fined at the same time, echo­ing some of the great­est noise-/weird­core re­leas­es of re­cent years in­clud­ing those by the likes of Warm Bod­ies, Snif­fany & The Nits, Vexx, Dots, Judy & The Jerks or Mys­tic Inane.

Al­bum-Stream →

Slogutis - Slogutis

An in­cred­i­bly self-as­sured de­but tape by a group from Vic­to­ria, Cana­da burst­ing on­to the scene ful­ly formed and ma­ture, bring­ing to life in­ven­tive, haunt­ing and elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed epics com­pact­ed in­to short, dense hard­core tracks in which they let on­ly the murki­est ten­den­cies of noisy hard-/post­core groups á la Acrylics, Vidro, ear­ly Bad Breed­ing col­lide with an over­all aes­thet­ic branch­ing out deep in­to the sup­pressed sub­con­scious, un­can­ny realms of death rock-/dun­geon re­lat­ed or oth­er­wise "black­ened" or met­al in­fused noise.

Al­bum-Stream →

Hellco - Hellco

A sim­ply de­light­ful de­but LP by this Philadel­phia group, brought to us via lo­cal la­bel SRA Records. I wan­na de­scribe this shit as a mixed bag in the best sense pos­si­ble, an ec­cen­tric repos­i­to­ry of slight­ly cow­punk-in­fused art punk hov­er­ing some­where be­tween garage- and noise-heavy hard­core shit with a cer­tain KBD-ex­ten­sion some­what rem­i­nis­cent of ear­ly Elec­tric Chair plus a touch of Soup­cans on one hand, and then on the oth­er, there are some ubiq­ui­tous echoes to be found of old acts on the in­ter­sec­tion of '80s noise rock and pro­to-grunge like, say, U-Men, Scratch Acid, Vol­cano Suns, But­t­hole Surfers, Min­ute­men, Sac­cha­rine Trust, Feed­time and very ear­ly Meat Pup­pets, just to name a cou­ple of the most ob­vi­ous ref­er­ences.

Al­bum-Stream →

Repulsion Switch & Klint - Split

An­oth­er beau­ty from ital­ian pow­er­house la­bel Good­bye Boozy Records. You might re­mem­ber Buenos Aires group re­pul­sion switch from their 2019 de­mo and a bunch of EPs they put out since then. Here, we've got eas­i­ly their strongest batch of tracks so far of their re­fresh­ing­ly sim­ple yet equal­ly ex­plo­sive, garage-fla­vored old­school hard­core sound. An­oth­er known quan­ti­ty here at 12XU head­quar­ters is synth punk gu­ru Klint from Schleswig, Ger­many who takes charge of side b here with his usu­al work­man­like pre­ci­sion, cu­ri­ous ex­pe­r­i­man­ta­tion and a new cou­ple of tunes most­ly on the rougher edge of the spec­trum, per­fect­ly com­ple­ment­ing the RS tracks.

Al­bum-Stream →