C57BL/​6 - LP 1

It's been a whop­ping five years since we last heard of this Los An­ge­les group. Their first LP (duh!) is a bit heav­ier on the hard­core- and garage punk side of things af­ter their old­er shit had been lean­ing stronger in­to its synth-/elec­tro punk ten­den­cies. Those re­lent­less­ly bru­tal elec­tric beats are still front and cen­ter here though, giv­ing es­pe­cial­ly the epic open­ing shot Open World kind of an in­dus­tri­al-tinged, cursed Aus­muteants-meet-Big Black vibe… with ad­di­tion­al over­tones of Cri­sis Man maybe?

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Chinese Mudmen - Meet The Mud /​ Mud On Mud

Crawl­ing out of the same brown pud­dle that pre­vi­ous­ly spat out the won­ders of Scab Breath we get two more raw and de­light­ful clumps of garage punk, this time with more of an hard­core edge to it and a slight note of KBD muck. An at­tack on the sens­es just as straight­for­ward as it's crude and sham­bol­ic - traits you might al­so find in re­cent acts á la Mod­ern Needs, Liq­uids or Fried E/​m.

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Eunix - Demo

Mem­bers of Bib and Ni­hilis­tic fit, among a whole shit­load of oth­er groups, de­liv­er their first EP here and it's hard to not get ex­cit­ed in face of this ex­plo­sive force. These are su­per-sol­id, ma­ture and elab­o­rate song as­sem­blies made up of a time­less post­core sound which is al­so per­fect­ly able to slow things down - like in the doom/s­ludge-lean­ing ex­cer­cise Face Down - with­out bor­ing you to death. Al­ways al­ways a sign of com­po­si­tion­al ex­cel­lence if you ask me. In re­cent years, we might've heard sim­i­lar blasts from bands like Ro­mance, Shove, As­cot Stab­ber, Flow­ers of Evil or ear­ly Bad Breed­ing.

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Advoids - Advoids

Mem­bers of Diode and Frea­kees gift us yet an­oth­er at­tack of de­li­cious­ly off-the-rails noise, this time close­ly scrap­ing past the rough co­or­di­nates of post punk, post- and weird­core. Some repi­ti­tive The Fall-es­que riff leads in­to pure hard­core an­ar­chy in All the World. Give Me Mine then has a dis­tinc­tive ear­ly Min­ute­men-meet-James Chance kind of en­er­gy to it. Fur­ther you might find some traces of Flip­per, Sac­cha­rine Trust or The Pop Group in there or al­ter­nate­ly, you might iden­ti­fy bits and pieces of more re­cent shit á la Rolex, Big Bop­per or Gay Cum Dad­dies.

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Pig Earth - Exit Wound

A son­ic ex­pe­ri­ence won­der­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist, craft­ed by some Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton group. Prime in­flu­ence here seems to be a whole bat­tery of ear­ly-to-mid eight­ies, loose­ly SST and Touch & Go-con­nect­ed stuff - on the more strum­my, folk-in­fused side of things ad­mit­ted­ly, but nev­er afraid of spon­ta­neous­ly mor­ph­ing in­to short bursts of hard­core punk ei­ther. Most ob­vi­ous amoung those in­flu­ences would prob­a­bly be shit among the lines of Angst and Meat Pup­pets, ear­ly Di­nosaur Jr. and, sec­on­dar­i­ly, U-Men, Mud­honey and 80s Sci­en­tists, some very slight hints of Dicks and Wipers. Or al­ter­nate­ly, you might think of more re­cent Acts like ear­ly Milk Mu­sic, Dhar­ma Dogs, Chronophage and Damak.

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Fugitive Bubble - Delusion

The Olympia, Wash­ing­ton group's first long­play­ing cas­sette, fol­low­ing two equal­ly awe­some tapes on the fab­u­lous Im­po­tent Fe­tus la­bel, still de­liv­ers the goods of un­pre­dictable, free­wheel­ing hard- and post­core with ad­di­tion­al in­gre­di­ents of garage punk and mild in­san­i­ty, stub­born­ly re­fus­ing to fit in­to your pre­con­cieved no­tions of what this thing called punk rock is sup­posed play out like. A fair­ly eclec­tic, genre-bend­ing ap­proach which you might, if you re­al­ly had to, com­pare to groups as di­verse as Das Drip, Warm Bod­ies, Vexx, Judy & The Jerks, Mys­tic Inane, Hot­mom, Gen Pop or Snif­fany & The Nits at one point or an­oth­er.

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Snarling Dogs - Demo

This group from Pitts­burgh, Penn­syl­va­nia pulls off a vague­ly fa­mil­iar but nonethe­less spec­tac­u­lar com­bus­tion of catchy old­school hard­core en­er­gy with some cow­punk vibes to it, op­er­at­ing some­where in­be­tween the rough pa­ra­me­ters of Germs, Dicks, the ear­ly hard­core in­car­na­tions of Angst and Meat Pup­pets, as well as more re­cent stuff like Fried E/​m and Mod­ern Needs.

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Dregs - Enemy Not Me

Fol­low­ing up on their al­ready quite awe­some 2019 de­mo, Austin group Dregs shift their sound a good bit away from a more garage- and fuzz punk lean­ing sound, fur­ther to­wards a hard­er to pin-down mix of in­flu­ences on the fringes of 80s-to-mid-90s hard- and post­core, among oth­ers sug­gest­ing the likes of X (US), Dicks or Flip­per at some points, post­core groups like Gray Mat­ter or Dri­ve Like Je­hu at oth­ers while more re­cent bands like Vexx, Cel Ray, Gen Pop or Lit­tle Ug­ly Girls wouldn't sound too far off ei­ther.

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Illiterates - No Experts

The newest EP by Pitts­burg band Il­lit­er­ates, fol­low­ing up an al­ready pret­ty fuck­ing good 2021 record, is noth­ing short de­ment­ed and fun old­school hard­core per­fec­tion, kin­da mak­ing a point of in­vent­ing noth­ing new here while nev­er drop­pig the ball for a sec­ond ei­ther - this is one tight, fun and, well… dumb as fuck blast of a record.

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Spewed Brain - International Heartthrob

Beau­ti­ful­ly sham­bol­ic chaos op­er­at­ing some­where around the weird­er fringes of hard­core and garage punk. When in hard­core mode, i'm most re­mind­ed of Cells and oth­er hard­core-lean­ing projects of Con­nie Voltaire while on the garage side of things, i'm think­ing of stuff á la Liq­uids, ear­ly Erik Ner­vous or - more re­cent­ly - Print Head and Scab Breath.

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