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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like a smelly puddle of pure hard- and noisecore disgust, this neat little tape by New York group Opsec has kind of an extensive Flipper- and No Trend feel to it just as well as bits and pieces of more recent phenomena like Soupcans, C-Krit, Stinkhole, Crisis Man, Black Button or Mystic Inane.
Three hardcore releases especially stuck out this week, all of 'em more or less treading off the genre's beaten paths. The most conventionally sounding - relatively speaking of course - is the EP by People's Temple on NY label RoachLeg Records, giving us an extremely tuneful variation on 80s hardcore, at times coming across like a blend of Circle Jerks with early-to-middle-era Naked Raygun and with occasional flourishes of Hüsker Dü to boot. Of more recend Bands, Fried E/m might also fit the bill. Hickey's tape on Archfiend records then infuses contemporary strands of garage-, synth- and eggpunk weirdness with plenty of oldschool hardcore energy, along the way also evoking the some vibes of Flipper, Spike in Vain, Broken Talent… With this release, we might just be entering the eggcore era! Montreal's Hood Rats operate in a vaguely similar territory, also having a sound grounded in garage punk brimming with lo-fi eggpunk quirkyness just as much as with an unkempt KBD energy and the tunes to make it stick.
Punter came up with an excellent demo in 2020. Their new EP on Drunken Sailor Records elevates their sound to a whole different level though, combining the strengths of "heavy" metal- and hard rock-infused garage acts á la Polute, Cheap Heat, Cement Shoes or Stiff Richards, the hard rockin' hardcore attack of, say, Cutters and Cülo, postcore of the Dollhouse, Acrylics, Flea Collar variety and all the drama, rage and melancholy of Pist Idiots, Jackson Reid Briggs & The Heaters.
This Greenville, South Carolina group kicks up an excellent racket located somwhere inbetween the gears of garage punk, post punk and postcore bearing some similaritiy to more recent stuff á la Big Bopper, Mystic Inane, Dollhouse, Cutie, Wymyns Prysyn, Crisis Man… just as much as to classic pieces by the likes of Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, Nation Of Ulysses, Rites of Spring or Gray Matter.
Having made somewhat of a splash with their unpredictable 2019 demo and a more conventinally hardcore-leaning EP in 2021, the Richmond, Virginia group is shaking things up once again with their first full-length effort, significantly slowing things down and seemingly taking plenty of cues from left-field 80s acts on the experimental intersection of hardcore punk and (proto-)noise rock in the vein of, among others, Flipper, No Trend, Spike in Vain or Broken Talent, while also not entirely dissimilar to more recent groups like Soupcans, Vulture Shit, C-Krit or Stinkhole.
