A fun, smart high-energy blow of garage-infused hardcore punk delivered by a group that might or mightn’t be from Long Beach, California, holding a perfect balance between dumb straight-ahead oldschool energy and the various quirks and eccentricities of more recent hardcore phenomena, which sorta locates them on the genre map somewhere in the excellent company of other contemporary troublemakers such as Mystic Inane, Launcher, Fried E/M, Modern Needs or Liquid Assets.
This Philadelphia group's line-up brings together generations of punks, having Chuck Meehan of hardcore dinosaurs YDI among its ranks as well as members of more recent acts like Blank Spell, Haldol and DeStructos. Their first EP explodes right into your face with eight-and-a-half bursts of unpredictable, chaotic and noise-infused hard-/post-/weirdcore roughly in the ballpark of what you might've heard in recent years from bands like Kaleidoscope, Daydream or Fugitive Bubble.
This L.A. group comes right out of the orbit of Launcher and Co-Ed. As you might already expect, this is another explosive charge of simple, raw and energetic noise made up to equal parts of garage- and catchy early 80s hardcore punk enhanced with that certain ragged KBD-style additive we've come to know and love out of this particular neighborhood.
An early contender for the loudest record of 2022, this burst of maximally abrasive noise - recorded sometime in 2016 and now finally released via Runstate Tapes - truly has what it takes to startle the dead and sounds like it crawled out of a disgusting brown puddle of pure despair, its hardcore punk foundation buried deep under thick layers of white noise and feedback… but listen closely and you might also find many unexpected flashes of melody embedded deep in there.
…and here's yet another short and sweet artifact of vaguely egg-related garage punk by some NJ person. This shit plays out like a mix of Alien Nosejob in HC 7" mode, S.B.F. and Connie Voltaire's hardcore-focussed projects. Also, good call transforming two slow, boring tracks into exciting, fast tracks through the wonders of cutting edge pitch adjustment technology.
This Demo of by a NYC group is an explosive ripper that doesn't even try to squeeze any new nuances out of a style of ultra-oldschool hardcore punk that could plausibly have originated from any point in time for the last 4+ decades, instead shredding through that very old formula as forceful as it's ever gonna get with conviction, persistence, unerring aim and precision.
The 2019 demo by this Washington, D.C. group had its very own thrills already, but their debut 7" on 11 PM Records is a different kind of beast altogether, way more focused in its vision and benefiting from increased production values. The opening track Blood Runs Through is the prime example here for what makes them special - a general catchyness and sense of melody rarely heard in contemporary hardcore punk collides with straightforward riffs that often seem to originate from the oldschool "heavy" metal playbook rather than classic hardcore, woven into slightly eccentric song structures that always have a surprise or two up their sleeves. At their best, they kinda come across like an unlikely fusion of Cülo and Naked Raygun.
A kickass little demo from some Buenos Aires group or person, standing with one foot in the contemporary puddle of lockdown-induced DIY garage punk, the other one immersed deep into layers of early eighties hardcore punk with a little bit of that certain KBD-style grime on top. Simple, economic and effective.
A spectacular first impression of a Copenhagen group playing a rather unconventional mix of post punk, hard- and postcore incorporating a rare sense of melody and a strong psychedelic, almost shoegaze-y undercurrent. Also, thinking of the Copenhagen scene, you can't help but register a faint echo of early Iceage and Lower.
This melbourne group's debut EP delivers five versatile high-energy blows, shapeshifting their way somewhere around the fringes of the extended hard-/post-/noisecore multiverse, their relentless yet sophisticated attack calling to mind the likes of Dollhouse, Cement Shoes or Vexx.
