Romance - Seven Inches of Romance

A neat lit­tle yet-to-be-pressed 7" by a Syd­ney group sound­ing a lit­tle as if a more spiky ver­sion of Lithics col­lid­ed with the likes of noisy post punkers Brandy, the re­cent noisec­ore of Shove, a very slight hint of Wipers and the an­cient record­ings of noise rock­ers World Dom­i­na­tion En­ter­pris­es.

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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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Affordable Repayments - Can't Win For Losing Some Days

This group from Por­tar­ling­ton, Aus­tralia cre­ates a dron­ing, sprawl­ing and nonethe­less ab­solute­ly rip­ping sound­scape that com­bines the traits of such time­less greats as Wipers, 80s Son­ic Youth, U-Men or Live Skull, just as much as a fuzzy clump of AUS and NZ groups like The Gor­dons, Fun­gus Brains, X and Feed­time.

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Soft Shoulder - Smile Building's Exit

Tempe, Ari­zona group Soft Shoul­der have been at it for way over a decade now and still seem as live­ly and pro­duc­tive as ever, hav­ing churned out a steady stream of sin­gles and EPs re­leased dig­i­tal­ly and as lim­it­ed lathe cuts the past year. Their newest LP presents them as fo­cused as they haven't been in a long while though, their quirky-as-fuck mix­ture of post punk and noise rock burst­ing with en­er­gy as catchy grooves some­what rem­i­nis­cent of The Fall from the late eight­ies on­ward col­lides with a de­cid­ed­ly no-wave school of noise and dis­so­nance.

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Catalogue - Modern Delusion

It took me a while to no­tice but the newest LP by Mar­seille group Cat­a­logue turns out to be their strongest ef­fort to date. Where their sound could still be a lit­tle tir­ing on their pre­vi­ous LP, they show a lot more va­ri­ety on their newest one keep­ing things in­ter­est­ing through­out. Their noisy post punk, as usu­al be­ing dri­ven for­ward by eight­ies-style drum ma­chine beats, may owe a lit­tle to Big Black in some parts, Live Skull in oth­ers or some no-wave dis­so­nance gets loaded up with catchy hooks. In House­plants we even get to hear some al­most synth-/new wave stylings.

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Day Residue - Day Residue

More awe­some shit cour­tesy of Painters Tapes by a De­troit group hav­ing a strong pro­to-grunge vibe to them that wouldn't seem out of place next to ear­ly Mud­honey, U-Men, Feed­time, X (the aus­tralian group) or 80s Sci­en­tists. Al­so you might find some traces of amer­i­can pro­to noise rock á la Flip­per, Bro­ken Tal­ent just as well as more re­cent groups rough­ly in the or­bit of TVO or Vexx in there.

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Objections - BSA Day /​ Better Luck Next Time

A beau­ti­ful­ly out-of-fash­ion 7" by a Leeds group cre­at­ing a sound lo­cat­ed amidst the rough co­or­di­nates of math rock, post­core and noise rock, ob­vi­ous­ly pay­ing trubute pri­mar­i­ly to the 90s-to-2000s era of Dischord Records and in par­tic­u­lar to groups of the Jaw­box, Au­to­clave, Hoover, Lung­fish, Q and not U va­ri­ety.

Black Button - Rejoice

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.

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Body House - Hose Man

When it comes to con­tem­po­rary noise rock, i'm no­to­ri­ous­ly hard to please but this L.A. group eas­i­ly does the trick for me, play­ing a vari­ant of the genre ap­proach­ing Big Black lev­els of dis­so­nant shred­ding while al­so re­mind­ing me a bit of old­school acts like Dis­tort­ed Pony, Bas­tro, Drunks With Guns as well as more re­cent stuff á la Spray Paint… or, maybe, an ul­tra-straight­for­ward ver­sion of Mul­ti­c­ult, dri­ven along by vi­cious, at times al­most Gang of Four-es­que grooves.

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Trigger Cut - Soot

Back from the lit­er­al ash­es of a cer­tain prac­tice space apoc­a­lypse, noise rock­ers Trig­ger Cut re­turn as strong and vi­tal as ever with their newest LP which sees the group in­creas­ing­ly carv­ing out their own lit­tle place in­side their genre while skill­ful­ly pay­ing hom­mage to nu­mer­ous clas­sics all the while - think of shit like Bas­tro, Dis­tort­ed Pony, any­thing Al­bi­ni-re­lat­ed… al­so some re­al sur­pris­es here, like the open­er Wa­ter Fukkery, hav­ing a melod­ic old­school emo-/post­core vibe to it rem­i­nis­cent of clas­sic acts in the vicin­i­ty of Dri­ve Like Je­hu, Au­to­clave, Quick­sand or Jaw­box. With­out ques­tion this is their most di­verse, in­ven­tive and play­ful record to date.

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