Last Year's Epoxy River and Super Pool LP by this Evesham, New Jersey (presumably one-man-) group was already such a massive leap in quality for them and yet again, they manage to considerably refine their sound on this newest LP, on which they kinda leave behind the late-2000s fuzz punk and noise pop ingredients that dominated that record and lean even more into the oldschool '80s and '90s college- and indie rock-informed sounds ranging from classic Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh, Bitch Magnet and early Seam to the likes of Superchunk and Polvo, with just a subtle hint of first and second wave emo thrown in for good measure but also increasing amounts of '80s hardcore-based proto-noise rockers like Flipper, Big Black, Drunks With Guns and No Trend, especially in the final stretch of the record. There's an unpredictable quality and an explosive, uncontainable energy to these tunes, radiating the pure untamed joy of blasting a euphoric and abrasive, larger-than-life and kinda anachronistic type of melodic noise out of your gear that feels pleasantly out-of-place in this era, all of it further thrown deliciously off-balance by the ear-piercing screams that prove this dude still ain't ready to half-ass anything here.
Holy fuck, what this Wakefield, UK group is pulling off on their debut EP is pushing so many of the right buttons for me. Rooted in timeless buzzsaw-guitar post punk with more than just a bit of a Big Black edge, this shit also incorporates much of a catchy garage punk immediacy, noise rock sonic assault and relentless hardcore propulsion with plenty of melodic scraps and fragments peppered all throughout. This is so fucking up my alley and reminds me of another crop of UK post punk acts that either predate or avoid the more gentrified nature of the current UK landscape, the closest comparisons i can come up with from the top of my head would be Leeds-based groups Cool Jerks and Coded Marking, but that doesn't tell the whole story either.
In a world of rapidly changing musical hypes and trends and an unrelenting social media promo rat race trying to please an algorithm way more than actual humans, i always get some healing out of watching a band as uncompromising and unfazed by the modern attention economy as these frenchmen, who even predate this blog by over a decade, simply doing whatever the fuck they like for close to a quarter century by now. Accordingly, their seventh LP once again shares all the qualities and quirks you've come to love about them over time and nonetheless they stay utterly unpredictable here in their art punk that stays every bit as crude as it's catchy and nonetheless has plenty of variety and smarts buried under its rough surface too, their possible inspirations spanning from old-timey noise makers á la Half Japanese, The Membranes, Feedtime, The Fall, various old no wave-related or even slightly kraut-ish indulgences to slightly more recent garage punk essentials like the early works of The UV Race and Eddy Current Suppression Ring. But really, it would be unfair at this point to treat Subtle Turnhips as anything less than the unique and uncompromising creative force in their own right they've proven to be and this new record too is no less than yet another instant genre classic.
Here's another strange artifact of peculiar yet also kinda catchy noise rock and postcore delirium for connoisseurs of rough and unwieldy noise. Agita are a group from Philadelphia and their third EP, just released on cassette by local label Strange Mono, unleashes upon us fifteen attacks of a crude ruckus mostly less than one minute long that reminds me as much of early proto noise rockers á la Flipper, No Trend or even slightly of very early Rudimentari Peni as it does of more recent noisy oddities like Soupcans, Soft Shoulder, making for twelve delightful minutes of cluttered, chaotic noise held im place by reassuringly rigid and seamlessly integraded supporting structures, hammered home in an unrelenting performance that ain't pulling any punches here.
Once again a real knockout tape brought to us by the reliable New York purveyor of varyingly punk-related eccentricities, Fuzzy Warbles Cassettes. The opening track No Kill Means immediatelty radiates kind of an art punk vibe á la Television-meet-Ruts or more recently, Peace de Résistance or later Institute. Soft Change then takes a way more abstract, minimalist post punk route, quite cold and rigid but kinda funky at the same time. Cave One is a relatively straightforward, but by no means dumb, scrap of catchy garage punk and so is All Skill Levels with its equally post- and proto punk-ish vibes and an additional layer of dissonant noise. Great Pastures compresses some of these same traits into an unexpectedly catchy and compact little package of tangentially Sonic Youth-esque buzz. Anticev then surprises with a lot of a surf rock feel. And so it goes on... this is an eclectic grab bag of a record that pulls a new surprise out of its hat at every corner and quite woundrously doesn't drop the ball even once but rather feels weirdly coherent and methodical in its shapeshifting approach.
Our favorite ukrainian eggpunk odditiy Завірюга sure have shaken up their sound a good bit for their newest EP, doing away with the guitars altogether so the bass really takes center stage this time, complemented by minimalist synths and electronics that overall push these songs in a slighty noise rock- and industrial-leaning direction, resulting in what i consider their strongest and freshest record in a good while. Keep an eye on these dudes, you never know what they're up to next.
Kickass new shit from what appears to be a Melbourne-based duo... or trio? I dunno, the info on bandcamp is a bit ambiguous in that regard. Also, Billiam was involved in capturing this noise. which so far has always been a good omen too. Anyway, these two tunes are right up my alley with that noisy and blown-out fuzz- and garage punk sound that sounds a bit as if The Gobs got fused with a bit of that eighties noise rock- and proto-grunge energy of groups á la X (AUS), Scratch Acid, Fungus Brains, U-Men or Feedtime.
This Baltimore group features members of Nag and Quitter, which already raises expectations and it appears that on their first EP, they're pulling every lever to subvert rather than fulfill those. This record certainly has a split personality of some kind with every tune sounding like it originates from a different Group entirely and i'm gonna say it fucking rips! Carte Blance is four minutes of math-y noise rock, the kind you'd expect from such groups like John (timestwo), Luggage, the earlier works of Tunic or Help. Vertices then feels a tiny bit closer to the bleak and monotonous post punk vibes you'd have expected at first but there's also a dusty americana vibe goin' on kinda like what we've heart on that recent The III tape. Cranberry is a dissonant and noisy burst of hardcore, followed by three minutes of experimental drone/noise in The Gate. Then at last in Kept Bread, a doom-/drone-ish beginning leads into what probably bears the most resemblence here to the aforementioned Nag, if maybe Played at two-thirds the speed. A puzzling release that is and i can't wait to find out where they're gonna end up going with all this!
Strange beast, the debut EP of this group with members scattered across Australia and the USA (Sydney, Portland and Melbourne, more specifically), on which everything just feels a bit off... in a good way! Right frome the Intro there's an unmistakable Mission Of Burma- and Moving Targets vibe goin' on and echoes of further '80s oddities of the Really Red, Angst and Saccharine Trust variety. Also, there's some undercurrent of Sonic Youth-esque guitar harmonies and '90s Postcore elements á la Unwound, Drive Like Jehu or later Gray Matter work in unison with their more melodic counterparts like Chavez and Polvo, two Bands whose work also echoes heavily through the even stronger second half of this Record from Closer oneward, where their whole sound veers a lot closer towards melodic Seam- and Superchunk-infused Indie Rock with some additional traces of No Age and Swervedriver maybe? Anyway, this is some thorougly enjoyable shit.
Here's yet another vaguely hardcore-adjacent oddity by a group from Athens, Georgia whose music seems to bridge the gap between pitch-black mid-'80s hardcore and 90s sludgy AmRep noise rock as well as the latter genre's various proto stages that came before. Namely, i'm reminded quite a lot here of eighties Lo-Fi noise rockers Drunks With Guns but the obligatory Flipper and No Trend references apply just as well while in their more uptempo hardcore parts, there may be the occasional oldschool death rock vibe creeping in. This is so fucking up my alley!
