Cartoon - Nyuck Nyuck Boing!

Now here's some bril­liant shit i've been to­tal­ly un­pre­pared for, cer­tain­ly hav­ing a mind of its own and be­ing de­light­ful­ly out of touch with the zeit­geist! Sure, the whole thing feels kin­da old. I'm kin­da old too, so i like that. Imag­ine the likes of Sac­cha­rine Trust, Min­ute­men, Swell Maps and The Pop Group par­tak­ing in an oc­cult rit­u­al to con­jure up an an­cient '60s acid rock de­mon, an un­holy cross­breed of psych- and math rock. This is quite ter­ri­bly self-in­dul­gent of course, but that as­pect kin­da comes with both of those gen­res, i guess. At this point i'm pret­ty sure you've al­ready made up your mind about it and know if you're gonna love or hate it. In my hum­ble opin­ion, what the Philadel­phia group hal­lu­ci­nates up here is pret­ty fuck­ing swell and to­tal­ly should be le­gal­ized!

Al­bum-Stream →

Arse - Kaputt.

It took the Syd­ney group like a half decade to come up with their third EP but here it fi­nal­ly is in all its glo­ry and spec­ta­cle. Their very own fu­sion of noise rock, hard- and post­core has re­tained every bit of their fran­tic en­er­gy while mix­ing shit up just enough to keep things in­ter­est­ing, for ex­am­ple in Shame Bomb, in which they con­jure up a pre­vi­ous­ly un­heard sense of melan­choly. Oth­er times, their speeds and lev­els of dev­as­ta­tion are reach­ing the ex­plo­sive force of their de­but EP in songs such as Lev­el Skip­per and Prick in the Franger, af­ter the slight­ly more for­giv­ing pre­vi­ous Safe Word EP, while tracks like Night Shift Blues once again su­per­charge all the grime and dirt of old­school Am­phet­a­mine Repile-style riff­ing with a re­lent­less hard­core at­tack.

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MKVulture - Terminal Freakout

A dense and noisy post punk spec­ta­cle un­folds on this Rich­mond, Vir­ginia group's de­but EP, its four elab­o­rate­ly con­struct­ed songs mak­ing a ful­ly ma­ture and con­fi­dent im­pres­sion al­ready. At times this has a cu­ri­ous vibe of, say, Straw Man Army plus a sub­tle trace of Poi­son Ruïn while in oth­er places this shit re­minds me a lot of some of the past decade's more melan­choly and song-ori­ent­ed post punk acts in the vein of ear­ly Es­tranged, Pub­lic Eye, Crim­i­nal Code, Bruised, VHS, Waste Man as well as At­lanta heavy­weights Wymyns Prysyn and Institute/Mothers's Milk.

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Knowso - Pulsating Gore

Cleveland's Know­so for sure have been among the most idio­syn­crat­ic and mem­o­rable groups of the past cou­ple years. Their newest full length shows them at the height of their strength once again, their amal­ga­ma­tion of post punk, noise- and math rock still com­ing across just as quirky and whim­si­cal as it is tight, rigid and an­gu­lar all the same, com­bin­ing a seem­ing­ly pro­ce­dur­al and ef­fi­cient, math­e­mat­i­cal ap­proach with an amount of fun and catchy­ness you wouldn't re­al­ly ex­pect in­side these rough pa­ra­me­ters. At this point, their sound is pret­ty much their own thing but if you ab­soiute­ly must com­pare them to oth­er groups, you might find some sim­i­lar­i­ties to stuff such as Brandy, Landown­er, Big Bop­per or maybe Nag in their more ap­proach­able mo­ments.

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Soft Shoulder - It's A Small World After

(…) as fo­cused as they haven't been in a long while (…) i wrote about their pre­vi­ous al­bum Smile Building's Ex­it. Tempe, Ari­zona group Soft Shoul­der then be like: "Hold my beer…" and come around the cor­ner with yet an­oth­er LP, record­ed around the same time as its pre­de­ces­sor and pre­sent­ing their sound in an even more snap­py and com­pelling light. Their unique blend con­sist­ing of both con­tem­po­rary and an­cient post punk mag­ic tricks, old­school noise rock and dis­tinct­ly no wave- and '80s The Fall-in­formed noise ex­per­i­ments has nev­er had more catchy ap­peal and sparkle than on this record.

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Luggage - Hand Is Bad

Chica­go trio Lug­gage have, over the course of the past eight years, proven to be a true bul­wark in the sec­tor of un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly ex­cen­tric, dis­so­nant and un­wieldy noise rock, post­core and math rock which they usu­al­ly hap­pen to throt­tle down to a slug­gish crawl. If any­thing, they've just grown ever more un­com­pro­mis­ing over the years, cul­mi­nat­ing in their newest de­formed lump of an LP, yet an­oth­er chal­leng­ing out­burst of noise heav­i­ly in­debt­ed to the likes of Slint, Tar, Shel­lac and if i had to name some­thing more con­tem­po­rary, i'd say the first two Be­hav­ior al­bums (es­pe­cial­ly the spec­tac­u­lar sec­ond one Bit­ter Bit­ter) make a close enough com­par­i­son as well.

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Flat Worms - Witness Marks

Flat Worms have been among the most re­li­ably awe­some groups of the past decade or so - you rough­ly know what to ex­pect, know it's gonna be good and will have just enough fresh ideas and flour­ish­es to keep things in­ter­est­ing. Need­less to say, their newest LP won't dis­s­a­point ei­ther, their sig­na­ture sound in­be­tween the worlds of garage punk, noise rock and post punk com­ing across as tight and en­er­getic as ever and, just maybe, even a bit more var­ied and play­ful than on pre­vi­ous ef­forts. In SSRT the dis­tinct grooves of Wire and Tele­vi­sion com­bine in­to an ever-so-slight­ly kraut-in­fused ex­er­cise. Time Warp In Ex­ile feels like a fu­sion of The Cow­boy and Spray Paint - the same then kin­da ap­plies to the al­bum clos­ing ti­tle track, which ad­di­tion­al­ly seems to bor­row a thing or two from The Ruts' clas­sic It Was Cold.

Sor­ry folks, there's no em­bed­d­a­ble full al­bum stream avail­able but you can lis­ten to the whole thing over at their Sound­cloud.

Dizzy Daze - Proto-Being

Ex­cit­ing shit in the realm of noise rock, post­core and garage punk on this Tokyo group's newest EP show­cas­ing quite a bit of styl­is­tic va­ri­ety. Pro­to-Be­ing crash­es right out of the gate like a mix of Mul­ti­c­ult, Tar and Dri­ve like Je­hu. Slug then ex­hibits a more catchy, melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty akin to, say, Bitch Mag­net, Pol­vo or Chavez. Ev­i­dence has some acid-drenched pro­to punk vibe to it like MX-80 col­lid­ing with ear­ly The Men plus a hint of Wipers and last but not least, Dis­con­nect ra­di­ates some dis­tinct Hot Snakes-meeet-Na­tion Of Ulysses kind of en­er­gy.

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The Bozo Big Shit Garbage Band - It's My Move

A new Trad­ing Wreck­age re­lease, which is al­ways good for some vague­ly no wave-in­formed joy, chaos and de­prav­i­ty. This one's a re­al stun­ner though! In this par­tic­u­lar in­car­na­tion, The Bo­zo Big Shit Garbage Band ap­pears to be a so­lo en­deav­or of Tony Shit al­so known as Reese McLean and what­ev­er oth­er monikers the guy has gone un­der, who has al­so been an in­te­gral part of the likes of Gay Cum Dad­dies, Eat Avery's Bones, Bukkake Moms, Flesh Narc and many oth­ers. While some cos­mic back­ground hum of no wave ex­per­i­men­ta­tion is still tan­gi­ble here, a lack of hu­man chaos and clut­ter dur­ing record­ing ap­pears to have al­so trans­lat­ed in­to an equal­ly less clut­tered al­bum. Al­though still every bit as cre­ative and un­pre­dictable as we came to ex­pect from pre­vi­ous re­leas­es, this newest one does it all in a struc­tured, catchy and propul­sive man­ner pre­vi­ous­ly un­heard from this dude, at times rem­i­nis­cent of groups on the in­ter­sec­tion of garage-, post- and art punk like the UV Race, Soft Shoul­der, Shark Toys and Par­quet Courts, while in oth­er mo­ments, this shit might sounds like some Am­Rep and Touch&Go-esque 90s Noise Rock col­lides with mid-eight­ies The Fall.

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Pleaser - Pleaser

Fol­low­ing up on their in­cred­i­ble 2021 de­mo, this Copen­hagen group de­liv­ers an equal­ly ex­cit­ing de­but full length. On one hand, this sounds vague­ly fa­mil­iar as the lo­cal leg­ends Low­er and (ear­ly) Iceage have sure left their mark on Pleaser's mu­sic - hav­ing a sim­i­lar ap­peal of larg­er-than-life dra­ma tan­gled up in chaot­ic and emo­tion­al no-holds-barred per­for­mances - in ad­di­tion to less­er known Copen­hagen groups like Melt­ing Walk­men, Echo Peo­ple and Spines. But then again, Pleas­er to­tal­ly hold their own ow­ing to top-notch song sub­stance and plen­ty of neat lit­tle sur­pris­es like some black met­al flour­ish­es in the in­stru­men­tal The World Says Its Name, Mor­ri­cone stylings and a Mur­der­er-es­que psy­che­del­ic cow­punk haze in Dri­ve of Dis­tress while Light and Fire and This Is How I Die have some dis­tinct Poi­son Ruïn vibes to them. Last but not least, in The Dream, a good bit of Rites of Spring, Dag Nasty col­lides with some 90s Leather­face or Sami­am vibes as well as some­what younger noise pop acts á la Star Par­ty, Times Beach, No Age, Male Bond­ing or Joan­na Grue­some.

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