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.

Al­bum-Stream →

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

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.

Al­bum-Stream →

Hevrat Ha'Hashmal - 2+1

Five min­utes of de­light­ful nois­es and struc­tured chaos crammed in­to dense lit­tle tunes by an is­raeli group. Equal­ly pun­ish­ing, quirky and eclec­tic shit right in the sweet spot over­lap­ping post punk, noise rock and garage punk - a free­wheel­ing any­thing-goes spir­it re­mind­ing me of a bunch of groups such as Big Bop­per, Brandy, Pat­ti, Re­al­i­ty Group or Cutie.

Pablo X - Pablo X

Min­i­mal­ist psy­che­del­ic hyp­no­tism of a par­tic­u­lar­ly repet­i­tive and stub­born, time­less va­ri­ety by french­man Re­my Pablo who, if i'm not mis­tak­en, is al­so play­ing in groups such as The Anomalys and Weird Omen. You can hear clear echoes of ol late-'70s and '80s un­der­ground groups á la MX-80, Chrome, ear­ly Tele­scopes and Met­al Ur­bain while fur­ther com­par­isons might just as well be made to more re­cent acts like Peace de Ré­sis­tance, A Place To Bury Strangers, Jean Mignon and Writhing Squares.

Al­bum-Stream →

Beef - Beef

This Cincin­nati group's sec­ond EP sets off a strong new set of high­ly flam­ma­ble charges made up of in­gre­di­ents found some­where in the grey ar­eas of Noise Rock, Post-, Garage- and Synth Punk… a bit like an un­sta­ble mix­ture of Bust­ed Head Rack­et, Brandy, R.Clown, ISS, Spy­roids and Know­so boiled down to an al­most '70s/'80s The Fall-es­qe sim­plic­i­ty and rep­e­ti­tion.

Al­bum-Stream →

Texture Freq - Masochistic Episode

A beau­ti­ful­ly over­whelm­ing mud show­er of noise-in­fest­ed Post­core, the de­but EP of this Min­neapo­lis group clear­ly in­her­it­ing some of the DNA of the city's own Noise Rock-re­lat­ed his­to­ry while feel­ing per­fect­ly con­tem­po­rary all the same, main­ly re­mind­ing me of re­cent bands á la Doll­house, Launch­er, Mys­tic Inane, Wymyns Prysyn and Op­tic Nerve… with a touch of Hot Snakes thrown in for good mea­sure.

Al­bum-Stream →

Warp - Automatic Gratuity

I'd al­most for­got­ten about this San Fran­cis­co group yet here they are fol­low­ing up their im­pres­sive 2019 de­but al­bum with a new EP show­cas­ing their quirky and in­ven­tive sound on the fringes of noise rock, hard- and post­core in a shape both rougher and more re­fined at the same time, echo­ing some of the great­est noise-/weird­core re­leas­es of re­cent years in­clud­ing those by the likes of Warm Bod­ies, Snif­fany & The Nits, Vexx, Dots, Judy & The Jerks or Mys­tic Inane.

Al­bum-Stream →

Hellco - Hellco

A sim­ply de­light­ful de­but LP by this Philadel­phia group, brought to us via lo­cal la­bel SRA Records. I wan­na de­scribe this shit as a mixed bag in the best sense pos­si­ble, an ec­cen­tric repos­i­to­ry of slight­ly cow­punk-in­fused art punk hov­er­ing some­where be­tween garage- and noise-heavy hard­core shit with a cer­tain KBD-ex­ten­sion some­what rem­i­nis­cent of ear­ly Elec­tric Chair plus a touch of Soup­cans on one hand, and then on the oth­er, there are some ubiq­ui­tous echoes to be found of old acts on the in­ter­sec­tion of '80s noise rock and pro­to-grunge like, say, U-Men, Scratch Acid, Vol­cano Suns, But­t­hole Surfers, Min­ute­men, Sac­cha­rine Trust, Feed­time and very ear­ly Meat Pup­pets, just to name a cou­ple of the most ob­vi­ous ref­er­ences.

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