Chicago's Omniwhores have been fucking around in the noise rock-, post- and art punk niches for many years now but never have they hit the spot for me as much as on their newest EP Sucker Face, on which they arrange their moving parts like the monotonous electric beats, buzzsaw guitars, sharp basslines and a battery of weird-ass samples it appears - all of which have been present on previous releases - in a way that comes together in a much more organic and seamless way, a mixture that mainly reminds me of such '80s-to-'90s noisemakers as World Domination Enterprises, Braniac, Royal Trux and Butthole Surfers in one way or another.
Now this is what i call a bulky, filthy clump of abrasive noise that greets us on this Vienna based group's second Tape and their first full length effort at that. At first glance, this shit appears to primarily channel the likes of Flipper, No Trend and a touch of early Swans, plus a decent chunk of old No Wave-ish excess. But listen a bit closer and you can also sense distinct echoes of eighties japanese psych-noise groups like The Rabbits or the the US art punk classics of Chrome and MX-80. Tunes like Entropy, then again, have a bit more of an early 2010s Copenhagen vibe á la Lower and Iceage to them and while i'm already namedropping shit from that era, there might aswell be a bit of Soupcans in there. Anyway, this is fourty excellent minutes of weapons-grade sonic assault to overwhelm your senses, blow your mental fuses, bypass all inhibitions and when it's done with you, you just feel gross and wanna take a fucking shower ASAP so yeah, this record accomplishes everything it set out to do.
Last year's full length debut of this Raleigh, North Carolina group already made a lasting impression and their latest EP via the local scene bulwark Sorry State Records continues in a similar vein, although there are also gradual changes to be gleaned here, with their overall aesthetic feeling more playful this time and not quite as grim as it still was on the LP, with those quirky toy keyboard vibes and a good deal of nutty ideas making for an excellent counterweight to their otherwise pretty much wrecking ball-like sound inbetween the worlds of Noise Rock, Post- and Synth Punk that once again reminds me a lot of groups á la Isotope Soap, Broken Prayer, Powerplant, Kerozine or Beef.
The past couple weeks had quite an abundance of incredible short-form 2-track releases and i'm even shorter on time than i anticipated as, on top of my infamously unreliable brain chemistry, this week also came up with a family emergency for me to help mitigate, so i'm gonna take the liberty of just dumping the four strongest of the batch in a single post.
The most surprising of thiose was certainly the debut (?) single of Atlanta, Georgia group Assembly, covering a pretty wide and eclectic stylistic spectrum in the postcore, noise- and math rock field ranging from classic '90s and early '00s Dischord-flavored sounds of the Faraquet, Bluetip and Q And Not U variety over other '90s phenomena like Polvo, Braniac and Chavez to more recent noise rock and art punk acts like Wax Chattels, Solderer, Body House, Haunted Horses and, most of all, Spray Paint and assiciated later acts Rider/Horse and During.
Australia's Tee Vee Repairman - yeah, of course it's another group of Gee Tee's Ishka Edmeades - follows up a bunch of previous EPs and a brilliant LP with a new 7" whose two songs can easily be counted as among the finest in a discography that's never been lacking in infectious power pop melodies to begin with.
In a similar vein, there's a new Smirk (aka Nick Vicario, also of Public Eye, Crisis Man und Cemento) 7" that also sees the dude considerably upping his songwriting game, going places we haven't seen of him before with Domestic Dog kinda fusing oldschool anarcho and post punk flourishes with a pronounced 77-ish melodicity and an almost Television-like spaciousness that also permeates the other tune Manhunt in Paradise, the whole of which sounds a bit like the most recent Institute LP being taken a step further in its art punk elegance.
And finally, in contrast to the previous bands, we have an example of a group plainly serving up more of the same and what a brilliant kind of "same" that is, the new 7" of Brooklyn power pop group Shop Talk who've so far always blown me away with every new release and the new one can do no wrong either, with Museum Of Sex being another flawless instance of catchy and straightforward '77-ish punk with that distinct Dickies flavor while the more intricately constructed Gaslight slows things down a bit, adds a more melancholy vibe and equal parts of a Buzzcocks- and Replacements quality to the mix. A knockout tune to say the least.
Manchester's Gold Cup have already accumulated a number of notable EPs over the past couple years but in my book they really struck yellow for the first time with their newest golden shower of hits that is their fourth EP, walliowing in a sleazed-up hard-rockin' garage punk sound that seems to channel kind of a Golden Pelicans energy while in tunes like opener Zero Percent and closing tune King Crab, they refine the formula with faint echoes of oldschool AmRep-Style noise rock and a subtle hint of 90s postcore. Stuck On Repeat on the other hand is a catchy-as-hell borderline powerpop-ish tune of the highest caliber and The Piss Has Been Taken reminds me of another quite yellow jet of a band, Australia's own Pist Idiots.
Two years after their super fun debut EP, Philadelphia's cleanest finally present us with their first LP which doubles down on the chaotic energy of their disjointed art punk that sits comfortably between the chairs of dissonant, oldschool no wave-ish noise, artcore elements akin to early Minutemen and also plenty of more recent phenomena from artsy post punk groups like Patti, Reality Group and Brandy to more postcore-leaning acts like Big Bopper, Cutie, Mystic Inane and Rolex. And i gotta say, their math-y convoluted sound does a pretty decent job of approximating the mental overload and challenge the task of cleaning up the cave presents to my ADHD-cluttered, probably mildly autistic brain... but they sure make it sound like the most fun activity in the world.
This Melbourne group's third EP has five new outbursts of post punk for us that i wouldn't exactly call surprising or innovative but it gets all the basics right, is competent and well put together while holding a neat balance alternating between cold, clinical tension and warmer, melodic relief in their confident and actually quite varied songwriting, frequently reminding me of shit á la Girls In Synthesis, Corker, Criminal Code, Rank/Xerox, Negative Space, Shepparton Airplane, Batpiss or Bench Press.
Previous releases of this group from Pisa, Italy have all been obscured by a thick veil of of Lo-Fi grime and muck, yet the rough sonics couldn't do anything to fully conceal the raw brilliance hiding beneath all the clutter. For their newest EP, they polished up their production values just enough for the first time to bring their eccentric, pocket-sized post punk epics out of the murky shadows and confirm our suspicion they don't have to fear the revealing exposure to broad daylight. Starting off with a vibe not dissimilar to early 2010s surf-infused noise pop and fuzz punk groups like Male Bonding, early Wavves, No Age, Times Beach, Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger! or, way more recently, Shooting Losers, it doesn't take long though before their tunes also develop a distinct last-decade post punk feel á la Die! Die! Die! and Piles, but also rougher, weirder punk phenomena like Dumb Vision, Piss Wizard and Pink Guitars wouldn't be too far fetched as a reference. On top of that, there's an unmistakable hint of mid-90s-to-early-2000s postcore at play here, the kind some uncultured philistines may be inclined to dub screamo but let it be known once and for all that this distinction shall be considered an insult to any good band, so no, this ain't screamo and fuck you for even bringing up that cursed idea.
As you may have noticed, i have an unhealthy habit of comparing lots of bands to Saccharine Trust, some of whom may have never listened to Saccharine Trust to begin with. Now here's a group actually confessing to that specific influence for a change, refreshing! The music of these Hungarians doesn't disappoint either, their debut LP having a bit of an oldschool anarcho bent to itself and plenty of a Drive Like Jehu energy to boot, a touch of Big Black in Általános Életkrízis Magyarországon and glittering Sonic Youth-Style guitar textures all throughout with further similarities to more recent post punk phenomena like Straw Man Army, Marbled Eye, Institute and Corker. Best of all, their sound is bolstered by plenty of substance, their compositions being held together by smart, rock-solid craftsmanship and wise sonic construction.
I didn't expect the latest LP of this Portsmouth, New Hampshire group to hit this hard - what an impressive qualitative leap from pretty much anything they've done before! Right out of the gate the opener Brain Feeder establishes a propulsive force in which weighty grooves and glittering melodic textures collide in a mix of post-, garage punk and a slight hint of postcore. For the remainder of the record, the formula gets further explored and expanded upon and their driving energy certainly gets plenty of reinforcement out of deliberate build-ups and carefully set-up dramaturgy in their sometimes rather simple but oftentimes quite intricate, always perfectly balanced song architectures.
