For some reason i had my doubts about this record beforehand (dunno… might have been down to the somewhat slick production? Intelligible lyrics, urgh!) but now listening to the whole thing, i gotta say it turns out to be pretty fucking awesome shit once again, even incrementally improving on the already impressive quality standard of the Chicago group's previous releases in a flawless batch of smart and elaborate postcore tunes, which at certain points might draw comparisons to groups like Batpiss, Meat Wave, Bench Press, Bloody Gears, earlier stuff by the likes of Tunic, Pile and USA Nails, angular post punk acts like Lithics, Pill or Marbled Eye as well as occasional flashes of, say… Jawbox, Smart Went Crazy, Q and not U and mid-'90s Fugazi. What more could i ask for, really?
Repeatedly the Berlin group featuring members of, among others, Useless Eaters, Idiota Civlizzatto, Exit Group und Clock Of Time delivers the goods of elaborately constructed, slightly deathrock-infused post punk grooves, with Clock Of Time being the most obvious comparison among the groups mentioned as these folks do indeed play some variant of what i can't help but classify as quite traditional Berlin school of the past decade-plus, scratching a similar itch to bands like Pigeon, Liiek, Diät, Pretty Hurts… Not that i'd consider that to be a bad thing at all. Quite the contrary - after all, "Berlin sound" wouldn't be a thing really if it hadn't been built up over the years to embody such a consistent legacy of impeccable quality releases.
A smart and intricately constructed mixture of Post Punk, Noise Rock and Postcore is being set off by this New York group on this plainly phenomenal demo. There's no way around addressing the elephant in the room though: This reminds me a lot of Straw Man Army - especially of their first LP - but you could do a lot worse than being compared to a band of such stature, right? Friends of Bloody Gears, Faraquet, Meat Wave and such will also get a kick out of this.
It took a good while for this group's debut LP to finally materialize after the the label Chunklet Industries already promised this longplayer around the release of the Birds Of Juneau 7" in the summer of 2021… I suspect you can once again blame the challenges of the current vinyl economy for that. It's another strong record though, on which the group featuring members of such powerhouses as Spray Paint, Wilful Boys, Brandy, Pampers and Pyrex admirably manages to keep things exciting with quite a bit of eclectic variety. For example, we get a kind of Swell Maps-go-Synthwave vibes in HoloLens, a strong dub feel in Mallman, kinda like a sped-up variant of Exek. That all said, you can't really deny their sound obviously having inherited the largest chunk of its DNA from Spray Paint, especially their later work (although, speaking of DNA, a certain no wave vibe is ever present on here aswell). Further i've also got a suspicion though that there'll be some quite familiar sounding echoes of this record to be heard on the upcoming Pyrex LP on Total Punk!
It's been a whopping five years since we last heard of this Los Angeles group. Their first LP (duh!) is a bit heavier on the hardcore- and garage punk side of things after their older shit had been leaning stronger into its synth-/electro punk tendencies. Those relentlessly brutal electric beats are still front and center here though, giving especially the epic opening shot Open World kind of an industrial-tinged, cursed Ausmuteants-meet-Big Black vibe… with additional overtones of Crisis Man maybe?
In a somewhat unexpected but, all things considered, perfectly sensible move, the Philadelphia group on the cutting edge of the still kinda vaguely defined and developing dungeon punk genre release their first full length effort on the well established, rather metal-leaning label Relapse Records. Thankfully this has precious little influence on their sound, aesthetics and production values, with their newest batch of songs even presenting the group at their grittiest and most Lo-Fi so far, their still absolutely singular, elaborate sonic constructs made up of post- and garage punk, noise rock, postcore, a very slight hint of Oi! and only the most ancient ingredients of proto- and old-oldschool metal remaining obscured by in a thick layer of tape hiss all the time. Yeah, the whole thing sounds glorious i gotta say!
Absolutely fucking brilliant shit once again arriving at our shores courtesy of Total Punk Records! Glittering Insects feature members of GG King, Predator, Wymyns Prysyn and Uniform (the atlanta group, not the NY industrial punk/-metal duo) and of these, it bears the most similarity to the latter two groups with the melancholy arrangements strongly echoing that distinct Uniform vibe. Overall the combination of gritty abrasive textures, the aforementioned sense of melancholy, a songcraft that comes across as sad and unwieldy yet melodic and catchy at the same time, reminds me a lot of australian noise-/indie rock gods Kitchen's Floor, the scuzzy post punk of City Yelps or, in its most catchy moments, the noise pop of early Treehouse. An exceptionally immersive and epic experience best taken in as a whole - a rare thing these days.
Members of Bib and Nihilistic fit, among a whole shitload of other groups, deliver their first EP here and it's hard to not get excited in face of this explosive force. These are super-solid, mature and elaborate song assemblies made up of a timeless postcore sound which is also perfectly able to slow things down - like in the doom/sludge-leaning excercise Face Down - without boring you to death. Always always a sign of compositional excellence if you ask me. In recent years, we might've heard similar blasts from bands like Romance, Shove, Ascot Stabber, Flowers of Evil or early Bad Breeding.
Still having compared their last digital single mainly to the established Mission of Burma formula, i'll expand that assessment to a more nebulous triangle of Burma, Wipers and Sonic Youth in face of the newest tracks by the Wollongong, Australia group - an aesthetic hovering inbetween the worlds of post punk, noise rock and fuzz punk which you might as well compare to more contemporary groups like early No Age or recent italian sensation Orrendo Subotnik.
A sonic experience wonderfully out of touch with the zeitgeist, crafted by some Bellingham, Washington group. Prime influence here seems to be a whole battery of early-to-mid eighties, loosely SST and Touch & Go-connected stuff - on the more strummy, folk-infused side of things admittedly, but never afraid of spontaneously morphing into short bursts of hardcore punk either. Most obvious amoung those influences would probably be shit among the lines of Angst and Meat Puppets, early Dinosaur Jr. and, secondarily, U-Men, Mudhoney and 80s Scientists, some very slight hints of Dicks and Wipers. Or alternately, you might think of more recent Acts like early Milk Music, Dharma Dogs, Chronophage and Damak.
