Catalogue - Modern Delusion

It took me a while to no­tice but the newest LP by Mar­seille group Cat­a­logue turns out to be their strongest ef­fort to date. Where their sound could still be a lit­tle tir­ing on their pre­vi­ous LP, they show a lot more va­ri­ety on their newest one keep­ing things in­ter­est­ing through­out. Their noisy post punk, as usu­al be­ing dri­ven for­ward by eight­ies-style drum ma­chine beats, may owe a lit­tle to Big Black in some parts, Live Skull in oth­ers or some no-wave dis­so­nance gets loaded up with catchy hooks. In House­plants we even get to hear some al­most synth-/new wave stylings.

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Day Residue - Day Residue

More awe­some shit cour­tesy of Painters Tapes by a De­troit group hav­ing a strong pro­to-grunge vibe to them that wouldn't seem out of place next to ear­ly Mud­honey, U-Men, Feed­time, X (the aus­tralian group) or 80s Sci­en­tists. Al­so you might find some traces of amer­i­can pro­to noise rock á la Flip­per, Bro­ken Tal­ent just as well as more re­cent groups rough­ly in the or­bit of TVO or Vexx in there.

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Objections - BSA Day /​ Better Luck Next Time

A beau­ti­ful­ly out-of-fash­ion 7" by a Leeds group cre­at­ing a sound lo­cat­ed amidst the rough co­or­di­nates of math rock, post­core and noise rock, ob­vi­ous­ly pay­ing trubute pri­mar­i­ly to the 90s-to-2000s era of Dischord Records and in par­tic­u­lar to groups of the Jaw­box, Au­to­clave, Hoover, Lung­fish, Q and not U va­ri­ety.

Black Button - Rejoice

Hav­ing made some­what of a splash with their un­pre­dictable 2019 de­mo and a more con­venti­nal­ly hard­core-lean­ing EP in 2021, the Rich­mond, Vir­ginia group is shak­ing things up once again with their first full-length ef­fort, sig­nif­i­cant­ly slow­ing things down and seem­ing­ly tak­ing plen­ty of cues from left-field 80s acts on the ex­per­i­men­tal in­ter­sec­tion of hard­core punk and (proto-)noise rock in the vein of, among oth­ers, Flip­per, No Trend, Spike in Vain or Bro­ken Tal­ent, while al­so not en­tire­ly dis­sim­i­lar to more re­cent groups like Soup­cans, Vul­ture Shit, C-Krit or Stink­hole.

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Body House - Hose Man

When it comes to con­tem­po­rary noise rock, i'm no­to­ri­ous­ly hard to please but this L.A. group eas­i­ly does the trick for me, play­ing a vari­ant of the genre ap­proach­ing Big Black lev­els of dis­so­nant shred­ding while al­so re­mind­ing me a bit of old­school acts like Dis­tort­ed Pony, Bas­tro, Drunks With Guns as well as more re­cent stuff á la Spray Paint… or, maybe, an ul­tra-straight­for­ward ver­sion of Mul­ti­c­ult, dri­ven along by vi­cious, at times al­most Gang of Four-es­que grooves.

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Trigger Cut - Soot

Back from the lit­er­al ash­es of a cer­tain prac­tice space apoc­a­lypse, noise rock­ers Trig­ger Cut re­turn as strong and vi­tal as ever with their newest LP which sees the group in­creas­ing­ly carv­ing out their own lit­tle place in­side their genre while skill­ful­ly pay­ing hom­mage to nu­mer­ous clas­sics all the while - think of shit like Bas­tro, Dis­tort­ed Pony, any­thing Al­bi­ni-re­lat­ed… al­so some re­al sur­pris­es here, like the open­er Wa­ter Fukkery, hav­ing a melod­ic old­school emo-/post­core vibe to it rem­i­nis­cent of clas­sic acts in the vicin­i­ty of Dri­ve Like Je­hu, Au­to­clave, Quick­sand or Jaw­box. With­out ques­tion this is their most di­verse, in­ven­tive and play­ful record to date.

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Kitchen's Floor - None Of That

Wow, i didn't re­al­ly ex­pect this to hap­pen. A good sev­en years af­ter the group's sor­ta clas­sic LP The Bat­tle Of Bris­bane we fi­nal­ly get an­oth­er al­bum by what at this point ap­pears to ex­ist as more of a so­lo ven­ture by vo­cal­ist Matt Kennedy. His sin­gu­lar sound and vi­sion in the realm of post punk, noise rock and that un­like­ly folk-y un­der­cur­rent comes ac­cross as sharp and un­com­pro­mis­ing as ever though, ap­pear­ing beau­ti­ful­ly out of step with the zeit­geist.

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Rider/​Horse - Feed 'Em Salt

The sec­ond LP by that Duo fea­tur­ing none oth­er than Spray Paint's Cory Plump as well as some mys­te­ri­ous Chris, who has in some ca­pac­i­ty worked with Les Savy Fav, Trans Am and Scene Cream­ers in the past, de­liv­ers more of their ad­dic­tive melange of post punk and noise rock with that cer­tain in­dus­tri­al feel, as ex­per­i­men­tal as it's hyp­not­ic and catchy all the same. Maybe it's just due to the mix and mas­ter­ing, but the son­ic spec­trum ap­pears some­what de­clut­tered here com­pared to the pre­de­ces­sor with an at times less claus­tro­pho­bic, more nat­ur­al feel and plen­ty of room to breathe. Still tons of Swell Maps or, al­ter­nate­ly, Ex­ek vibes to go around though and there's even a hint of Pro­tomar­tyr in Rot­ting Prof­its, some echoes of Wire in Flori­da Gaso­line.

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Nearly Dead - Death Party

In a noise rock world most­ly dom­i­nat­ed by pre­ten­tious wankers con­tent with re­pro­duc­ing the done-to-death "left­over doom riffs played with odd time sig­na­tures (that makes us math rock, i guess…)" for­mu­la ad nau­se­am, Canada's Near­ly Dead have al­ways kin­da stuck out from the sad sta­tus quo not through smarts but through sheer prim­i­tive force and a very old­school ap­proach to sludge-in­fest­ed noise rock, rem­i­nis­cent of an­cient genre ar­ti­facts by the likes of Cows, Kill­doz­er, Cherubs, Fun­gus Brains, Scratch Acid… plus count­less of deep cuts from the clas­sic Am­Rep cat­a­logue. These tunes make me wan­na take a show­er - a rare qual­i­ty these days.

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Ra!d - Ra!d

As co­in­ci­dence would have it, here's yet an­oth­er group of some­what fuzzy where­abouts al­though the avail­able ev­i­dence gen­er­al­ly points to­ward Penn­syl­va­nia this time. On their most re­cent full-length ef­fort, a war­bly blown-out lo-fi acoustic in­tro gives way to a knock­out punch of a post punk blast that sounds a bit as if the hal­lu­cino­genic haze of groups á la Piles or Die! Die! Die! en­tered the pitch black worlds of Nag. Oth­er times we get some­what more con­ven­tion­al yet nonethe­less ass-kick­ing flash­es of old­school doom- and sludge-lean­ing Am­Rep-style noise rock col­lid­ing with the spaced out acid punk ex­cess of, say, De­struc­tion Unit, Hamer or Su­per-X.

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