Vangas - Dog Walker /​ Waltz In E Minor

At­lanta noise rock­ers Van­gas stay beau­ti­ful­ly un­con­ven­tion­al on their new 7" via Chun­klet. On the A-side, a slow-burn­ing groove creeps along to­ward an in­evitable erup­tion at its mid­point, where shit fi­nal­ly gets weird. The even more un­pleas­ant B-side then re­minds me quite a bit of their Port­land noise rock con­tem­po­raries Mar­riage + Can­cer or cana­di­ans Near­ly Dead.

Maximum Roach - Dry Rot

This group, prob­a­bly from Phoenix, Ari­zona, sets up some chem­i­cal­ly un­sta­ble noise punk shit weld­ed to a garagecore rock­et dri­ve ready to blow up in your face. At times you might feel pleas­ant­ly re­mind­ed of acts like Beast Fiend, Anx­i­ety, Bo Gritz or Mys­tic Inane.

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B.E.E.F. 39X - Man-Simulator 5

At first lis­ten, i can't help but think of the tex­an (neo) no wave/​chaotic noise rock con­nec­tion around bands like Flesh Narc, Gay Cum Dad­dies and a few oth­er projects shar­ing much of the same per­son­nel. How­ev­er, this band is from Philadel­phia, mak­ing any as­so­ci­a­tion with those rather un­like­ly. Al­so, on clos­er in­spec­tion, their sound and songs come across a lot more struc­tured, com­pared with the kin­da se­mi-im­pro­vised feel of the Den­ton scene's out­put. Sound­wise, this is some­what less in the no wave camp, lean­ing more in­to the noise rock side of things and now that i'm think­ing of it… I al­so see quite some sim­i­lar­i­ties to their ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly much clos­er New York con­tem­po­raries Spray Paint and Big Neck Po­lice, as well as a hint of cana­di­an noise punks Sop­cans.

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The Cowboy - The Cowboy 7"

Cleveland's The Cow­boy are back! Two years af­ter their ex­plo­sive de­but al­bum, the group fea­tur­ing mem­bers of Plea­sure Left­ists and Ho­mostu­pids haven't lost their abil­i­ty to kick ass with a sound os­cil­lat­ing be­tween garage- and post punk, noise rock over­tones, an abra­sive sur­face com­bined with dis­arm­ing catchy­ness. All this re­minds me of bands like Plax, Ex-Cult, Shark Toys and Flat Worms. Al­so, in a rather un­ex­pect­ed turn of events, we get ex­posed to a laid back in­die­rockin' in­stru­men­tal tune on the b-side.

Luggage - Shift

With their third Al­bum, Chicago's Lug­gage de­liv­er a seam­less con­tin­u­a­tion of the qual­i­ties es­tab­lished on their 2017 ef­fort Three, even dou­ble down on those. Fit­ting­ly and un­mis­tak­ably record­ed at Elec­tri­cal Au­dio, a brit­tle, of­ten crawl­ing sound in the rough area of Noise- and Math Rock, Post- and Slow­core al­lows it­self am­ple time to un­fold and sounds a lot like their home­town in the late 80s to 90s. Or, at dif­fer­ent points, like a more straight­for­ward Shel­lac, slow mo­tion Tar, much loud­er Slint or an even more bleak vari­ant of Codeine.

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Kumusta - Kumusta #1

Ex­quis­ite shit from Rouen, France. Ku­mus­ta emerge on the scene with a fun mix­ture draw­ing a line from noise rock & -core on one end of the spec­trum, some raw garage en­er­gy on the oth­er, a shit­load of post punk & post­core in be­tween. Imag­ine a fu­sion of slowed-down Bad Breed­ing with Crim­i­nal Code in cer­tain mo­ments, or at oth­er times, you might be re­mind­ed of Australia's post­core pow­er­tools Bat­piss and Bench Press.

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Girls In Synthesis - Arterial Movements 7"

While their last EP Fan The Flames didn't ap­peal to me as much as i hoped for, their newest 7" shows London's Girls In Syn­the­sis at their best. Just like be­fore, their sound is a skilled bal­anc­ing act on the thresh­old be­tween post punk and noise rock, thus op­er­at­ing in much of the same realm as Bands like USA Nails, Tu­nic or John (timest­wo), among oth­ers. The def­i­nite high­light here is Smart­ing with its kin­da Big Black-es­que way of gui­tar shred­ding.

Sandré - Ave Muñón

On their de­but LP, Barcelona's San­dré de­liv­er a round­house kick of un­err­ing pre­ci­sion, a sound lo­cat­ed some­where on the fringes of post punk, post- and noisec­ore; al­ways keep­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance be­tween a raw, im­me­di­ate im­pact and self-con­fi­dent am­bi­tion. Spec­u­lat­ing about pos­si­ble in­flu­ences, i'm think­ing of a wide ar­ray of bands like Down­town Boys, ear­ly Die! Die! Die!, Les Savy Fav - but i'm al­so feel­ing a very dis­tinct vibe akin to oth­er span­ish acts of re­cent years, es­pe­cial­ly the likes of Ju­ven­tud Juché, Be­tu­niz­er and Cubano Vale.

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Rita Repulsa - Rita's Revenge

Boston elec­tro punk duo Ri­ta Re­pul­sa en­ter the scene with their first EP, whose large­ly sam­ple-dri­ven con­tents rough­ly re­sem­ble the charme of an ex­tra brain dam­aged ver­sion of North Carolina's ISS, sup­ple­ment­ed with a sub­tle dose of noise rock and a lyri­cal fix­a­tion on… Mighty Mor­phin Pow­er Rangers?!? Works for me.

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Spray Paint - Into The Country

For the austin noise rock­ers with that dis­tinc­tive no wave edge, the past three years were marked ex­clu­sive­ly by sev­er­al col­lab­o­ra­tion projects, re­sult­ing in one al­bum, an­oth­er EP and two 7"s, all of it first rate stuff. Now we get a new "reg­u­lar" al­bum, al­though the record­ings al­ready date back to the year 2016. Ac­cord­ing­ly, these songs sound more like the log­i­cal evo­lu­tion from their last LP Feel The Clamps, re­leased that same year. As al­ways with this band, there's no rush to rein­vent them­selves. In­stead, their sound is evolv­ing grad­u­al­ly and dili­gent, re­veal­ing on­ly a few new facets at a time. Most no­table this time is a more min­i­mal­ist ap­proach to their com­po­si­tions as well as the in­creas­ing use of drum ma­chines and synths. And as al­ways, the re­sults are quite thrilling.

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