A new LP by Italia 90, best kept secret of contemporary british post punk, who so far have managed to completely avoid as well as outlive the hype cycle some of their peers have been riding hard over the past few years. Hard to believe at this point that this is actually their first full length release. Overall, they're staying true to themselves here without making things too easy either for themselves or the audience, striking a delicate balance between catchy tunes á la New Factory, Tales From Beyond and more cumbersome sonic assaults like Magdalene and Golgatha. Otherwise, a slightly Wire-esque opening track gives way to a more familiar soundscape owing a lot to the classics of, among others, Swell Maps and Membranes, the occasional hint of Crass. Or alternately, you might also draw some comparisons to more recent acts like Exek, early Protomartyr.
This Greenville, South Carolina group kicks up an excellent racket located somwhere inbetween the gears of garage punk, post punk and postcore bearing some similaritiy to more recent stuff á la Big Bopper, Mystic Inane, Dollhouse, Cutie, Wymyns Prysyn, Crisis Man… just as much as to classic pieces by the likes of Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes, Nation Of Ulysses, Rites of Spring or Gray Matter.
There's really no other way to put it… on their latest output the group from Wollongong, Australia leans in quite heavily on the ancient blueprint established primarily by bands like Mission of Burma, Moving Targets, Volcano Suns which, if you ask me, should be more of a thing anyway so yeah, this is good stuff.
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.
It took the Bristol group just shy of a year to come up with the newest installment in their, so far, absolutely spectacular and flawless run of (digital) singles. I'm glad to announce that i've got nothing new to say about this one - these two tunes are yet another masterclass of melodic post punk and power pop songcraft with clear echoes of Buzzcocks, Television Personalities, Mekons and many more artefacts of predominantly british DIY punk history.
This neat little EP by St. Louis, Missouri dude Nick G and friends delivers seven blasts of dark yet melodic, heavily song-based post punk - admittedly not a terribly original thing at this point but not too predictable either, solidly constructed throughout. A definitive treat for fans of stuff á la Criminal Code, Public Eye, VHS, Sievehead or Bruised… with occasional flashes of Trauma Harness or The Estranged to boot.
A thoroughly high quality new batch of 7"s and even a CD from the ever reliable italian garage punk institution Goodbye Boozy Records. Tee Vee Repairman is yet another project of Ishka Edmeades who you might also know from acts such as Satanic Togas, Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp., Gee Tee, Remote Control, Mainframe… this dude seems to be in pretty much anything out of the Warttman orbit and beyond that. Let's just say dude's been's a constant fixture on this blog in recent years and will sure crop up many more times because everything he touches tends to become instant garage punk and power pop gold. A different beast altogether is the 7" by Wayne Pain & The Shit Stains, a simple & stupid attack of decidedly oldschool fuzzed-out garage punk with that classic rockabilly edge to it. Speaking of rockabilly… Qinqs have a touch of that going on too, although in their case it reeks less of The Cramps and more of The Fall - The Great White Wonder might as well be called How i re-wrote Elastic Man - as well as more recent occurrences á la Shark Toys, Ex Cult, Parquet Courts or The UV Race. The newest tape by the mysterious Zoids then is another endearingly eccentric treat of minimalist electro-/space-/garage punk transporting more than just a little bit of a Suicide-meets-Metal Urbain / Dr. Mix and the Remix vibe. Also: Yeah, fuck vinyl 'cos the future belongs to the compact disc bro. Dadgad's tracks then serve as the perfect transition between the aforementioned electric space punk stylings and the opposite half of a 7" featuring - yet again - that dude known as Zhoop… or was it Feed? Djinn? Brundle maybe? I don't care really it's all good shit!
A new mini LP by Atlanta's post punk force of nature Nag - i guess everybody knows what to expect at this point and i'm totally okay with that as there still ain't a whole lot of groups quite like them. Despite the raw ingredients of their sound being as old as post punk itself, there's a unique quality to their vision, about as simplistic as you can get away with in some places while amazingly elaborate where it counts in others, with the occasional touch of psychedelia and hammered home with a rough and unrelenting force.
Side number four by Marmora, New Jersey garage troubador Die TV is yet another super-solid batch of garage-/synth-/electro punk miniature goodness. Not much more to add to that other than what i already said about his previous releases: Friends of weirdness in the same orbit as, say, Powerplant, Stalins of Sound, Erik Nervous, The Spits, Set-Top Box, Digital Leather… rejoice!
A super effective bunch of straightforward punk smashers by a Perth grounp - simple at first glance yet always carefully constructed for maximum impact. Plausible comparisons from recent years would include bands such as Xetas, Cool Jerks, Flowers of Evil or Dead Years while from long before that, you might see flashes of Naked Raygun, Laughing Hyenas, Hot Snakes, Man Sized Action and the like…
