This Minneapolis group sets off some fine little blasts of quite classic-sounding postcore that roughly follows the old blueprints set out by Drive Like Jehu and – even more so – Hot Snakes, subsequently carried over into later punk eras by more recent groups like Wymyns Prysyn and Bloody Gears, though in this particular case i think it especially warrants a mention of shit like Ascot Stabber or Flowers of Evil as the way rougher side of that same coin so to speak, which reigns supreme especially in the second half of this EP. Now that i’m thinking of it, i also hear a bit of Video and early Bad Breeding.
New fodder for dungeon dwellers and other medieval punk scum. Sword Breaker of Utrecht, Netherlands made a strong impression with their Demo in 2022 and their full-length debut now delivers more of that same kind of headsplitting fun which can easily be categorized as “Poison Ruïn and their ripple effects”, although that doesn’t mean that their tunes won’t deliver some exquisite thrills in their own right, approaching the microgenre from a way rougher and simpler angle (despite an ever-so-slightly cleaner production aesthetic) which feels way more ’70s hard rock- than ’80s heavy metal-inspired while also leaning harder into classic Oi!- and garage territory with addidional traces of Wipers and subtle touches of british psychedelia.
The second EPs of danes Missvnaries Ov Charity is certainly a curious anomaly in this day and age – their post punk sound stuffed with heavily eighties-leaning drum machines plus period-appropriate production flourishes and an overall quite new wave-ish flavor reminds me of pretty much nothing contemporary and instead of a number of 80s Homestead Records and Touch and Go-affiliated acts such as Breaking Circus, Flour and Nice Strong Arm, all of which i consider more of the deep cut variety (though especially Nice Strong Arm should get a lot more respect if you ask me) which is to say: Yeah i think this is a beautiful deviation from your average post punk routine business. Love it.
I gotta admit, after very much enjoying their 2019 debut EP, i had some serious difficulty warming up in particular to the 2023 Big Mess LP by this Brighton group which complied a bit too rigidly for my taste to the hip, ultra-processed middle-of-the-road formula of current british post punk chic, complete with its just-a-bit-too-slick production style, overuse of polyrhythmic leads and appregios, annoying zoomer count-your-syllables sprechgesang – ya know, not the most original building blocks these days. Their newest longplayer is a whole different beast altogether though, having regained much the group’s previous edge and at times an almost postcore and noise rock-ish energy being poured into tunes that sound organically developed and whole this time – rather than forced, artificially cobbled together, processed and quantized within an inch of their life in a pro tools post production hell. No, this here is clearly the sound of a capable band being somehow shocked out of their complacency, a breathing, pulsing organism propelled forward with considerable momentum by real righteous anger while the tunes themselves are the most soundly and carefully composed and balanced we’ve heard of them so far, the synths being another subject of further refinement, sounding more properly anchored and seamlessly embedded than ever before on this record, which overall reminds me of a number of pretty diverse groups á la Beef, Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice, Broken Prayer, Wristwatch and Patti, among many others.
Laxisme are a group from Leipzig, Germany yet there’s a lot more than just their french lyrics to evoke comparisons to a certain breed of frenchie groups playing that particular mix of straightforward, super catchy garage- and post punk with just a subtle hint of Oi! mixed in, as we’ve previously heard similarly from such groups as Telecult, Distance, Stalled Minds, Nightwatchers, Litovsk and early Bleakness, though you may also in part compare them to stronger garage-leaning euro acts like belgian groups Mitraille, Pedigree and Itches, the Netherlands’ Achterlicht or Dadar, Shitty Life from Italy. So yeah, nothing groundbreaking or novel about this record but the formula certainly still hits hard when executed well and the execution is top notch here – presented with excellent drive, energy and a bit of a ’77 edge to it and a couple of certified rippers like Grands Cerveaux and 7 Secondes absolutely seal the deal here.
Not too long after their brilliant debut EP we already get to hear the first full LP of this Minneapolis group which still delights with a pleasantly old-fashioned genre mixture that primarily appears to take inspiration from the more left-field and melancholy edges of ’80s -’90s post punk, hard- and postcore history, although the influences are a lot more varied here with the opening song Hello World having a strong ’90s Dischord vibe somewhat reminiscent of the likes of Jawbox, Crownhate Ruin, Bluetip, Smart Went Crazy or Kerosene 454 while Tectonic Plates comes across like a curious mixture of Rapeman, Brainiac and Mule. Kick Geneva and Steve remind me a lot of Angst and Moving Targets, BDFI has some Butthole Surfers-esque doominess and it’s not before the second-to-last track, the instrumental What Happens Next and the subsequent Mantle, that those Mission Of Burma influences – which were more strongly present on the EP – kick into full gear once again. Anyway, through much of the record, there’s a slightly folk-ish undercurrent goin’ on aswell that further calls to mind such eighties US groups like The Proletariat, Volcano Suns, M.I.A. and My Dad Is Dead.
Electric Prawns 2 of Moffat Beach, Australia are back with not just one, but two new LPs, in a way highlighting two opposing vibes that have been part of the group’s stylistic DNA all along. The very deep red of the Perspex LP’s artwork could already be taken as subtle signal to proceed with caution and indeed this one is more of a downer by design, the driving Useless Eaters vibes of the opener Who’s Been Laying Eggs Under My Skin? giving way to an increasingly bleak sounding make of psychedelic garage rock that oscillates somewhere inbetween deep sadness and outright bad trip territory, up in space as much as miles underwater and always aware of the fact that both space and the deep ocean are utterly inhospitable places and only a thick steel wall is preventing your body from instantly getting reduced into half a bathtub worth of reddish goo. Feeling awesome about your fragile existence already? Don’t worry ‘cos i’ve only told you half the truth so far, with (the so far only imaginary) side B of the record kinda staying in a vintage psychedelia realm but focusing on the much more uplifting parts of that whole affair, so sunny that you’re gonna have flowers growing out of your ass in no time. The Heavy Shitters LP then is a lot closer to the friendlier, instantly recognizable vibe that has dominated much of their previous work and just wants to play and fuck around and rock out and crack lots of stupid fart jokes. Many of the record’s biggest hits are saved for the second half and especially the marvellous six-song spree going from Sick to Farted In Her Sleep is the kind of thing a lesser group would fucking kill for.
That Evinspragg record has garnered the most publicity of the newest Inscrutable Records batch for several reasons, some of them justifiable, others more annoyingly drama-related. But to be perfectly honest, that one is a bit too ambitious for its own good in my humble opinion and a bit of a mixed bag which starts out incredibly strong, then kinda fizzles out towards the end and i actually feel much more drawn towards the label’s other two releases among which is this full-length debut by Johnny Skin. On it, they create a dreamy, melancholy and super-catchy melange blending the yearning vibe of ’50s-’60s bubblegum pop ballads with rudimetary, minimalist lo-fi vintage electronic drum beats and synths in a fashion that’s gonna draw inevitable comparisons to Suicide and Métal Urbain, interspersed with a bunch of more noisy and dissonant no wave-ish tunes more in the vein of noisy synth punk pioneers á la Primitive Calculators or Nervous Gender and the experimental, psychedelic sounds of Theoretical Girls, Chrome or MX-80.
It’s been another couple of incredible weeks for more-or-less hardcore-related noises so here are four more picks i find particularly notable, in a spectrum progressively moving from the more punk-ish ends towards the unapologetically metal-embracing realms of the genre. For starters we have a brand new tape by Dublin, Ireland group Flower Power who deliver five forceful punches of rough-ass lo-fi ruckus that appears to stand with one foot in the legacy of left-field hardcore shit á la early Flipper, Broken Talent, Noxious Fumes or more recently, Soupcans, Stinkhole and Vulture Shit, with the other firmly planted in oldschool KBD-style artifacts of the Mentally Ill, Endtables and Executives breed, combining hardcore energy with garage punk drive. A much more grim mood then emanates from the tunes of Leeds, England group Mother Nature, whose punk attacks have plenty of a post punk-ish, death rock-y, noise rock-ing vibe to them that reminds me of such acts as Acrylics, earlier Bad Breeding and the australians Arse. Cheap Heat of Schenectady, New York had already made quite an impact with their excellent 2022 demo and on their new EP, they pick up the threads right where they left them off, with a sound that mixes hardcore with a generous plundering of motörpunk, sleaze rock and speed metal, resulting in an overal aesthetic not entirely dissimilar to such groups as Cülo, Cement Shoes, Tarantüla and Polute. Last but not least we have the most metal-leaning group of the whole bunch, Dart from Oulu, Finland, who are the latest entry into a developing canon of bands working on rehabilitating the reputational damage of sounds on the intersection of hardcore and metal by recognizing the punk rock inside of metal, rather than clumsily forcing generic metal elements upon punk rock. The result, as you might have guessed, is drenched in tons of straightforward, oldschool NWOBHM energy and may please oldschool metalheads as much as it will fans of punk acts á la Poison Ruïn, Punter, Ninth Circle, Polute, Hög and Steröid.
Oslo group Molbo sure have made some waves recently with their two cassettes in 2023/’24 which got a huge boost when they got reissued together on vinyl earlier this year via Erste Theke Tonträger. Their overall sound hasn’t changed considerably since then but nonetheless there’s plenty of refinement evident here, consolidating their style into a more robust and consistent whole while once again weaving threads of garage-, post- and egg punk, death rock and dungeon punk into a pretty fucking inventive and gloriously deformed genre bastard, fortifying and defending their own little niche in the contemporary egg/dungeon canon.
