Now these chaps are from Spain yet their sound rather makes me think a whole bunch of predominantly french bands, their sound sitting inbetween the coordinates of post punk and -core, melodic garage punk and Oi!, calling to mind the likes of Youth Avoiders, Telecult, Nightwatchers, Bleakness and, most recently, Distance or the french-singing Leipzig, Germany group Laxisme. It would thus be easy to dismiss this as yet another artifact of a recently quite ubiquitous subgenre but that would be kinda unfair and discounting what a massive fireworks of powerful hooks this way-above-average record is setting off from beginning to end.
I gotta admit i had severely subdued expectations for the successor to this Long Beach, California group's excellent 2022 debut LP, not because of anything actually related to them but rather simply 'cos sound-wise, they kinda struck me as the kind of group likely to either get too ambitious and bite of more then they can chew or, alternately, suddenly decide that it's about time to break through to the wider broccoli-haired indie crowd and water-down and gloss-up their sound accordingly. Thankfully, i was so fucking wrong and none of that has happened here. Although like on their debut, you may once again classify this shit as an, on the surface, quite fashionable make of jagged post punk with echoes both of first- and second-wave art punk groups á la early Siouxsie, Delta Five, Transmitters, Pylon and even a hint of Wire, as well as more recent phenomena like Marcel Wave, Spread Joy, Sweeping Promises and Marbled Eye, everything appears a lot more deliberate and refined on this one. While retaining that subtle undercurrent of no-wave mutant funk-ish dissonance, all of these new tunes distinguish themselves through perfectly balanced dramaturgy and dynamic, nuanced song progressions, often dialing down the pace and noise to a deliberately understated appeal, making perfect use of elaborate song architecture to achieve the maximum oomph not by way of sheer force but a mindful, punctual and laser-focused group effort.
There's more going on under the hood than first meets the eye on this Budapest group's debut cassette whose eight tunes on one hand - especially in its first half - channel some vaguely oldschool-ish KBD- and garage punk vibes with alternating flourishes of Gun Club and Wipers, counterbalanced by a bunch of way more contemporary sounding elements on which groups of the current anarcho-/postcore-axis á la Straw Man Army and Fantasma have surely left their mark while at many other points, a certain breed of art punk melancholy akin to, say, Kitchen's Floor and Uniform (Atlanta, not NYC) also shines through.
This is the third release already in just a couple months by this blackened-/dungeon punk act frome wherever in the US and just like its predecessors it's yet another first-rate addition to the microgenre which approaches the stylistic signifiers of black metal from an uncommon post punk- and death rock angle to create a sound that's in equal measure atmospheric, dense and layered while blasting a respectable crater in their own little patch of spooky dark forest all the same.
This Brooklyn, NY group's newest EP mostly continues the breakneck pace and sonic assault of its predecessor, the Body LP released earlier this year, while still subtly evolving their sound in a somewhat more compact and approachable direction, allowing for just a tiny bit more nuance and variety compared to that aforementioned, utterly uncompromising previous slab of vinyl without sacrificing much in terms of sheer unrelenting force.
Brilliantly simple anarcho-flavored post punk is what we get on this Demo by a group from Perth, Australia, working a decidedly rough, unpolished aesthetic of minimal means towards maximum impact, along the way reminding me of a bunch groups ranging from more obvious references like Institute, Impotentie and early Rank/Xerox to a significantly slowed-down variant of either Nag or recent Pyrex.
Typically excellent new fodder from some of my favorite post punk weirdos. The first track Optimism on this new Cassingle by the Cleveland, Ohio group encapsulates all the hallmarks of their angular brand of post punk into a compact and super-catchy little package while Foot Of Pride is a somewhat more ambitious, sprawling affair which - with its mid-tempo pace and uncharactaristically expansive length of over five minutes - still doesn't ever come close to overstaying its welcome thanks to its understated but effective slow-burn dramaturgy and a performance every bit as sharp and precise as anything this one-of-a-kind group has done before.
This Copenhagen-based group once again channels that same widescreen thrill and excitement that already made their 2023 debut LP stand out from the great bulk of ambitious post punk acts and all of it is still in place here - the desperate, existential drama reminiscent of early Iceage, Lower and other groups that cropped up in their wake, the omnipresent cowpunk undercurrents, the equally melodic and elaborate arrangements and structures that call to mind the first couple of Protomartyr EPs, coupled with the urgency and immediacy of early White Lung - while at the same time, these tunes come across as ever-so-slightly more streamlined, refined in a careful, gradual way resulting in yet another quite unique and miles-above-average punk record.
I had kind of a difficult time getting into the previous EP of Buffalo, New York punks Science Man which, with its at times kinda generic and metal-ish, mosh-y riffing, sometimes felt a bit like the the group couldn't quite match up their great ambition with an appropriate amount of substance. Their newest LP is way more up my alley though with their mixture of noise-infused, sludgy hard- and postcore sounding quite a bit more organic and less forced, driven by inventive, catchy hooks and elaborate song structures that carry with them a sense of danger and unpredictability without ever feeling randomly thrown together. These tunes show amounts of deliberation, intent and directionality that i found missing on their last one is what i'm trying to say here.
A curious little creature, this new tape coming to us courtesy of the reliably weird and brilliant - and if you ask me, wildly under-appreciated - NY label Fuzzy Warbles Cassettes. The second tape by this act of mysterious origin is some gloriously old-fashioned minimalist synth punk action that on one hand channels some of the old '80s underground greats like Nervous Gender, Units, Visitors, Screamers, Primitive Calculators or Marginal Man, but also the hypnotic, scrappy charm of early John Carpenter soundtracks and in the current landscape, they kinda fit in with such groups as Lost Packages, Abscam or some particular incarnations of Freak Genes.
