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.
This group from Olympia, Washington has always been an exquisite thrill ride with their two previous EPs and an LP, all of which came out via the reliably excellent cassette label Impotent Fetus. Following a vinyl reissue of said LP via Sorry State Records, that very same label now presents us with their second album and as expected, their hyperactive mix of art- and garage punk, hard- and postcore is yet another delightfully overwhelming assault on the senses equally unpredictable, smart and elaborate, somewhat reminiscent of old left-field hardcore acts like Tragic Mulatto (most strikingly in Failed Experiment), Really Red and Saccharine Trust on one hand but just as related to more recent phenomena like Mystic Inane, Warm Bodies, Launcher, Vexx, Rolex, Cucuy or Big Bopper.
A worthy addition to the see/saw-sourced piss bands spreadsheet comes from some Raleigh, North Carolina dude or band creating a fun mix of noise rock and garage punk with hammering Big Black-esque drum machine beats, although i'm gonna say that despite some decidedly Albini-esque guitar noises being contained in here aswell, the overall vibe reminds me more of London's World Domination Enterprises and, to a lesser extent, their fellow brits The Membranes who also had a quite Big Black-ish phase in the late eighties, while the most garage-leaning tracks like Meat Tenderizer evoke the way more stripped-down, minimalistic prototypes of Métal Urbain / Dr. Mix And The Remix with further possible references being the likes Scratch Acid and Brainiac. So yeah, this is good shit!
These croatian punks didn't take long to completely win me over with their joyous and odd garage punk mixture of cowpunk-y X (US) and Gun Club vibes, Angst-ish folk punk sprinkles and tons of early Minutemen-esque, freewheeling anything-goes funky post punk weirdnes that also calls to mind a wild bunch of contemporary acts like Ismatic Guru, Patti, Tyvek, Print Head and Shark Toys, while the the sort-of-theme-tune Dad Joke almost feels like an authentic throwback to old DIY brits á la Mekons, Television Personalities and Desperate Bicycles.
Oooh-kay, so this is supposed to be the new project of some old british-american punk geezer but to be perfectly honest, i'm fairly positive that you can't take anything of what's written on their bandcamp page at face value. Anyway, this is some ripping shit. It's a noisy, fuzzed out explosive concoction of garage- and post punk with just a smidge of '90s indie rock and old britisch DIY thrown in for good measure. Devotees of actually not-that-old groups á la Shark Toys, Tyvek, Parquet Courts and earlier Cloud Nothings are gonna approve of this.
I can't ever have enough snooper tunes in my life so this new tour EP is more than welcome even if it feels like a little bit of a cheat, consisting only like 60% of actual new songs while the other 40% are made up of two rather inessential instances of experimentation and fucking around. The two "actual" tunes are high-octane rippers though, driven by electric beats a bit like we've kinda already heard in the track Subdivision from their 2022 Town Topic EP, although the energy level here is almost brutal in direct comparison, catapulting their sound into some straight electro punk territory with the songs themselves striking me as pretty classic, first-rate Snooper material. Now if these folks just could make up their minds to actually play a show or two in the western parts of germany on their next tour, that would make me a very happy boy. There are egg punk afficinados living in places other than Berlin, you know...
Now that's some first rate shit, the second LP of this group based in the little town of Domodossola in Italy's Piedmont region. On it, they create a thorougly captivating high-energy sound between the worlds of garage- and art punk that appears to be just as much inspired by oldschool KBD-style oddities as by way artsier post punk acts like Mission Of Burma, Volcano Suns and Moving Targets, held together by the nuts and bolts of unwavering song construction. In tunes like Ping Pong, Punching Me and Licking Nipples we also get some brief little hardcore attacks. I gotta say, should it actually be the case that, as according to the title, these dudes suck, then i love everything about the way they do it, sucking in all the right ways for my deranged tastes.
Now i suddenly remember that, like, two weeks ago, i was thrilled as hell to see a new Nourishment EP being released and then apparently failed to bookmark it and forgot about it in the last couple weeks' relentless flood of new releases. Happens to me all the time. Well, better late the never i guess. The sonic parameters on this one stay roughly the same for the US-based blackened-/dungeon punk group, althought the production values appear to have been improved a tiny bit here. As before, the new record captivates with a distinct spin on the genre that once again appears to take plenty of inspiration from contemporary, dark goth-infused post punk and oldschool death rock.
