When the Carp released their first demo 2021 it was love at first sight but still the group felt a bit like a fifth wheel as far as Nathan Ward-Fronted bands are concerned, kinda like a slightly too logical middle ground between the jaggy post punk efficiency of Knowso, the wild off-the-rails energy of Cruelster and the rougher garage edge of Perverts Again. Their excellent debut LP in 2024 then saw them branch out a little, though still sounding kinda noncommittal to any clear direction that would differentiate them from the established Cruelster and Knowso blueprints. Now this new one for the first time sounds to me like the group is slowly starting to develop an identity of their own marked by a more rustic, wilfully dumbed-down garage punk undercurrent and a way less brainy and detached, more earnest and unfiltered heart-on-your-sleeve approach to their tunes. Anyway, as pretty much anything these dudes have touched so far, this yet another essential nugget for admirers of their particular strain of highly structured and sturdy post punk cubism with a fuzzy garage edge.
This Victoria, British Columbia group is generating tons of fun and eccentric post-/art punk bliss that partly, but not quite, fits the common mold of late '70s / early '80s Siouxsie, Pylon, Delta 5 or B-52s inspired groups… there's a similar catchy quirkines to these but you also can't deny a strong garage-y proto punk thing goin' here and a rougher, more anarchic UK-bred DIY vibe, the kind you'd rather expect from the likes of Cravats, Membranes, Fatal Microbes or Flowers In The Dustbin or hidden away in the depths of some old Messthetics compilation, while there's still some plausible connection you can draw to more recent post punk phenomena of the Spread Joy and Marcel Wave variety and even some 2010s weirdcore phenomena loke Warm Bodies and Vexx. That's some appealing shit right there.
Dammo does that Domo demo kablammo. This presumably Winnipeg based group excites my synapses in a way that surely does feel kinda egg-related in this day and age but also stands apart thanks to more of an oldschool vibe that harkens back to the more innocent pre- and proto-egg days of the 2010s and the hook-laden no-frills garage punk explosions by the likes of Kid Chrome, S.B.F. and, a little later, Set-Top Box, Crown Moulding, Liquid Face or the earliest works of Science Man.
Featuring Mickey Marie of Nervosas, The Missed and, most recently, Xanny Stars fame along with a whole mess of other notable participants in the current Cleveland punk scene, this group kicks loose some confident and soundly constructed garage punk mayhem with a slight Wipers, Saints or Dead Boys undercurrent at first but also gaining a bit of a Strike Under or Really Red quality along the way. Gotta admit the whole thing sags a little in the middle, me having an especially hard time warming up to the somewhat cookie-cutter dad punk stylings of Fortunate Few, but otherwise this thing is a thoroughly thrilling affair that only gets better from there, the other tune sung by Marie Sit and Stare already growing on me much better and then there's no denying that the final two songs sung by Jake, formerly playing drums for Bad Noids, are a couple of instant classics in their own right that kinda remind me of peak Piss Test energy and once the NWOBHM-style metal shredding puts in the final touches for the closing track Vestigestability, you just know these folks know exactly what the fuck they're going for.
Smirk always kinda stood apart from the pack of 2nd wave eggpunk groups in as much as there always appeared to have been some tension going on between the more upbeat and quirky egg-ish vibes and a much darker post punk undercurrent in many of their early tunes, a trait they went all-in on for the first time only on last year's incredible Domestic Dog 7", just in time when their previous trajectory, as well as that of much of their eggpunk surroundings in general, started to show serious signs of diminishing returns. Its two tunes put them more in the neighborhood of essential post punk pillars of the Institute, Marbled Eye and The Estranged variety and the shit worked just admirably 'cos these impressively elaborate and balanced tunes absolutely held their own and so does everything on this new LP now, their most sober and earnest set of tunes to date, showing all the hallmarks of another eggpunk outfit hatching into a full-blown chickenpunk group in a way that i'm sure would make ex Lumpy dude quite proud, even if i still think he's got the whole chicken-and-egg problem upside down. In all these cases, clearly the egg was there first and these eggs need to have room to exist and be bred and flourish in order to mature into the kind of beauty we see right here. Damn does that sentence make me sound stupid and pretentious. I better refrain from typing any more random words now.
Finally here's the debut LP of this group from Bremen, Germany, a record i've been hotly anticipating even though i've also had some reasonable doubts as to how well that whole schtick is gonna play in 2026 given how insanely, in the short span of 18 months since their debut EP, the proliferation and oversaturation of vaguely Snooper and Prison Affair-informed egg-ish garage punk groups has progressed to the point of some unavoidable genre fatigue on my part, as i've been moaning about previously already. On one hand i'm kinda sad to say that, for me at least, the enjoyment of a new Wax Minds LP is indeed somewhat affected and it's actually through little fault of their own so i'm kinda feeling like an asshole for even saying that. My initial impression ain't helped by the fact that the record ain't exactly front-loaded with its strongest material - especially the second and third tunes Lead-Limbed Losers' Anthem and Growing Old, Staying Gold somehow just don't quite cut it for me - and it's only starting with the title tune Funatic Asylum that the album begins to really come into its own and finally settle into that golden zone of catchy-ass hooks, exciting slicing-and-dicing guitar work and vicious like-clockwork garage punk propulsion we've all been hoping for. Did i also mention this group absolutely kills live? Go see 'em if you have the chance! Many of my gripes may be purely a me-problem actually, borne out of following the eggosphere a bit too closely for a long time, and as much as this record has to stand up to a glut of vaguely similar sounding groups these days, i actually think it does an admirable job at that once it gets over its somewhat shaky opening stretch.
A mysterious group from nowhere is ambushing us with this killer EP wallowing in a garage punk sub-niche not all too common anymore these days, which i'd say is actually ripe for a comeback, strongly reminding me of the mid-aughts-to-2010s era of angular garage punk that was kinda the backdrop that informed this very blog's early days. Think of groups á la Sauna Youth, Ex-Cult, Shark Toys and early Teenanger... maybe there are also some traces of UV Race, Total Control or Eddy Current Suppression Ring in there, even a touch of early Useless Eaters in the record's absolute über-tune I Find Your Tattoos & Piercings Boring. So yeah, good shit right there, wouldn't say no to more of that!
Damn, has it really been close to five years since we last heard from these spanish egg-/garage punk veterans? Anyway, this new EP shows the group in top form once again, the opening tune Almas Perdidas transporting a kind of intricacy and elegance you'd rather expect from, say, late-career Fugazi than anything coming out of the current eggpunk circuit, easily transcending the band's humble beginnings, though they ain't doing anything to betray or obscure their roots either, the thrilling polyrhythmic playfulness of Pues pues pues pues being yet another impressive example of fusing fun, egg-ish quirks and whims with a healthy dose of subtle postcore smarts before Yo Yo leads the EP to an insanely satisfying conclusion with another energetic, comparatively straightforward but by no means simplistic punk smasher. This may easily be the most well-balanced and elaborate thing Finale have done so far.
Holy fuck, what this Wakefield, UK group is pulling off on their debut EP is pushing so many of the right buttons for me. Rooted in timeless buzzsaw-guitar post punk with more than just a bit of a Big Black edge, this shit also incorporates much of a catchy garage punk immediacy, noise rock sonic assault and relentless hardcore propulsion with plenty of melodic scraps and fragments peppered all throughout. This is so fucking up my alley and reminds me of another crop of UK post punk acts that either predate or avoid the more gentrified nature of the current UK landscape, the closest comparisons i can come up with from the top of my head would be Leeds-based groups Cool Jerks and Coded Marking, but that doesn't tell the whole story either.
This group's debut EP is Indiana DIY punk at its best that on one hand appears to have quite a few things in common at least spiritually with the state's early eggpunk scene as it certainly has a similar air of chaos, inventiveness and unpredictability you'd expect of a Skull Cult or Erik Nervous record for example, even though the rough sonic parameters here are often of a completely different nature, ranging from propulsive straight-ahead garage punk and a no-bullshit hardcore energy reminiscent of another indiana curiosity - that whole Zhoop/Feed/Djinn/Brundle/etc. clusterfuck - to plenty of geographically rather unrelated postcore vibes of the Wymyns Prysyn or oldschool Hot Snakes-/Drive Like Jehu variety, various stages and incarnations of NYC's Science Man or the fuzz punk excess of early The Gobs. Anyway, as you may have gathered, there's always some thrilling and unexpected shit happening on this record.
