This Melbourne group has been around before. That was sometime during the 90's and back then, their sound could be described as your typical, slightly emo-fied postcore style of that period with echoes of Chavez, Slint and Polvo. Their first new songs in a quarter-century however are quite far from a nostalgic retread of their earlier tunes. Instead, we get presented an all-new and slick post punk sound clearly belonging into the present day, which doesn't look out of place among acts like say, Sleepies, Gotobeds or Drahla, at the same time sounding rather timeless and mature in all the best ways, at times also evoking a subtle Moving Targets or Volcano Suns vibe.
It's been a few years since i last heard of London group Sarcasm. On their latest and, apparently, last EP their ultra-minimalist post punk with strong hints of Crass and more recent bands like Marbled Eye, Rank/Xerox or Labor still sounds pretty much as if not a minute has gone by since then, which is totally fine with me. Quite possibly, these songs were recorded not long after their 2017 Malarial Bog EP.
More quality shit courtesey of Deluxe Bias. This absurdly short cassingle of noise in the realm of KBD-informed weirdcore, garage- and post punk will sure be a delight to folks who've already developed a huge boner for Mystic Inane, Rolex or Fried E/M.
Following last year's somewhat more refined full-length debut, the second LP by Atlanta dark-/post punk group Nag feels more like a throwback to their earlier EPs - and i mean that in all the best ways. These songs are raw as fuck, the arrangements almost as sparse as you can possibly stretch the genre before it's gonna collapse. Why write a goddamn novel when all you need to get across is a single but rather desperate sentence?
I already liked this Philadelphia group's first tape a lot but its successor raises the bar even higher for their own mixture of garage-, post- and dungeon punk that doesn't shy away from allowing quite a bit of very oldschool "heavy" metal into the mix - in regards to the movie just as much as the genre.
It took the Portland, Oregon trio a few releases to get there, but their newest 7" is pushing all the right buttons for me with its no wave-infused as well as Gang Of Four-inspired danceable post punk, which in this particular case reminds me especially of Brighton group Austerity.
Excellent post punk of the moderately dark variety with some traces of postcore, math- and noise rock is what we get on this australian group's first EP, kinda like a Fusion of B-Boys, Girls In Synthesis and Rank/Xerox… but also not entirely dissimilar to stuff like Video, Public Eye, Tunic or The Estranged.
Another fine EP by North Carolina electro-/sample-/mashup punk duo ISS on which they, among other things, venture into full-on hardcore territoty (in Facemask), which i don't think they've ever done before and it works just beautifully here.
Night Miasma are a group from Chemnitz, Germany featuring members of L'appel Du Vide, whith whom you're probably familiar already if you're into that kind of thing. Their debut EP doesn't stray too far from that stylistically, delivering a flavor of dark punk / deathrock-infused post punk that doesn't add anything new to the genre but gets all the basics right in these four soundly constructed songs.
Their 2019 debut album New Freak was great fun already, but on the belgian group's newest EP all the moving parts click into each other way more tightly and effective, while their quite slick yet powerful garage punk sound has gained a bit more of a subtle post punk vibe. At various points i'm reminded of groups like (early) Teenanger, Video, Flat Worms, Sauna Youth, Ex-Cult as well as french acts Nightwatchers & Telecult.
