Mystic Inane - Natural Beauty

Man, it's been at least half a decade since i last heard of this New Or­leans group. How­ev­er un­ex­pect­ed the re­lease of their new 7" might come, their blend of garage- & post punk, hard- & post­core cer­tain­ly sounds as fresh and en­er­getic as ever on this one, fit­ting in nice­ly with more re­cent groups in the vein of Launch­er, Liq­uid As­sets or Fried E/​M.

Al­bum-Stream →

Nutrition - No

Is this re­al­ly the first time i'm post­ing a re­lease of this group? This is baf­fling to me 'cos it feels as if these guys from Kaloomps, Cana­da have been around for­ev­er, hav­ing first won my at­ten­tion with a string of nine cass­in­gles of steadi­ly in­creas­ing qual­i­ty, fol­lowed by a self-ti­tled EP which for some rea­son didn't click with me quite as much. On their re­cent fol­low-up how­ev­er, they're def­i­nite­ly in their zone, de­liv­er­ing six high-mo­men­tum bursts of vague­ly KBD-ish and Wipers-es­que Garage-/Post Punk, al­so bear­ing some sim­i­lar­i­ty to groups like Launch­er, In­sti­tute, Liq­uid As­sets and, oc­ca­tion­al­ly, a hint of Crass.

Al­bum-Stream →

Prized Pig - PPEP

A thor­ough­ly pleas­ant lis­ten­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, this de­but EP by some Los An­ge­les group, made up of noise rock, post- and garage punk in­gre­di­ents, re­mind­ing me of a slight­ly garage-lean­ing in­car­na­tion of Nag, spiked with some weird­ness of the Soup­cans, Stink­hole or Lumpy & The Dumpers va­ri­ety. Tasty shit.

Print Head - Happyhappy

Whoa, what a beau­ti­ful­ly crude piece of DIY lo-fi fuck­ery in the twi­light zones of slight­ly no-wave-ish post punk and garage rock, this dig­i­tal re­lease by some un­known Hicksville, NY en­ti­ty. Kin­da like an in­cred­i­bly weird in­car­na­tion of The Woolen Men in­ter­min­gling with Half Japan­ese and The UV Race. This is just gor­geous!

Al­bum-Stream →

The Celetoids - Optic Nerve

While their 2017 Pu­pal Stage EP still struck me as a bit un­der­cooked, their newest tape shows these croa­t­ian punks (fea­tur­ing mem­bers of Mod­ern Delu­sion) re­fin­ing their sound in­to some­thing way more con­sis­tent and en­joy­able, made up of straight-ahead punk rock that some­times veers slight­ly to­wards the KBD-in­spired garage sound of groups like Launch­er, Frea­kees… at oth­er times tak­ing some cues from melod­ic, post punk-lean­ing acts in the fash­ion of Red Dons, Xe­tas, Anx­ious Liv­ing or ear­li­er The Es­tranged.

Al­bum-Stream →

Super-X - Super-X

Hav­ing re­leased a strong de­but EP in 2017, Mel­bourne group Su­per-X now de­liv­er their first full length, once again packed with tons of spaced-out son­ic force. Clas­sic Stooges en­er­gy col­lides with psy­che­del­ic fire­works á la ear­ly Tele­scopes, some un­ex­pect­ed­ly high amount of post punk and a hint of MX-80, while they man­age to keep things in­ter­est­ing and ver­sa­tile through­out the whole jour­ney, evok­ing a rather di­verse clus­ter of com­par­isons such as Pub­lic Eye, Writhing Squares, De­struc­tion Unit, Faux Fe­ro­cious, Bail­ter­space, The Cow­boy or Open Your Heart-era The Men.

Al­bum-Stream →

Kaleidoscope - Decolonization /​/​ Straw Man Army - Age Of Exile

Two noisy new ar­ti­facts brought to us by New York's ex­quis­ite D4MT la­bel. First, there's a new ex­tend­ed play by hard-/post­core pow­er­house Kalei­do­scope on which their sound comes across a tiny bit more more sim­pli­fied and straight­for­ward than on last year's killer de­but LP, yet as in­spired, play­ful and in­ven­tive as ever.
Sim­i­lar things can be said about the de­but al­bum of Straw Man Army, a duo i can't find much in­for­ma­tion on, but at a quick glance they seem to con­sist of none oth­er than Kaleidoscope's drum­mer boy and some oth­er dude. Just as you'd ex­pect, this is an­oth­er quite ad­ven­tur­ous ride through the realms of dark post punk both clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary, some­times bor­der­ing on Crass-style min­i­mal­ism, Wipers-es­que melan­cho­lia while al­so re­mind­ing me of more re­cent ec­cen­tric­i­ties by the likes of Mur­der­er or Wymyns Prysyn.

Al­bum-Streams →

Warm Red - Decades Of Breakfast

As was to be ex­pect­ed, this At­lanta group's first full length ef­fort is thir­ty min­utes of pure post punk bliss, re­mind­ing me, at sev­er­al points, of some of the genre's best con­tem­po­raries - the rigid rhythms of Know­so and Nag come to mind, mixed with the more play­ful flour­ish­es of Pat­ti or Mar­bled Eye. Oth­er valid com­par­isons might be acts like Bruised, Sar­casm or La­bor.

Al­bum-Stream →

Lip - Commodity

Baltimore's Lip first won my at­ten­tion through a split EP with Nag a while ago. While there's def­i­nite­ly some sim­i­lar­i­ty to said At­lanta post punk group, i'd say what they're pulling off on their lat­est EP bears a much clos­er re­sem­blance to groups like Sieve­head, Rank Xe­rox or Crim­i­nal Code. At times, their sound has a more pro­nounced old­school goth/​death rock vibe to it though, bring­ing to mind Dis­joy or, more re­cent­ly, Clock Of Time.

Al­bum-Stream →

Wax Chattels - Clot

Two years af­ter their promis­ing, though at times some­what un­der­cooked de­but LP, we get to hear a way more con­sis­tent sopho­more ef­fort by this Auck­land, New Zee­land trio. Their rather ab­stract yet al­ways catchy com­po­si­tions some­where on the fringes of Post Punk and Noise Rock - plus a hint of In­dus­tri­al - at sev­er­al points re­mind me of Acts like Girls In Syn­the­sis, Haunt­ed Hors­es, Ice Bal­loons or Tu­nic - with a small dose of Light­ning Bolt sprin­kled in for good mea­sure.

Al­bum-Stream →