This London group recorded their debut LP in a single day at Abbey Road. Does that actually matter all that much? I don’t think so but anyway, this thing sounds kinda neat, unexpectedly raw and unpolished. Right out of the gate, Defenestration greets us with a melodic and slightly folk-ish post punk vibe somewhere inbetween the worlds of Mission Of Burma, Sebadoh, Volcano Suns, Angst, Polvo or Medications, followed by a somewhat Wire-esque post punk exercise with hints of mid-2000s Indie Rock in Sinnes, the latter of which places this among my least favorite things on here along with the somewhat sleepy and undercooked Cruel Tutelage. Thankfully, Liar then picks up speed again in a mix of oldschool garage punk and a Mudhoney-esque Fuzz Punk-/Neo-Grunge vibe, some of which also resonates through the straightforward punk smasher Bumble Been before Red Fuzz leads into the overall much stronger secod half of the album with its catchiest pop tune so far. Pink Liquor then is a compact no-frills burst of noisy garage punk excellence and Automated Response sounds like yet another early Wire tribute right out of the Pink Flag Playbook, a much more well-balanced one this time though. Cavern Killer adds a bit of a rather contemporary sounding post punk and noise rock vibe to the mix before I Love You ends the record with a flawless oldschool oddity of the heavily ’77 and KBD-influenced variety.
Here’s yet another new nicho for you that’s so top fucking secret you can find it on bandcamp! On the successor to last year’s Dining Nothing / Sin Agenda Para La Muerte single, the group from Rosario, Argentinia delivers more of that same greatness drenched in the murky waters of eighties post-, garage- and art punk with an additional layer of fuzzy psychedelia on top that makes this record a neat companion piece to that recent Zulo EP which, coincidentally, has been released just a couple weeks prior on the very same local boutique label, Fake Sex Tape.
Not too long after their already quite joyous third EP, the Kalamazoo, Michigan group is already following up on that with an even stronger 2-track digital single that once again feels like a throwback to the glory days of ’80s-to-mid-’90s post punk, college-, indie- and alternative rock with the likes of Mission Of Burma, My Dad Is Dead, Sebadoh or Volcano Suns looming large over the opening track Party Store, while Good People sounds a bit like Flipper or Broken Talent filtered through a more approachable early Mudhoney- or mid-’90s Royal Trux vibe.
New noises from a dude who’s not only been playing in a whole shit-ton of highly regarded Berlin-based groups like Benzin, Pigeon, Liiek, Molde and Deltoids over the years but has also been cooking up his own very own little musical treats as a solo act under the Dee Bee Rich or DBR moniker for many years now. Two years after his previous self-titled tape already marked a huge step ahead from the more scrappy and quirky DIY Lo-Fi aesthetics of earlier releases towards a more coherent and fleshed-out musical vision, his newest LP shows further refinement and an expanded breadth of stylistic flourishes and influences. While the opener Smirched could well pass for an (excellent) outtake from that last Liiek album, Unacceptable already surprises us in spicing up the familiar post punk formula with some kinda ’77-ish guitar leads. Pool then adds a melodic sensibility to it of a kind you’d rather expect from more recent Institute releases for example, followed by Hold Me Tight on which this record finally reaches full catchy pop equilibrium, no doubt the most impressive demonstration of a matured songwriting craft that oozes out of every pore here and elevates every second of this killer record.
Damn, it’s been almost eight years now since we’ve last heard of Youth Avoiders on occasion of their 2018 Relentless LP, which i remember having had some lukewarm feelings about, but that’s probably less a reflection of that record’s qualities and more of the not all too sunny place my life has been at in 2018. Anyway, here’s a new Youth Avoiders LP at long last and guess what, it’s every bit as good as anything the Paris group has done so far, excelling in a sound inbetween melodic punk and postcore that’s become kind of a blueprint for countless of predominantly french groups following in their footsteps like Telecult, Nightwatchers, Stalled Minds, Litovsk, Bleakness, Laxisme or Bronco Libre, who in turn have developed it over the years to include varying amounts of post- and garage punk and, even more recently, Oi! elements. Because of that, their music may nowadays be described as pleasantly oldschool and possibly won’t sound quite as unique today as it did back in the early 2010s, but that’s just underscoring the massive influence these folks have had on parts of the scene with a sound that’s actually very much their own.
If you feel like you’ve heard these songs before, you’re not going nuts ‘cos indeed every single tune on album number 3 by this Madison, Wisconsin-based group has already been on one of their previous two LPs. So on one hand this thing plays out like some kind of best of comp but then again, everything has been re-recorded here, polished up and given a new layer of paint and especially those tunes from the first record – which still left some things to be desired in the production department – have gained a lot of punch and sparkle in what i’ll call their definitive versions now. So basically we’ve got kind of a “first Snooper LP” situation on our hands here and the strongest representation so far of their quite unique blend of super catchy garage- and post punk with psychedelic undercurrents and additional sprinkles of glam and goth, a combination that often reminds me of Powerplant, De()t or Isotope Soap minus the Synths, of Mononegatives, Shrudd or Electric Prawns 2 on the more psychedelic side of the equation and, in their lighter moments, the likes of Erik Nervous, Andy Human & The Reptoids, SGATV, Freak Genes or Cthtr.
This Chicago-based one-man band really upped their game on their 2025 Sunk EP after the dude’s previous releases still sounded more like fleeting snapshots of a developing act still in search of its own voice. This new tape released via the good folks at Knuckles On Stun now once again sounds like he means business, delivering four super-compact, simple and catchy treats of power pop-infused, melodic DIY garage punk with a subtle hint of Wipers that never misses a beat and always gets straight to the point.
Over the last couple years, Shrudd of Louiseville, Kentucky consistently upped their game with each new release and yet i’m gonna say their newest one is playing in a different league altogether, such an amazing leap from anything they’ve done before. Where their previous work cycled through numerous subgenres but had an undeniable egg-ish quality in common especially on their most recent bunch of EPs, this one moves way beyond that with the opener M.M.I.T.L. still bearing the closest resemblance to their previous work with kind of a Ghoulies vibe before Stagnant shows the first subtle harbinger of a darker, more psychedelic-leaning overall vibe reminiscent of the likes of Useless Eaters, Pow!, Electric Prawns 2 and Mononegatives, which really kicks into gear with the slightly Powerplant-esque aura of Bodies. EMT on the other hand has quite a bit of a classic blues-y, slightly cowpunk-ish garage vibe to itself, followed by Gift where they’re going into full spaced-out acid punk overdrive. And in such a vein it continues, gradually expanding their sonic color plaette with almost every new tune. So basically, here we have the newest example of a band growing the fuck up and branching out from their humble eggpunk beginnings towards new horizons, which i guess is gonna make ex-Lumpy Martin Meyer kinda happy and it makes me quite happy too cos this shit is so freakin’ good!
This Philadelphia group’s 2024 Nyuck Nyuck Boing LP was among of the most unlikely stunners released that year, a weirdly anachronistic-feeling, unwieldy behemoth of a record that seemed equally heavily inspired by US post punk/-core acts like Saccharine Trust and Minutemen as by british art punk of the Swell Maps and The Pop Group strain, with further echoes of mototik kraut-y grooves, no wave atonality and ’60 acid rock excesses. So here we have the successor now, on which many of these things still hold true while the band also manages to package their ecclectic influences into a somewhat more coherent-feeling and tangible package by mainly leaning into the psychedelic side of things here with a slow burn tension building throughout the first half, doing away almost completely with the previous LP’s funky post punk grooves, although those do make a brief comeback too in The Big Hit, which kicks off a comparatively lighthearted and, at times, leaned-back second half – the yin and yang of a group that still won’t give half a fuck about neat genre categories and our own conceptions thereof.
These folks based in Biel, Switzerland have created a true slow burn-type of a record here via the local imprint Chrüsimüsi Records that frequently takes its sweet time to get to the point but pays off handsomely when you stick with it. The sluggish crawl of an opening tune Different Times immediately reminds me of the dusty, desert-flavored americana rock of Weak Signal, which then gets transformed into very much of a post punk context in the following tune Bubbles while songs like Peace Of Mind have some obvious Velvet Underground energy flowing through them and a undercurrent of oldschool art- and glam rock that’s also ever-present in The Candidate. At other times, i’m frequently reminded of Berlin’s folk-ish Post Punkers Dead Finks, the earlier work of London’s Witching Waves, a decelerated variant of The Cowboy or Flatworms, the earthy garage rock of Honey Radar or the spiky art punk of Far Corners and Germ House… even the first Peace de Résistance LP may at times resonate with this.
