After a number of incredible EPs, it took Santa Rosa's Acrylics a good two years to assemble their fist long player, which - to no real surprise - turns out to be their most varied and mature chunk of noise. Their ambitious, but simultaneously always perfectly coherent mix of styles draws a perfect triangle between the dark post punk of Criminal Code, hardcore punk of the quite punishing variety reminiscent of Cülo, Hate Preachers, Impulso and forward thinking Postcore of acts like Ivy and Bad Breeding.
Two preview tracks from this (probably) british band's debut EP already made me kinda hungry for more of their shit and now the record's other two songs prove we haven't been promised too much. A soundscape of restless garage punk unfolds, transporting a feeling of widescreen spaciousness you rarely get to witness in this genre - somewhat as if recent Uranium Club met Radio Birdman and Modern Lovers, complemented by a bit of MX-80 weirdness. Also, the epic closer Seasons 13-31 seems to have taken some cues from Wipers' Youth Of America.
Exquisite shit from Rouen, France. Kumusta emerge on the scene with a fun mixture drawing a line from noise rock & -core on one end of the spectrum, some raw garage energy on the other, a shitload of post punk & postcore in between. Imagine a fusion of slowed-down Bad Breeding with Criminal Code in certain moments, or at other times, you might be reminded of Australia's postcore powertools Batpiss and Bench Press.
Last year's long playing debut by Seattle group Big Bite already struck me as an anomaly of the most welcome kind. Now their sophomore effort comes across as no less brilliant - once again breathing new life into a particular 90s niche, oscillating somewhere between straightforward, no-fuss but high-thrust indie- and alternative rock plus a bit of shoegaze. Think Sugar, Polvo or Swervedriver when it comes to bands of the aforementioned era, or of more recent acts like early Ovlov, Pardoner, Milked or Dead Soft. Psychedelic moments are given a bit more emphasis here than on their first, while in the album's final stretch you can sense a subtle post punk vibe of the Teenanger or Constant Mongrel variety.
Once again Barcelona's scene is killing it! Plataforma manage to do just that thanks to a beautifully rough, DIY-as-fuck sound in the realm of dark-/post punk with a healthy dose of goth/death rock doom & gloom. Crisis come to mind as well as the early 2010's Kopenhagen scene - think Lower and early Iceage - and some more recent stuff like britain's Disjoy.
While their last EP Fan The Flames didn't appeal to me as much as i hoped for, their newest 7" shows London's Girls In Synthesis at their best. Just like before, their sound is a skilled balancing act on the threshold between post punk and noise rock, thus operating in much of the same realm as Bands like USA Nails, Tunic or John (timestwo), among others. The definite highlight here is Smarting with its kinda Big Black-esque way of guitar shredding.
Barcelona's Lux already have a demo and a promising debut album under their belt, but with this recent EP their sound really clicks into gear, in which some of the more excentric strands of 80s post- and hardcore punk - Man Sized Action and The Proletariat come to mind - collide with distinctive goth/deathpunk bass lines. You might also be reminded of more recend bands like Street Eaters or the potent cowpunk propulsion of Murderer.
Not too long after a rather synth-heavy tape by that guy who recently seems to be involved in pretty much any other Berlin band, we get a small encore exhibiting a more guitar-centric sound, shifting the sonic coordinates closer to the garage. The overall vibe here kinda reminds me of early Erik Nervous.
Although other british bands of their genre enjoyed much more media attention than london art-/post punks Italia 90 have in recent years, few other bands, in my humble opinion, embody so much of the soul and rebellious no-bullshit DIY attitude of the scene, a bitter and emotional indictment of a society collectively shrugging off its own guilty conscience. It's about time this Band gets noticed a lot more. On their third EP -just like on its predecessors - i hear strong echoes of old post punk greats: Crisis, Membranes, Swell Maps and early Mekons for example. Simultaneously Italia 90 keep expanding on their sonic spectrum. Usually when punks go slow, this tends to result in a horrible trainwreck. But surprisingly, the slowest, most subdued moments are the clear highlights of this record. In Open Veins, the gentle performance collides with the disillusioned and angry charges delivered by its lyrics. This combination reminds me a bit of recent Protomartyr, while the closing track Against The Wall has a subtle psychedelic note in common with Wire's Chairs Missing album.
What the title promises, this record delivers. Danceable shit? You bet! Anarchist messages? Tons of those get proclaimed here in such density you really can't miss or ignore them. Musically, this is not exactly something you'd associate with anarcho punk, although this stuff clearly has much of the same spirit. This is infectouis post punk with a punchy postcore edge which, despite its dancefloor effectiveness, also succeeds in the noise department, showing no fear of waking up the neighbors. This, and their explicitly political lyrics seperate them quite a bit from last decade's short-lived dance punk explosion. Instead of New York cool you get an appropriately blunt and distinctly british sense of urgency, even as they seem to share many of the same influences. Gang Of Four, obviously, as well as Minutemen, mid- to late eighties Membranes, The Pop Group. And in the present, comparing them to Tics, Pill, Slumb Party, Special Interest or UZS wouldn't be too far off.
