Okay here’s yet another of these francophone (though in this case seemingly not french) Oi!-infused garage punk groups and i have nothing new to add here but also no complaints whatsoever ‘cos the quality is right up there with the genre’s best and friends of shit á la Telecult, Stalled Minds, Distance, Nightwatchers, Litovsk or most recently Laxisme are gonna have a ball with this one as well.
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After six years silence, out of the blue comes the second 7″ of this Antwerp, Belgium group via the local garage punk powerhouse Belly Butten Records. And oh boy, this is some heavy duty shit channeling an aesthetic that seems just as influenced by smart artsy garage punk groups á la Uranium Club, Vintage Crop, Reality Group as by the sprechgesang and eleborate arrangements of US postcore phenomenon Straw Man Army, even if lyrically this shit is a lot more lighthearted here, in-tune with the overall musical vibe. To round things out, there’s also a distinct touch of Tyvek or UV Race progressively creeping in over the course of these four tunes. I think this is just a perfect little 7″. So ready for the next one in another in six years.
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New shit from Mark Ryan (of Marked Men, Mind Spiders and Radioactivity fame) and his current electro-/synth punk outfit O-D-EX (or is it just Odex now?). After one short- and one long-playing release from last year – each of ’em sporting more of a minimalist and cold synth wave aesthetic – this new EP sees the duo of Ryan and Micah opening up their tunes towards a comparatively warm, melodic and overall more tangible direction that indeed sounds like a perfect middle ground between the group’s aforementioned previous releases and the considerably more garage-leaning Mind Spiders records.
Top Secret Nichos are my favorite kind of nicho, i’ll have fries with that thank you! Dining Nothing, is that so? Okay, maybe not then. Anyway, sin and muerte are pretty much on my agenda too along with beer, smut and Satan. Gotta love these dudes from Rosario, Argentina. Naturally their music kicks ass too! This is some excellent oldschool noise-infused post punk evoking bits and pieces of such groups as Nag, Impotentie, Labor and the early works of Institute, Low Life or Constant Mongrel, with the addtion of maybe a hint of combustive garage punk á la Jean Mignon especially in the aforementioned Dining Nothing.
Winky Frown have been kind of an oddity right from the start even in the – by definition – quite odd eggpunk genre in that their songs on one hand seem to perfectly fit in with a number of thoroughly established eggpunk formulas yet never fail to surprise and transcend the genre’s limitations, putting a lot more effort, ideas and songwriting finesse into their tunes than you’d usually expect. Their new digital 2-track single has yet another surprise in store for us when we’re greeted with a slow-jam tune kinda channelling a lost artifact of Chairs Missing-era Wire in turn channeling a lost artifact of Syd Barret-era Pink Floyd and the best thing is that shit fucking works! The second tune Upside Down Frown then is closer to the sonics we’re used to from the group, which is to say: another marvellously crafted high-momentum electrically driven garage punk smasher that unrelentingly builds up towards a massive payoff.
Melbourne group Shepparton Airplane first caught my ear when they exploded right into my face with their 2018 sophomore LP Almurta, then quickly followed by a 2020 album that just didn’t hit quite as hard for me – ambitious, sure, but also feeling kinda forced, like it’s just been trying a bit too hard. After a radio silence of five years, just when the group had basically dropped off my radar, whe unexpectedly get to witness what is without doubt their most mature, accomplished record to date. Now their sound somewhere inbetween the realms of post punk, noise rock and postcore has always felt a bit old-fashioned, more comfortably fitting in the late 2000s to late-2010s, but that’s also part of their charm, delightfully oldschool i’ll say and certainly in the same league with some of the best groups said era had to offer like Sleepies, Bench Press, Diät, Batpiss, Rank/Xerox, the early works of USA Nails, Protomartyr and Gotobeds to name just a few… yeah even a slight vibe of Open Your Heart-era The Men may be hidden there in tunes like Stereo Youth. Anyway, each song on here is an elaborate, self-contained post punk drama taking its sweet time to unfold but never failing to lead straight into a rich and spectacular payoff.
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With the recent Cruelster LP still quite hot out of the oven, here’s the newest artifact of another Nathan Ward-fronted group already, the significantly more angular and methodical yet unmistakably related Knowso, whose recent Optimism / Foot Of Pride cassingle had also landed just mere weeks ago. As usual this shit is operating pretty much on the bleeding edge of repetitive post- and art punk weirdness, performed by a bunch of flawlessly rotating, well-greased man machines. Really i can’t think of many other bands able to present such rigid and choppy compositions with such a frictionless drive and unbroken momentum. That’s not to say their music weren’t also catchy as fuck most of the time and especially in the second half here, tunes like Consumer Talk and Panopticon show them expanding on their melodic undercurrents for some of their most immediately striking and accessible tunes so far.
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And again, there’s two New Snarewaves releases already! Not only did a digital EP drop like two weeks ago, there’s also a new cassingle via Knuckles on Stun with an epic length of exactly one minute on which you’ll have to make up your own mind about whether or not it’s worth shelling out four-and-a-half USD for the running time equivalent of three-fifths your average punk tune. Anyway, as usual these are a bunch of excellent new burst of quite singular and eccentric, blown-out garage-/synth-/electro punk that’s equally simple, catchy and explosive.
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Tom Lyngcoln, previously probably best known for his old groups Pale Heads and The Nation Blue, really hit upon something special with his 2020 solo LP Raging Head and its larger-than-life dramas combining oldschool postcore with rustic americana elements, condensed down to fit into a super-economic, minimal footprint. So now we get to witness his newest band and kind of a spiritual successor to that one-off project, featuring further familiar faces like the garage punk supreme being that is Jackson Reid Briggs (currently of Split System), Callum Foley of The Blinds, The Stevens (he also played on Raging Head) and old gun Jay Jones, who had also provided the drum recordings Raging Head was built around and who apparently has played in a shit-ton of groups all the way since the mid-’90s that i’m just a bit too young to remember. Most of all it’s still Lyngcoln’s own distinct handwriting that’s front and center here though, with the whole thing playing out like a considerably rougher spin on his solo LP, more spontaneous and immediate, compraratively messy and cluttered in a good way. There’s one other thing i’m reminded of a little here and that’s the bands of Atlanta’s Josh Feigert and particularly his more recent groups like Uniform, Glittering Insects and Mother’s Milk.
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After an already thoroughly enjoyable debut EP in 2023, this Kansas City group’s newest LP turns out to be even more up my freakin’ alley with its surprisingly flexible, shapeshifting noise attacks in which some amount of oldschool US west coast style meets hints of early Minutemen and such (proto-) postcore and (proto-) noise rock acts like Flipper, Really Red and Saccharine Trust, whose unconventional styles get mutated here into some kind of KBD-drenched garage punk vibe that may be just as well described using a number of more contemporary references of the Launcher, Mystic Inane, Cutup, Fugitive Bubble, Rolex, Cucuy and Flea Collar type.
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