Display Homes - What If You're Right And They're Wrong?

Sad­ly over­shad­owed by the death of their their gui­tar play­er Dar­rell, the Syd­ney group's first LP via Er­ste Theke sig­ni­fies a ma­jor leap in qual­i­ty af­ter their al­ready quite en­joy­able pre­vi­ous E.T.A. EP, show­cas­ing the band as a much tighter unit de­liv­er­ing their sim­ple but ef­fec­tive, al­ways catchy and dance­able blend of time­less post punk with im­pres­sive pre­ci­sion and con­fi­dence. As be­fore, there's plen­ty of Py­lon groove and en­er­gy con­tained in here while at dif­fer­ent points you might al­so find sim­i­lar­i­ties to con­tem­po­rary acts such as Lithics, Pinch Points, Rank/​Xerox, Slumb Par­ty or Nots, with oc­ca­sion­al flash­es of Pix­ies-es­que surf-ish gui­tar leads.

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Mononegatives - Crossing Visual Field

A whole bar­rage of dig­i­tal sin­gles in re­cent weeks al­ready ap­peared to fore­shad­ow a new record by the Lon­don, On­tario group and in­deed here it is, their sec­ond LP in all its glo­ry, car­ry­ing an ex­cel­lent new batch of their quite dis­tinct, catchy as hell, al­ways slight­ly off-kil­ter and quirky genre mix­ture con­tain­ing el­e­ments of garage-, post- and synth punk, space- and psy­che­del­ic rock. You might com­pare some bits and pieces here to such groups as Pow!, Use­less Eaters and of course the re­cent col­lab­o­ra­tion Telegenic Plea­sures which al­so fea­tures some of the band mem­bers at work here - at this point though, i'd say they're pret­ty much carved out their own, in­stant­ly rec­og­niz­able lit­tle niche.

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During - During

It took a good while for this group's de­but LP to fi­nal­ly ma­te­ri­al­ize af­ter the the la­bel Chun­klet In­dus­tries al­ready promised this long­play­er around the re­lease of the Birds Of Juneau 7" in the sum­mer of 2021… I sus­pect you can once again blame the chal­lenges of the cur­rent vinyl econ­o­my for that. It's an­oth­er strong record though, on which the group fea­tur­ing mem­bers of such pow­er­hous­es as Spray Paint, Wil­ful Boys, Brandy, Pam­pers and Pyrex ad­mirably man­ages to keep things ex­cit­ing with quite a bit of eclec­tic va­ri­ety. For ex­am­ple, we get a kind of Swell Maps-go-Syn­th­wave vibes in HoloLens, a strong dub feel in Mall­man, kin­da like a sped-up vari­ant of Ex­ek. That all said, you can't re­al­ly de­ny their sound ob­vi­ous­ly hav­ing in­her­it­ed the largest chunk of its DNA from Spray Paint, es­pe­cial­ly their lat­er work (al­though, speak­ing of DNA, a cer­tain no wave vibe is ever present on here aswell). Fur­ther i've al­so got a sus­pi­cion though that there'll be some quite fa­mil­iar sound­ing echoes of this record to be heard on the up­com­ing Pyrex LP on To­tal Punk!

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C57BL/​6 - LP 1

It's been a whop­ping five years since we last heard of this Los An­ge­les group. Their first LP (duh!) is a bit heav­ier on the hard­core- and garage punk side of things af­ter their old­er shit had been lean­ing stronger in­to its synth-/elec­tro punk ten­den­cies. Those re­lent­less­ly bru­tal elec­tric beats are still front and cen­ter here though, giv­ing es­pe­cial­ly the epic open­ing shot Open World kind of an in­dus­tri­al-tinged, cursed Aus­muteants-meet-Big Black vibe… with ad­di­tion­al over­tones of Cri­sis Man maybe?

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Poison Ruïn - Härvest

In a some­what un­ex­pect­ed but, all things con­sid­ered, per­fect­ly sen­si­ble move, the Philadel­phia group on the cut­ting edge of the still kin­da vague­ly de­fined and de­vel­op­ing dun­geon punk genre re­lease their first full length ef­fort on the well es­tab­lished, rather met­al-lean­ing la­bel Re­lapse Records. Thank­ful­ly this has pre­cious lit­tle in­flu­ence on their sound, aes­thet­ics and pro­duc­tion val­ues, with their newest batch of songs even pre­sent­ing the group at their grit­ti­est and most Lo-Fi so far, their still ab­solute­ly sin­gu­lar, elab­o­rate son­ic con­structs made up of post- and garage punk, noise rock, post­core, a very slight hint of Oi! and on­ly the most an­cient in­gre­di­ents of pro­to- and old-old­school met­al re­main­ing ob­scured by in a thick lay­er of tape hiss all the time. Yeah, the whole thing sounds glo­ri­ous i got­ta say!

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Glittering Insects - Glittering Insects

Ab­solute­ly fuck­ing bril­liant shit once again ar­riv­ing at our shores cour­tesy of To­tal Punk Records! Glit­ter­ing In­sects fea­ture mem­bers of GG King, Preda­tor, Wymyns Prysyn and Uni­form (the at­lanta group, not the NY in­dus­tri­al punk/-met­al duo) and of these, it bears the most sim­i­lar­i­ty to the lat­ter two groups with the melan­choly arrange­ments strong­ly echo­ing that dis­tinct Uni­form vibe. Over­all the com­bi­na­tion of grit­ty abra­sive tex­tures, the afore­men­tioned sense of melan­choly, a songcraft that comes across as sad and un­wieldy yet melod­ic and catchy at the same time, re­minds me a lot of aus­tralian noise-/indie rock gods Kitchen's Floor, the scuzzy post punk of City Yelps or, in its most catchy mo­ments, the noise pop of ear­ly Tree­house. An ex­cep­tion­al­ly im­mer­sive and epic ex­pe­ri­ence best tak­en in as a whole - a rare thing these days.

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Body Maintenance - Beside You

The first LP of Melbourne's Body Main­te­nance ex­cites with ex­cel­lent post punk sounds of the catchy melod­ic kind, which won't ex­act­ly win any prices for orig­i­nal­i­ty but ex­cells in­stead thanks to some con­fi­dent song­writ­ing chops that nev­er fal­ter as well as a su­per dis­ci­plined per­for­mance, both things com­bin­ing in­to an ex­pe­ri­ence that feels sound­ly con­struct­ed at all times. Es­sen­tial lis­ten­ing for fans of shit á la The Es­tranged, Sieve­head, Crim­i­nal Code or Sched­ule 1.

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Eunix - Demo

Mem­bers of Bib and Ni­hilis­tic fit, among a whole shit­load of oth­er groups, de­liv­er their first EP here and it's hard to not get ex­cit­ed in face of this ex­plo­sive force. These are su­per-sol­id, ma­ture and elab­o­rate song as­sem­blies made up of a time­less post­core sound which is al­so per­fect­ly able to slow things down - like in the doom/s­ludge-lean­ing ex­cer­cise Face Down - with­out bor­ing you to death. Al­ways al­ways a sign of com­po­si­tion­al ex­cel­lence if you ask me. In re­cent years, we might've heard sim­i­lar blasts from bands like Ro­mance, Shove, As­cot Stab­ber, Flow­ers of Evil or ear­ly Bad Breed­ing.

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Public Interest - Spiritual Pollution

An­oth­er re­lease bear­ing the Er­ste Theke seal of qual­i­ty and in­deed this one's a huge step ahead for the Oak­land group af­ter a more garage- and synth punk-lean­ing de­but tape in 2019. Now they've trans­formed in­to a way more so­phis­ti­cat­ed post punk sound that comes across as moody yet con­spic­u­ous­ly song-ori­ent­ed and catchy all the same, a qual­i­ty you might have al­so no­ticed in the most re­cent ma­te­r­i­al by Mar­bled Eye, whose member(s) are al­so lend­ing a hand in this new kick­ass record. Im­bued with a psy­che­del­ic haze that re­minds me a bit of Chairs Miss­ing /​ 154-era Wire at times, you might just as well com­pare their elab­o­rate song con­structs to a di­verse clus­ter of such con­tem­po­rary genre cor­ner­stones as In­sti­tute, Rank/​Xerox, Pub­lic Eye, Diät, VR Sex, Bruised, Waste Man or ear­ly Paint Thin­ner.

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Advoids - Advoids

Mem­bers of Diode and Frea­kees gift us yet an­oth­er at­tack of de­li­cious­ly off-the-rails noise, this time close­ly scrap­ing past the rough co­or­di­nates of post punk, post- and weird­core. Some repi­ti­tive The Fall-es­que riff leads in­to pure hard­core an­ar­chy in All the World. Give Me Mine then has a dis­tinc­tive ear­ly Min­ute­men-meet-James Chance kind of en­er­gy to it. Fur­ther you might find some traces of Flip­per, Sac­cha­rine Trust or The Pop Group in there or al­ter­nate­ly, you might iden­ti­fy bits and pieces of more re­cent shit á la Rolex, Big Bop­per or Gay Cum Dad­dies.

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