Austin, Texas group Guiding Light already had a pretty exciting, if still kinda messy debut EP out via Stucco / Down South Tapes in 2024, who are now also responsible for the cassette release of their first full length record (viny is availablel via Post Present Medium), on which they up their game in pretty much every aspect of their sound as the the folk-ish strummy melancholia of Shackled By Lust makes immediately clear and even though that tune ain't fully representative of the rest of the album, it keeps on resonating as a thoroughly impressive opening salvo nonetheless. That greatness persists all throughout the record where their folk- and cowpunk-adjacent strummery somewhere inbetween the likes of Angst and Volcano Suns keeps colliding with eighties Post Punk right between the chairs of, say, Burma, Saccharine Trust, Man Sized Action and early Minutemen, though spiked with occasional bits of Flying Nun Post Punk Psychedelia, catchy Jangle Pop guitar leads and -harmonies, though if instead you feel like naming more recent Folk-/Cowpunk/Post Punk hybrids á la Leche, Cardi O., more recent Rolex or Optic Nerve, i'm gonna say you're right on the money too. Can't miss this one if you're into any of that shit.
After an already quite thrilling demo tape in 2023, the group from Oslo, Norway finally makes good on the promise and impresses with their fully realized vision three years later on their first longplayer, wildly elaborating on their eclectic sound that incorporates such things as a bit of the frantic and anxious early Iceage energy unravelling here, a touch of early Poison Ruïn high-stakes dungeon punk drama, coupled with a momentum somewhat reminiscent of Stay Home-Era Hank Woods & The Hammerheads and there's also plenty reference to be found of another New York Band Hank Wood has been in, the existential psychedelic cowpunk nightmarescapes of Murderer. Further i'm reminded of that unpredictable recent Forcer LP, the epic frankenstein song constructs of the 2020 Tom Lincoln solo album und its sort-of full band incarnation / successor Metho, whose line-up including the great Jackson Reid Briggs then again leads me to the realization that tunes like Trollmandens lærling also have quite a bit of a Split System energy to them. So yeah, what this band is pulling off here covers a lot of ground and whatever these dudes touch seems to turn into pure gold instantly, while the more garage-like mid-fi production values of the previous EP give way to a more hard- and postcore-infused vibe with slightly metal-infused overtones on this, matched up with just the right kind of vicious, unrelenting performance here to make that shit stick. This record is a wildly creative grab bag brimming with pure wonder and breathless ecstasy.
Damn, this Chicago group's noise must've already sounded quite archaic at the time their first LP dropped in 2013 but now, more than decade since their last recorded output, their sound has passively made it full circle back into the pleasantly old-fashioned, timeless and classy bracket of anachronistic noise, their sound clearly taking cues from the likes of Lync, early Jawbreaker and Superchunk or, to a lesser extent, Dag Nasty, Rites Of Spring and maybe also some traces of early Unwound and Hoover? Anyway, these tunes are operating on a level quite a few notches above your average '90s punk throwback, chiefly owing to an abundance of rock-solid songcraft all throughout and an unwavering intuition for timeless heavy-duty, load-bearing hooks, while also leaving plenty of wiggle room for some neat diversions and moments not quite fitting the standard early '90s postcore / emo / indie rock templates like that bit of a Wipers- and Dead Moon-esque garage flavor added to tunes like Caustic Dreams. It's this skillful balance of what strikes me as a quite intimate, encyclopedic knowledge and love of that particular patch of 90s punk history coupled with a marked reluctance to comply with its tropes and conventions too slavishly, adding even more of a unique flavor to a record that's not ashamed to feel vagely nostalgic and retro at points without ever coming across like a tired retread, still able to subvert and exceed my expectations in crucial places, a record equally inspired and old-fashioned.
Kaloomps, British Columbia group Headcheese have been messin' about for way longer than my intuition tells me as it still feels to me like their first Demo and self-titled debut mini-LP dropped just about yesterday, even though their most recent previous record Expired is actually like three years old by now. Anyway, this group has certainly left a thorough impresson in my faulty memory with a number of records that feel like an endless tug-of-war between successive impulses of elaborating on their sound and then dumbing it down again in the most thrilling way possible. Their newest one might well be their magnum opus so far though, with the group operating as a simultaneously tighter and rowdier-than-ever wrecking crew, pummeling into submission their most coherent, fleshed out bundle of chemically unstable creative outbursts so far, which no serious devotee of inventive, shaggy noise inbetween the worlds of KBD-injected garage punk, oldschool propulsive west coast-style hardcore and maybe even some particles of No Trend-, Broken Talent- or Flipper-esque proto noise rock mahem should miss out on.
This Dublin-based group's output so far is a bit of a, how should i put it... messy affair to say the least though it was never boring either, that's for sure. This new 2-track digital single may now mark their most successful attempt at uncluttering their creative vision so far and i'm nothing short of impressed with the classy oldschool indie rock vibes goin' on here, whose folk-ish strummyness recalls the glory days of Volcano Suns or one of their sorta-spiritual successors, the still active Tha Martha's Vineyard Ferries. The A-side Secret Bench In The Bardo is such a strong and striking example of that kind of thing the other tune Abacus Rubicon has to play second fiddle kinda by sheer circumstance, though that doesn't mean it's anything less than another perfectly pleasing late-eighties to mid-nineties postcore throwback in its own right.
The modern-day cowcore veterans from Austin, Texas return just a year after their quite good but also a bit too long and somewhat disjointed previous dose of pure chaos that was the Miracle Whip-It LP on Digital Hotdogs. This new EP now is in a way the exact opposite of that, their most condensed and coherent record so far with all the excess fat removed, eight minutes of super-dense excellence bursting at the seams from an abundance of clever ideas, heavy duty hooks and melodies in a massive spell of heavily Dicks-informed insanity.
Bordeaux, the wine-producing capital of France honestly doesn't have shit on, like, our local beer hotspots of Hansa, North Rhine-Westphalia and Karlskrone, southern Aldi but i gotta admit they've had some neat bands there over the years like Videodrome and Black Bug from earlier days or Distance more recently. But anyway, Haro in some aspects kinda fit an established template of french post punk / postcore groups of the Youth Avoiders and Nightwatchers ilk, although they completely forgo the subgenre's fashionable Oi! elements of late in exchange for a more elaborate and epic sound cleaverly constructed into widescreen melodramas that totally hold their own in that sector and i guess it's that scope that prompted some trusted authority in the field of bands that kinda sound like Coldplay to tell me this band kinda sounds like Coldplay in the EP's opening tune so now i think i've gotta check out these Coldplay dudes, they must be a swell band if true!
Two bands from the greater Los Angeles area have pooled their resources for a true god-tier hardcore split here that shall one day be regarded as one of the great roaring '20s split releases in a leage with, say, last year's Stunted Youth & Save Our Children LP. Naturally, the Animated Violence tunes garner most of my initial attention for not only did these dudes already catch my ear with two kickass tapes since 2022 but also considerably upped their craft and insanity on here with a sound as eclectic, playful and inventive as it's catchy, melodic and noisy-as-fuck nonetheless, making for a wild and bumpy unpredictable ride. But as much as this shit is right up my alley, that should by no means lead me to discount the Total Vacation tracks here which on the surface revel in a simpler early '80s oldschool direction yet are in no way less thrilling and packed with bright ideas and weird flourishes, only these tend to be more spread out here over roughly double the amount of shorter tunes and there's absolutely no arguing with instant hits like Chimera and Perspective / For Once.
Holy fuck, what this Wakefield, UK group is pulling off on their debut EP is pushing so many of the right buttons for me. Rooted in timeless buzzsaw-guitar post punk with more than just a bit of a Big Black edge, this shit also incorporates much of a catchy garage punk immediacy, noise rock sonic assault and relentless hardcore propulsion with plenty of melodic scraps and fragments peppered all throughout. This is so fucking up my alley and reminds me of another crop of UK post punk acts that either predate or avoid the more gentrified nature of the current UK landscape, the closest comparisons i can come up with from the top of my head would be Leeds-based groups Cool Jerks and Coded Marking, but that doesn't tell the whole story either.
Here's an odd one for you, and i mean that in the most positive sense, coming from a group presumably from Charlotte, North Carolina. The thing starts out as very much of a hardcore record, though even throughout the first couple tunes you can't help but notice that pronounced spaced-out psychedelic undercurrent and an increasingly catchy, melodic quality as well as some top-notch ability of song construction underneath that really goes into overdrive in the fourth track Misery, after which the record then incrementally slows down the tempo with each track and leans even more into an acid rock-driven post punk, postcore and art punk vibe that reminds me a bit of recent Science Man, Optic Nerve and there's even a slight bit of LoFi-era Poison Ruin in Make A Case. Inevitably, the record eventually reaches something of a full-on space rock territory yet retains all of these at times subtly emo-fied, melancholic undertones and ist melodic brilliance and you know what, at no point does this group sound much like anything else around really - the best comparison i can come up with for the second half from the top of my head are the likes of recent Shrudd and some of Electric Prawns 2, but really that's kind of a stretch already. You also may compare the larger-than-life drama of the record's middle section to Tom Lyngcoln's Raging Head LP or his more recent band and spiritual successor to that one-off record, Metho. But none of these comparisons truly stick here. This record is freakin' unique is what i'm sayin'.
