On their first full length effort, this Stockholm group kicks up an excellent fuss divided into snappy to-the-point punk blasts taking place somewhere between the poles of garage punk, hard- and postcore with certain parallels to acts like Tenement Rats, Sick Thoughts and early Teenanger on the more garage-leaning side of things as well as garage-infused postcore acts such as Video, Crisis Man, Ascot Stabber, Batpiss, Flowers Of Evil.
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The most unexpected gem of this week comes from a Paris group and apparently has already been recorded in 2018. This is a puzzling and overwhelming burst of chaotic noise crudely wedged inbetween the edges of garage punk, KBD-style oddities and the weirder fringes of early 80s hardcore punk. The opener VVV evokes a vibe kinda like a mix between fellow frenchmen Subtle Turnhips and US hardcore oddballs Landowner while Moose Lodge conjures up the legacy of, among others, proto noise rockers of the Flipper, Broken Talent or Fungus Brains caliber. City Blocks unites the qualities of Bad Brains and MC5 in a neat little package. Other times, they evoke The Mentally Ill or kinda bridge the gap between Neos and Neo Neos while numerous more recent groups á la Total Sham, Liquid Assets, Launcher, Crisis Man, Freakees or Liposuction aren't too far off either at one point or another. This shit is as unique as it's primitive and mostly unpredictable, more than once defying any attempt at categorization.
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As coincidence would have it, here's yet another group of somewhat fuzzy whereabouts although the available evidence generally points toward Pennsylvania this time. On their most recent full-length effort, a warbly blown-out lo-fi acoustic intro gives way to a knockout punch of a post punk blast that sounds a bit as if the hallucinogenic haze of groups á la Piles or Die! Die! Die! entered the pitch black worlds of Nag. Other times we get somewhat more conventional yet nonetheless ass-kicking flashes of oldschool doom- and sludge-leaning AmRep-style noise rock colliding with the spaced out acid punk excess of, say, Destruction Unit, Hamer or Super-X.
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I haven't got the slightest clue where these folks hail from and also how this EP, having been released a year ago apparently, could go unnoticed for so long. 'Cos this certainly ain't your typical average boring post punk record. Their sound of equal parts post punk and -core equipped with some excellent garage propulsion kinda bridges the gaps between a wide range of stuff of early Protomartyr or Constant Mongrel caliber on the Post Punk side of things, more garage-leaning acts in the Tyvek, Parquet Courts or Gotobeds vein, plenty of Hot Snakes-/Drive Like Jehu-esque postcore vibes and even the occasional hint of Mission Of Burma or Moving Targets can be found in there.
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The full length debut of this London group is a perfect storm of delightfully off-the-rails hard- and postcore, often permeated with unexpectedly melodic subcurrents and at first glance kinda playing out like a middle ground between weirdcore powerhouse Warm Bodies and fellow someone-and-the-somethings group Judy and the Jerks… but theres more than just that going on here with moments reminiscent of an eclectic cluster of ambitious hardcore groups á la Acrylics, Crisis Man, Murderer, Kaleidoscope or Straw Man Army.
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An exquisite jet-propelled racket, the second longplayer by Athens, Georgia group McQQeen - now proudly carrying the Big Neck Records seal of quality. What kinda starts out a bit in the vein of bands á la Flat Worms, The Cowboy and Fashion Pimps & The Glamazons with a conspicuous Psychedelic/Space Rock undercurrent then expands into a quite comprehensive sweep through much of what is and has been great on the intersection of garage punk, noise rock, post punk and -core including contemporary acts of the Metz, John (Timestwo) or Spray Paint kind as well as the occasional flourish of Destruction Unit's space punk excess, the fuzz punk orgies of early The Men, even some slight touches of U-Men or McLusky are to be found in there.
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This San Francisco group just delivered a stunningly confident debut LP made up of smart post punk and postcore, bursting with elaborate, dramaturgically dense song structures, tightly interlocking grooves and arrangements. In the contemporary landscape you might compare bits and pieces of this record to an expansive cluster of groups like Batpiss, Meat Wave, Bloody Gears, Stuck, Bench Press, Noughts, Lithics or Tunic. Going a bit further back in time, you might aswell recognize the obligatory bit of Drive Like Jehu, Fugazi or Jawbox, even find some Wire-esque flourishes in there if you just listen closely enough.
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The first few noisy artifacts of this Detroit group - a kickass EP's worth of standalone tracks unceremoniously dumped on their bandcamp page - span a gamut evoking some of the best references on the intersection of garage punk and postcore, ranging from straightforward garage R'n'R acts á la Sick Thoughts, early Video & Teenanger, to the explosive genre bastards of Crisis Man, Ascot Stabber and Flowers Of Evil, not to mention some unmistakable Hot Snakes kind of vibe all the way through.
Another powerful punch in the nuts from that California supergroup sharing members with the likes of Acrylics, Public Eye, Violent Change and Ceremony. Here, they deliver their most compact and vigorous set of new tunes so far, having fine-tuned their formula of equal parts hardcore- and garage punk for maximum impact, fusing the unrelenting force of Acrylics and Bad Breeding with the abrasive garage qualities of, say… early Teenanger or Video.
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The second longplayer (ignoring last year's Her Majesty's Ship OST) by this Kaleidoscope-adjacent New York duo sees their sonics shifting into a comparatively downbeat, darker and more cumbersome, yet equally rewarding direction. There's simply no other group quite like them in the current post punk/-core landscape and these chaps clearly maintain their position on the cutting edge of contemporary (art-/post-)punk while simultaneously being perfectly aware of its rich history, culminating in what to me is the crowning achievement of this album - the slow-burning, sprawling Beware, which kinda sounds like classic landmark records of the Chairs Missing and The Argument caliber boiled down to their very essence.
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