Back from the literal ashes of a certain practice space apocalypse, noise rockers Trigger Cut return as strong and vital as ever with their newest LP which sees the group increasingly carving out their own little place inside their genre while skillfully paying hommage to numerous classics all the while - think of shit like Bastro, Distorted Pony, anything Albini-related… also some real surprises here, like the opener Water Fukkery, having a melodic oldschool emo-/postcore vibe to it reminiscent of classic acts in the vicinity of Drive Like Jehu, Autoclave, Quicksand or Jawbox. Without question this is their most diverse, inventive and playful record to date.
Just a quck hint here about three excellent new tapes courtesey of the ever-reliable 11 PM Records. The post-/math-/weirdcore powerhouse Rolex doesn't need any introduction, i think, delivering a snappy three-and-a-half minutes long fireworks of eleborate, hyperactice and chaotic postcore. Phantom then represent something of an opposite to that with oldschool hardcore punk of the most primal and unruly kind. Z-Pak, last but not least, appear to to combine the qualities of both aforementioned acts. What's not to love about that?
The Washington group's full length debut is certainly the most Dischord-sounding new Dischord release i've heard in years, liberally but skillfully plundering its way through fourty years of postcore legacy like a wonderful anachronism. That makes an old fart like me brim with joy and given the participants involved here - all of them having had their part in shaping the aforementioned legacy - i'm not at all surprised by the strength of this album.
The full-length debut of this Tokyo group kinda plays out like a round-trip through some of the most jangly and melodic sections of late eighties to nineties indie rock, noise pop, post- and emocore, conjuring up the spirit of groups like Polvo, Superchunk, Unwound, Bitch Magnet, Lync, Dinosaur Jr. and many more, with the occasional flash of Slint thrown in for good measure and some shoegaze flourishes particularly of the Swervedriver variety - all of that bottled up using fittingly rough lo-fi production values. An altogether rare and refreshing thing these days, at least in its raw and undiluted form as on display here.
This group from Kaloomps, BC, Canada delivers a joyous little ride around the weirder fringes of early-to-mid 80s hard- and postcore with some mean funky grooves thrown in as well as that certain garage punk additive and - to make the mess perfect - given a thorough KBD-style fuckover. Also not too far off from somewhat recent groups in the vein of, say, Mystic Inane or Fried E/m, among others.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.