Soft Torture - Soft Torture

This Philadel­phia group's line-up brings to­geth­er gen­er­a­tions of punks, hav­ing Chuck Mee­han of hard­core di­nosaurs YDI among its ranks as well as mem­bers of more re­cent acts like Blank Spell, Hal­dol and De­Struc­tos. Their first EP ex­plodes right in­to your face with eight-and-a-half bursts of un­pre­dictable, chaot­ic and noise-in­fused hard-/post-/weird­core rough­ly in the ball­park of what you might've heard in re­cent years from bands like Kalei­do­scope, Day­dream or Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

Al­bum-Stream →

Hungry Man - Permanent Crisis

Damn, that's some top-notch qual­i­ty old­school post­core shit here, the kind ca­pa­ble of trans­port­ing mid­dle-aged fucks like me in­to high­er spheres, elab­o­rate yet un­pre­ten­tious and with a melod­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty that evokes the glo­ry days of Vol­cano Suns, Mov­ing Tar­gets and Mis­sion of Bur­ma. The mon­u­men­tal open­ing suite, on the oth­er hand, kin­da re­minds me of Dra­goon, the open­ing be­he­moth of Bitch Magnet's fi­nal al­bum Ben Hur. Oth­er­wise, 90s Dischord in­flu­ences rule supreme here with ubiq­ui­tous echoes of the likes of Au­to­clave, Bluetip, Hoover, Crown­hate Ru­in, Kerosene 454, ear­ly Jaw­box… you name it! And yeah, of course there's al­so a bit of Fugazi go­ing on but i'd say they're far from a pri­ma­ry in­flu­ence here. Hun­gry Man are able to pull off all that with­out com­ing across like a dull ripoff and rather like a band who val­ues its in­flu­ences, yet per­fect­ly stands on its own two feet, speak­ing in­to the present day with their own voice.

Al­bum-Stream →

Pleaser - Demo

A spec­tac­u­lar first im­pres­sion of a Copen­hagen group play­ing a rather un­con­ven­tion­al mix of post punk, hard- and post­core in­cor­po­rat­ing a rare sense of melody and a strong psy­che­del­ic, al­most shoegaze-y un­der­cur­rent. Al­so, think­ing of the Copen­hagen scene, you can't help but reg­is­ter a faint echo of ear­ly Iceage and Low­er.

Tunic - Quitter

An­oth­er Tu­nic record, an­oth­er ver­i­ta­ble kick in the teeth. Af­ter their re­cent com­pi­la­tion LP Ex­hal­ing, col­lect­ing their pre­vi­ous sin­gles & EPs, their sec­ond "re­al" al­bum pret­ty much con­tin­ues where they left off with those, while on­ly very cau­tious­ly ex­pand­ing their son­ic vo­cab­u­lary. At times this can feel a bit repet­i­tive to the point where you catch your­self won­der­ing: "Haven't i al­ready heard that song just a minute ago?" That's a mi­nor nit­pick though. As long as these dudes con­tin­ue to wield their noise­mak­ing pow­er­tools with such de­ter­mi­na­tion and raw, over­whelm­ing force, that's more than enough for me.

Al­bum-Stream →

Shove - Shove

This mel­bourne group's de­but EP de­liv­ers five ver­sa­tile high-en­er­gy blows, shapeshift­ing their way some­where around the fringes of the ex­tend­ed hard-/post-/noisec­ore mul­ti­verse, their re­lent­less yet so­phis­ti­cat­ed at­tack call­ing to mind the likes of Doll­house, Ce­ment Shoes or Vexx.

Al­bum-Stream →

John (timestwo) - Nocturnal Manoeuvres

The Lon­don postcore/​noise rock duo once again con­vinces by way of sheer force cou­pled with un­err­ing pre­ci­sion, every sin­gle det­o­na­tion on their sec­ond LP us­ing a rather min­i­mal­is­tic recipe in the most fo­cused way pos­si­ble to achieve max­i­mum dam­age. Don't miss this spec­ta­cle if groups like Tu­nic, Death Ped­als, USA Nails or Metz are your thing.

Al­bum-Stream →

A little hardcore roundup post thingy or whatever you wanna call this…

In my bum­bling quest to get some at least some shit done, here are three posts worth of re­cent hard­core punk stand­outs rolled in­to one. First there are five bursts of rather quirky, un­con­ven­tion­al noise­mak­ing cour­te­sey of Chicago's De­odor­ant, who had al­ready re­leased a fun lit­tle al­bum via Not Nor­mal Tapes in 2018. On their newest EP, they cov­er a lot of ground rang­ing from old­school hard-/post­core weirdos like Sac­cha­rine Trust, Beefeater, Re­al­ly Red or ear­ly Min­ute­men, to more re­cent groups á la Op­tic Nerve and Mys­tic Inane, round­ed out by a few sub­tle cow­punk vibes like in King Samo. If all of that shit's way to smar­ty­pants art­sy for that tiny brain of yours to han­dle, you might pre­fer the way more straight­for­ward ruckus of slight­ly garage-in­fused no-frills old­school may­hem as pre­sent­ed by Dye of Kansas City. But then again, in case that sounds like way too much fun and you pre­fer a bit more death, de­spair and in­san­i­ty in your punk rock, we've got you cov­ered too in the form of Dal­las group Urn's lat­est EP whose re­lent­less at­tack comes off about as dark and mud­dy as a pot of stale burnt cof­fee… dis­gust­ing and vi­tal­iz­ing at the same same time.

Al­bum-Stream →

Elephant Rifle - Satryasis

Fol­low­ing their 2018 al­bum Hunk, which some­how didn't re­al­ly click with me, the Reno, Neva­da group's newest EP man­ages to hit all the right spots this time while nev­er re­peat­ing it­self, cov­er­ing a son­ic range span­ning from old­school Am­Rep- and Touch & Go-style noise rock, hard­core punk rem­i­nis­cent of ear­ly Die Kreuzen and in its clos­ing track, some Dri­ve Like Je­hu-es­que Post­core.

Optic Nerve - In A Fast Car Waving Goodbye

The Syd­ney group's lat­est EP seam­less­ly builds up­on the awe­some­ness of their 2019 de­but, set­ting off a per­fect storm of post punk/-core that ap­pears to draw just as much in­spi­ra­tion from the more odd cor­ners of the 80's scene like Sac­cha­rine Trust, Re­al­ly Red or Man Sized Ac­tion as it does from the folk- and cow­punk of Angst, with some un­de­ni­able Hot Snakes mo­men­tum on top.

Al­bum-Stream →

Big Bopper - Introducing Big Bopper

Phew… this thing must've been mixed/​mastered by a deaf per­son. I'm pret­ty much used to all kinds of son­ic ex­tremes by now but this must be the first time ever that i can't bear lis­ten­ing to a thing with­out at least ap­ply­ing some heavy EQ. Maybe the ac­tu­al cas­sette re­lease is less painful to lis­ten to though…

Oth­er­wise this thing kicks butt with un­err­ing pre­ci­sion. Don't know how i man­aged to over­look this so far but some­how stu­pid me need­ed an­oth­er re­minder in the form of a (dig­i­tal on­ly?) reis­sue on Good­bye Boozy to fi­nal­ly no­tice its qual­i­ties. These tex­ans play some pret­ty wild and un­pre­dictable amal­ga­ma­tion of post- and garage punk, noise rock and post­core which you might, at dif­fer­ent points, com­pare to groups like Pat­ti, Cutie, Rolex, Mys­tic Inane or Brandy.

Al­bum-Stream →