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 →

Tarred Cell - Tarred Cell

Pret­ty awe­some noisec­ore shit is flush­ing out the ear canals on this de­but EP by a group with mem­bers strewn all across Berlin, Leipzig and Bonn. This cer­tain­ly has some touch­es of Acrylics, Vul­ture Shit, Soup­cans and Stink­hole… or maybe of an al­ter­nate uni­verse in­car­na­tion of No Trend, Flip­per and Bro­ken Tal­ent played at triple speed.

Al­bum-Stream →

Off Peak Arson - Off Peak Arson

Whoa, what an ex­cel­lent de­but EP by a Mem­phis, Ten­nessee group! The open­er plays out kin­da like Dri­ve Like Je­hu or Hot Snakes in cre­ative over­drive mode, al­so be­ing some­what rem­i­nis­cent of con­tem­po­rary bands like Meat Wave, Mys­tic Inane, Tu­nic or Wymyns Prysyn. Next they change gear en­tire­ly and come up with a mid-tem­po post punk tune in which a puls­ing beat col­lides with some se­ri­ous Fly­ing Nun-style psy­che­delia and a cer­tain Sauna Youth vibe. The lat­ter al­so per­me­ates the sub­se­quent two garage punk smash­ers with echoes of Ex-Cult, ear­ly Teenanger or Dumb Punts, grad­u­al­ly shapeshift­ing in­to more of a post punk and in­die rock style not un­like Go­tobeds, Sleepies or B-Boys, which in the clos­ing track once again morphs in­to kind of a Swervedriv­er-es­que slow jam. There's not a sin­gle weak spot to be found on this record!

Al­bum-Stream →

Full Toilet - Why

As a coun­ter­bal­ance to my last post, here's kind of a mu­si­cal shit­post cre­at­ed by some seat­tle dude who al­so hap­pened to play in one or the oth­er lo­cal leg­end you might have heard of. A four­teen-act rock opera of 7"-sized pro­por­tions that kin­da plays out like an odd fu­sion of 80's Nomeansno, ear­ly Min­ute­men and Sac­cha­rine Trust… chances are i'm al­ready over­think­ing this though.

Al­bum-Stream →

Last Quokka & False Cobra - The West Ghost Split

Plen­ty of good­ness on this split 7" by two aus­tralian bands. Last Quokka's side show­cas­es some of their best ma­te­r­i­al to date and their fa­mil­iar, heav­i­ly garage-boost­ed post­core sound with traces of Hot Snakes and ear­ly Jaw­box, as well as more re­cent groups like Video, Bad Breed­ing and As­cot Stab­ber.

This marks the first time i hear about False Co­bra. Some of the above com­par­isons may al­so ap­ply to their songs, though over­all they lean a lot heav­ier in­to the garage and clas­sic punk side of things, hav­ing a bit of a Ruts or X (L.A.) vibe and al­so some vague sim­i­nar­i­ty to The Liv­ing Eyes, Mi­ni Skirt or ear­ly Teenanger.

Al­bum-Stream →