Their rather Lo-Fi 2024 Demo was pure bliss already and now we get to behold the first more polished recordings of the NYC group on this new digital 2-track single, presenting them in a somewhat different light with less of a pronounced garage vibe, instead being more reminiscent of the more indie rock-ish, melodic leaning ends of the ’80s SST Records spectrum and loosely related shit, somewhere inbetween the likes of mid-career Hüsker Dü, early Dinosaur Jr., Man Sized Action, a hint of Angst maybe too. In that regard, and especially strongly in the undeniable über-hit Combat Zone (Left For Dead), these tunes remind me a lot of the incredible first Milk Music EP.
Toronto group Eye Ball had made myself – and probably everyone else listening – hungry for more of their shit with their two digital 2-track singles last year, which then got compiled into a four-track tape pretty soon after that. Now we get their first full LP worth of material and the previous comparisons to the likes of Marked Men, Radioactivity, Sonic Avenues and maybe early Sweet Reaper still hold mostly true, but there’s so much more going on here too with most of these tunes having a lot more grit and a rougher edge to them, a more determined attack. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of hooks and melodies to go around and the thing is packed with hits, but you know something’s cooking when right out of the gate the album greets us with a pretty hardcore-ish title tune and subsequently, sometimes seems to channel the the vigorous thrust of previous-decade garage punk acts like Sauna Youth and early Tyvek. The one-two punch consisting of Road Pig and Bruise for a Birthmark almost has a bit of a Cruelster-esque energy and of even more recent stuff, these sogs had me thinking of The Dumpies a lot. Quality shit, no doubt!
Reactivated old-timey australian punk veterans The Vacant Lot have a new 7″ out on Iron Lung Records and it’s a special one in multiple ways – to begin with, these are a bunch of formerly lost classics written in ’78-’79, now pulled from their stash of unrecorded gems and given a proper new recording for the first time. The current incarnation of the band has Ausmutents and Alien Nosejob front magician Jake Robertson handling the guitar, who also appears to share production duties with another indespensable central piller of the australien garage punk scene, Mikey Young and oh boy does it show, resulting in a record whose sound kinda encapsulates the best of both worlds, the quirky energy of a vibrant contemporary scene just as much as the playful catchyness of first-wave DIY punk.
This Madison, Wisconsin group delivers a thoroughly compelling third EP here, made up of mid-eighties to early-nineties melodic punk and indie rock of the heavily Dinosaur Jr., Superchunk, Jawbreaker, Archers Of Loaf and Sebadoh-informed kind that also also got a second wind roughly two decades later with bands like California X, Kicking Spit, Happy Diving, Fins and – most of all – Milk Music giving this sound a mild resurgence back then. Also, especially in Dust, there’s a bit of a Pitchfork / Drive Like Jehu vibe going on. Nowadays, all of this shit strikes me as timelessly old-fashioned in the most pleasing way, its consistently way-above-average quality underpinned all the way through by an ultra-solid set of underlying tunes.
I’m rarely ever posting compilations here ‘cos, quite honestly, most of these are too much of a mixed bag. I’m gonna make an exception here though as this shit has been put together by none other than see/saw dude Evan and just as you’d expect from him, this thing is certainly a couple notches above your average “Everybody send me your unreleased stuff for a good cause”-type comp and absolutely stacked with exclusive tracks by what amounts to a massive who’s who of the international punk underground right now. That, plus your 10$-or-more donation will be spent in support of those affected by the Los Angeles wildfires. Win/win i’m gonna say! What’s not to like?
Following up on a rather inconsistent, undercooked 2022 album, this Richmond, Virginia group’s newest EP is in a whole different ballpark altogether, a highly flammable little package of only certified smashers that at times would more comfortably blend into the crowd a decade prior – Rearview for example sounding a bit as if you fused the melodic punk rock of early Swearin’ with the melancholy of Royal Headache. This record pulls off that trick gracefully, held together by some top-notch songwriting chops, a tight, ultra-focused band performance and not least the soulful vocals of Katie Bowles who effortlessly delivers on that certain Siouxsie-vs-Debbie schtick that so many singers have been trying to emulate before but fell way short of more often than not. She totally sells it though!
On their latest and – as far as i can tell – only 7″ so far, the sporadically active Massachusetts post punk / -core supergroup plays it just a bit noisier and rougher than we’d previously expect from them and i’m gonna say that suits me just fine. With the a-side coming across kinda like a lost Wipers outtake as performed by a fusion of Scratch Acid and Feedtime and the b-side being a perfectly competent cover of a truly iconic Strike Under tune, there’s no use arguing with this flawless little punk single.
An excellent second EP from this San Leandro, California group blasting a surprisingly catchy and compact mixture of Post Punk and Postcore that on one hand appears to be looking back at noisy, left-field eighties punk acts like Flipper, Really Red and early Saccharine Trust, but also kinda fits in with contemporary stuff like The Unfit, Hood Rats and Lackey, while their vocalist channels his inner Jello Biafra, particularly in his sarcasm, choice of themes and approach at delivering subversive stories. Oh, and both of ’em have a deep appreciation of landlords!
I never came across this Copenhagen group before, although they’ve apparently been around for well over a decade by now. Right out of the gate, their third LP radiates an eerily familiar vibe yet looking a bit closer, there’s more goin’ on with this record than meets the eye at first glance. While the slight folk- and cowpunk vibes of the openening track call to mind the folk-ish post punk acts Dead Finks, Optic Nerve and the nervous garage punk twitch of Hank Wood & The Hammerheads, i’d say that subsequently, this record settles into an aesthetic blurring the line between straight-up catchy punk rock and a darker post punk feel, similar in one way or another to such groups like Xetas, Red Dons, later Naked Raygun, Warp Lines, Dead Years and Telecult. Also, there’s some neat Leatherface-esque guitar work going on here and a melancholic quality that reminds me of shit like The Misanthropes and early The Estranged.
Cardiff’s Bad Shout already had a promising debut EP out in 2023 and an even stronger second one this summer, yet so far thay never managed to escape that dreaded “not quite there yet”-status in my humble opinion. Well guess what, Bad Shout are so fucking there now with their third extended play on which they alternate between well-worn bluesy oldschool garage punk smashers, hardcore outbursts and power pop-ish, ’77-infused earworms with that slight Dickies note to them, among other things.
