In a noise rock world mostly dominated by pretentious wankers content with reproducing the done-to-death "leftover doom riffs played with odd time signatures (that makes us math rock, i guess…)" formula ad nauseam, Canada's Nearly Dead have always kinda stuck out from the sad status quo not through smarts but through sheer primitive force and a very oldschool approach to sludge-infested noise rock, reminiscent of ancient genre artifacts by the likes of Cows, Killdozer, Cherubs, Fungus Brains, Scratch Acid… plus countless of deep cuts from the classic AmRep catalogue. These tunes make me wanna take a shower - a rare quality these days.
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.
Another kickass EP by this Philadelphia group. This time they crank up the garage factor considerably while maintaining their taste for oldschool proto-noise rock and -sludge. Think of a curious mix between NY's Cutie and aussie garage groups like Mini Skirt, Pist Idiots on a collision course with old-timey noisemakers of the U-Men, Scientists, X (Sydney, not L.A.) variety plus a slight touch of Mudhoney.
An unrelenting storm of raw KBD-meets-stoner punk kicked loose by the Freaks of Philadelphia, enforced with loads of hardcore propulsion. Starts out kinda like an amalgamation of early Milk Music or Dinosaur Jr. with Everything Falls Apart-era Hüsker Dü, then settles into a mode that comes across like a mix of Tarantüla/Cülo, Fried Egg, a hint of Launcher and some added sludge and death rock vibes, the latter reminding me of Beta Boys.
This already marks the second time these two bands from Indianapolis are pooling their, um… resources for a split release - this time it's a 7" on Goodbye Boozy Records. Not only is the recording quality a little bit less rough than last time; both bands have also significantly diversified their musical vocabulary. The Resource Network alternate between smartypants garage punk of the Uranium Club & Yammerer variety, a post punk/-core thingy you could imagine as a weird mix of Rites Of Spring and early Slovenly, and finally a straight punk rocker radiating a Launcher-style KBD Vibe. Quite a bit of the latter you can also find on Big Hog's side and there's less of a hardcore edge to their new songs - instead you'll find a wild post punk ride you might describe as Patti-meet-early-Minutemen, surrounded by two blasts of noise punk resembling what Lumpy & The Dumpers could have sounded like on some sort of sludge/doom trip.
