I was intrigued when the Brisbane-based label Grog Records (re-)issued the Hello, Mr. Operator EP by New York electro punks Hand Helds on cassette, originally released late last year. A closer look at their bandcamp profile reveals not only that they’ve had a new EP out in January already but also that quite obviously they’ve been at it for a while already, churning out a ton of EPs in a varying spectrum of dark and noisy garage punk, minimalist and often quite harsh synth- and electro punk. I’m pretty sure i already came across them in the past but i’m also reminded why i passed over that stuff back then, as much of their earlier cataloque sounds like the equivalent of throwing lots of shit at the wall to see what’s gonna stick. Anyway, a couple of things have stuck apparetly and on their latest two EPs, things click into place way more tightly thanks to a more minimalist and deliberate less-is-more approach. Hello Mr. Operator is certainly the cruder of the two EPs with a heavily Primitive Calculators and occasionaly Suicide-indebted brand of Synth Punk minimalism. The Transatlantic Death Machine EP then trades in the bass guitar for live drums and things get even wilder and, dare i say, kinda sophisticated, despite the best efforts and dissonant patterns of synth cacophony in tunes like Glue Tongue to obscure the fact. There’s a weird kraut-ish, motorik quality to the whole thing and a successful approach of trimming the fat while giving attention to the details that matter, all of which positions these two records a couple notches above your average electro-kraut effort or no wave-ish ’80s synth punk throwback.
You could easily file these swiss dudes away as yet another artifact of kinda fashionable, Pisse-induced german-language post punk but this stuff is operating on a high level and standing very much on its own two feet with enough identity and ideas of their own to set them apart with a sound that strikes me as just a tad more international, with Rien Pour Moi reminding me a bit of the likes of Ismatic Guru or Landowner for example, while Animal Farm has a bit of an old Giorgio Murderer Vibe. Anyway, even if they won’t be able to shake off that Pisse comparisons just yet, this is a neat and excellent debut EP in its own right and i can’t wait to see where they’ll go from here.
After going all-in on some darker acid rock vibes on their 2024 Buying Time EP, this Stockholm group’s newest one once again steers largely clear of their egg-ish beginnings while returning to a bit of a lighter touch all the same – as much as they be trippin’ here, it’s an altogether pleasurable and joyous trip this time and whatever there may be left of potantially hazardous ’60s psychedelic indulgences in their catchy garage punk is always counterbalanced and lightened up by playful synth accents and other quirky devo-isms that more than once strike me as a more lighthearted equivalent to the recent works of their city neighbors and local synth punk legends Isotope Soap.
The Debut LP of these portuguese fellows delights with a flawless blend of synth-enhanced garage punk that on one hand often feels like a welcome throwback to an earlier, late-2010s era of electrified, egg-ish punk delirium of the Set-Top Box, Research Reactor Corp. variety with additional touches of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Kid Chrome’s heavy-duty riffing, while all the same feeling stylistically equally well-connected to somewhat more recent artifacts by the likes of Beef, The Gobs, Kerozine, Factory City Children and, most of all, 3D and The Holograms. So, certainly not reinventing the wheel here but nonetheless this is fun and well-executed shit that any genre aficinado shouldn’t miss out on.
Brilliant garage-/egg-/synth punk fare on this neat debut EP by some Montreal-based dude or group that i completely missed when it was first released as their contribution to Demo Fest 2025. Now here’s my second chance and damn, this is some good shit right here! The toy keyboard-meets-hammond-organ sound of the first two tracks brings me right back to some earlier days of (proto-) egg madness and particularly of those Mark Cone records from 2016/’17 respectively, while the next pair of tunes has a bit more of an electronic, industrial yet still absolutely playful feel somewhere inbetween the worlds of, say, Beef and R. Clown, before the closing track, a Violet Femmes cover tune, quite plausibly gives away one of the primary inspirations for this whole mess.
Well, it took like a year longer than promised but better late than never i guess, here’s finally a new LP of Stockholm’s synth punk bulwark that’s been around for roughly a decade already. So they’ve got nothing to prove at this point anyway and simply deliver yet another brilliant collection of spaced-out garage punk delicacies filled with their trademark Devo-isms and bookended by a couple of somewhat John Carpenter-esque instrumentals to underscore the pervasive cinematic qualities of this record, another killer one at that.
This Cleveland, Ohio group weaves compact and simple gems of moderately spaced-out, egg-ish garage- and synth punk into a neat little package of catchy delirium that reminds me of a quite colorful bunch of groups á la Metdog, The Gobs, SGATV, Sex Mex, Hyperdog, Beta Máximo or Apero and this shit is every bit as good as any of these.
Sex Mex have been a constant for the past couple years as my go-to act for straight-ahead fuzzy and melodic no-frills garage punk that doesn’t evolve much beyond its time-tested formula but so far hasn’t ever disappointed either, always kept afloat by the quality of the song material and this newest EP is without doubt among the strongest sets of new tunes they’ve let loose so far, another no-frills treat of synth-enhanced, euphoric garage pop to lift the spirits when we desperately need it.
Over the last couple years, Shrudd of Louiseville, Kentucky consistently upped their game with each new release and yet i’m gonna say their newest one is playing in a different league altogether, such an amazing leap from anything they’ve done before. Where their previous work cycled through numerous subgenres but had an undeniable egg-ish quality in common especially on their most recent bunch of EPs, this one moves way beyond that with the opener M.M.I.T.L. still bearing the closest resemblance to their previous work with kind of a Ghoulies vibe before Stagnant shows the first subtle harbinger of a darker, more psychedelic-leaning overall vibe reminiscent of the likes of Useless Eaters, Pow!, Electric Prawns 2 and Mononegatives, which really kicks into gear with the slightly Powerplant-esque aura of Bodies. EMT on the other hand has quite a bit of a classic blues-y, slightly cowpunk-ish garage vibe to itself, followed by Gift where they’re going into full spaced-out acid punk overdrive. And in such a vein it continues, gradually expanding their sonic color plaette with almost every new tune. So basically, here we have the newest example of a band growing the fuck up and branching out from their humble eggpunk beginnings towards new horizons, which i guess is gonna make ex-Lumpy Martin Meyer kinda happy and it makes me quite happy too cos this shit is so freakin’ good!
The Beta Máximo dude’s new synth-driven project Sonic Youth Of Today shapes up to beome a tireless tune factory just as prolific as his former thing. EP number three kicks things off with a neat cover version of the greatest fake punk tune ever put to tape and probably one among the essential eggpunk foundational texts, Village People’s Food Fight, but the real meat of this EP are once again its three original tunes which are simply synth punk at its very best, every bit as throbbing and propulsive as they’re irresistible in their catchyness while carrying the unmistakable signature of its creator.
