Somehow i must’ve overlooked this Ocean City, NJ dude so far. His long playing debut and third release altoghether hits my nerve dead-on though, with a variety of simple & stupid garage-/electro- and, occasionally, synth punk, often with a distinct 77-ish bent calling to mind old pioneers à la Screamers, MX-80, Metal Urbain/Dr. Mix & The Remix as well as a slight hint of Chrome. In Country Girls, quite fittingly, we even get a touch of Gun Club-esque americana-/cowpunk while of the more recent scene, you might draw comparisons to groups like S.B.F., Kid Chrome, Zoids or Mateo Manic.
Having already given an excellent first impression previously on a split tape with the great AJ Cortez, this West Palm Beach dude’s follow-up EP maintains the high standard of his garage- and synth punk, radiating the quirky energy of groups such as Satanic Togas, Erik Nervous, Prison Affair, Mononegatives, RMFC… while also incorporating some ’77-ish power pop sensibilities akin to Tommy and the Commies and towards the end, there’s also an increasingly Alien Nosejob- / Ausmuteants-esque thing goin’ on.
With quite a bit of delay – as has unfortunately become kind of the new normal for anything intended to be released on vinyl – we get the newest opus of sweden’s prime synth punk outfit Isotope Soap and oh boy, is this a spaced out new level of quirky and weird even for this group. As you might have noticed by now, i’m a sucker for this kind. Consisting roughly half of instrumental interludes radiating vibes not unlike a bizarro John Carpenter score, the actual Songs on this LP more than ever seem to draw inspiration from oldschool pioneers of the genre – yeah, of course there is some Devo in there but even more i’d suggest stuff like Screamers, Units and Nervous Gender, all mixed with more recent groups ‘a la Set-Top Box, Digital Leater and, occasionally, i even sense a touch of grim post punk in the vein of Video or VHS.
Their recent Skeleton/Runaway digital single was some quality shit already and a huge step up from previous releases. With their newest EP, the Austin, Texas group keeps the good stuff coming, clear highlights this time being the perfect power pop one-two punch The Amazing Super Ultra Spiderman & Shit Me Out but the rest is great fun too, coming across a bit like an amazing super ultra holy trinity of Ausmuteants, S.B.F. and Set-Top Box.
For his second 7″ on Goodbye Boozy Records, Cal Donald aka Liquid Face increases both the energy- and distortion levels considerably, making his special sauce of garage-/synth-/post punk come across kinda like a weird crossbreed between Powerplant, Mononegatives and the noise punk of Brandy.
This Melbourne group’s tape delivers a whole bucketload of synth-enhanced garage punk delight hovering somewhere inbetween the reference points of Useless Eaters, Sauna Youth, Ausmuteants, Metdog… and also fairly close to the whole Warttman Inc.-affiliated clusterfuck.
Last year’s debut tape of this Portland group was a perfectly fun little thing already but this new shit is just so much stronger in pretty much every aspect, their presentation tighter and the songs more concise, simple yet perfectly balanced and 100% efficient in their amalgamation of garage-, synth- and post punk, radiating out some serious vibes á la Research Reactor Corp., Mononegatives, Ghoulies or Warm Exit.
Garage-/synth-/electro punk from Cleveland, Ohio that carves out its own little place in the current landscape of similar groups by way of a certain psychedelic haze, kinda like a mix between The Spits, Silicon Heartbeat and Smirk, observed through some dense Chrome- or Metal Urbain-esque fog. Or you might describe it as some kind of garage punk incarnation of Murderer’s hallucinogenic cowpunk nightmarescapes.
Metdog’s fourth extended play is yet another treasure trove of playful and easygoing garage punk… let’s not talk about eggs again here. Admirers of R.M.F.C., Research Reactor Corp. or Satanic Togas will aprove of this, just as i’m gonna make an exception here and give my full approval for the use of auto-tune or vocoder or whatever that shit in the closing track is… fucking art, i guess.
Um… what meaningful thing is there left to say about a new Alien Nosejob record at this point? They kinda come in two shapes: The grab bag style ones where Mr. Robertson branches out in every direction possible and the hyperfocussed monoculture ones where he doubles down on a single genre – like his hardcore 7″s for example or that synth pop/eurotrash 12″ maxi a while ago. Well, this one’s another grab bag record and apart from that, it’s just the plain old usual awesomeness we’ve all come to expect from this dude who seems utterly unable to write a dull tune.
