The debut EP of this Portland group is kind of all over the map stylisticly but also fucking brilliant at all times, with the first two songs leaning into a sound between angular garage- and post punk, holding a delicate balance of dissonant textures and catchy hooks like you may have heard previously from groups such as Reality Group, Print Head, early R.M.F.C., Exit Group and Beef. Technology Discriminates Against The Poor then sounds a bit like a kraut-y Spray Paint fused with the likes Mononegatives or late Useless Eaters. False Reality reminds me somewhat of the spaced-out garage punk of Pow! while Identify has a quality of catchy minimalism similar to shit like Busted Head Racket and Daughter Bat and the Lip Stings. Beat Struggle then goes all-in on the motorik kraut-y vibes before the record gets to its worthy conclusion in the form of a neat cover tune of old dutchmen Ivy Green and the slow-burn synth punk grooves of Conflict Driven Entertainment.
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?
Some groups make my unpaid blogging job pretty fucking easy, like this one from London. You see, group exists 'cos dude likes suicide, simple as that. And as Alan Vega has no longer been walking among us for close to a decade by now, i'm not ever gonna complain about any competent acolyte keeping the fire burning. As far as these are concerned, you can certainly do much worse than this one - a perfectly adequate substitute i'm gonna say.
The sound of this Ciudad López Mateos, Mexico group remains kind of a singular, curious mixture on their third demo even in the colorful anything-goes context of the current eggpunk scene, feeling a bit like a flashback to the more melodic ends of the mid-to-late eighties punk rock spectrum - early pop punk artifacts that hadn't lost their abrasive edge yet, being given a thorough and fuzzed-out lo-fi makeover here and enriched with a perfectly measured dose of quirky, charming synth action altogether making for an irresistable bundle of pure sugary bliss.
As usual of a high-caliber, this new Split 7" coming our way from Italy's Goodbye Boozy Records. Schleswig, Germany's Viking Synth Punk Maestro Klint goes full hardcore mode on his side, churning out three massive bursts of his trademark abrasive force, spiked with plenty of melodic catchyness all the same. The dude can do no wrong and there still ain't anything quite like his music out there. The other side is made up of four new tracks by Hamburg's The Gents who, compared with their previous EP, are playing it decidedly fast and rough here as well, making for a perfectly substantial attack of straightforward garage punk bearing some similarity to the likes of Bart and the Brats or The Uglies.
Way more egg- than cowpunk, what this group from Poznań, Poland sets out to overwhelm our senses with. This shit is certainly among the more out-there offerings at the altar of playful insanity the genre has given us so far and it's a bottomless well of unpredictable fun that threatens to fall apart or go up in flames any moment but is so ridiculously satisfying while it lasts, reminding me of a colorful and markedly international bunch of acts such as early Skull Cult, Goblin Daycare, Paulo Vicious, Metdog, Beer, Cool Sorcery... and you can't leave out Barcelona's genre overlords Prison Affair of course.
Exquisite new spaced-out goodness on the fantastic second EP of this singaporean group whose acid-drenched haze of garage-, post- and synth punk feels a bit like a way more pissed-off variant of shit á la Useless Eaters, Ex-Cult, Pow! or Mononegatives, with just a smidge of rowdy primitive energy á la early Strange Attractor thrown in for good measure!
It's been over six years since we've last heard from this Bloomington, Indiana group which by now must be considered a highly influential force on the current garage-, synth- and eggpunk scene while in the meantime, members of the group have pumped their creative juices into acts like Belly Jelly, QQQL, Dummy and Big Hog. Now that they finally break the deafening silence, i gotta say this shit works better than ever in what must be the strongest set of tunes they've delivered so far. Just a tiny bit less weird and cluttered than on their previous efforts with more grounded, catchy and melodic song foundations and echoes of the likes of Tyvek, Marked Men and Lost Sounds, this is a strikingly mature work with all the hallmarks of a band that took a long break to branch out creatively in other projects, now reconvening to apply everything they've learned along the way with sleepwalking precision to an effortlessly wrecking result.
Now that's some hot shit, this debut tape by some dude from Lansing, Michigan. The fuzzed-out garage punk inferno of Cracked lays out a bit of a false trail for us at first, as the overall vibe then immediately shifts toward more of a noisy synth punk direction for the remaining tracks covering a good variety of stylistic flavors and accordingly, reminding me of a full ecclectic grab bag of acts in the wider synth-/electro-/sample punk spectrum including the likes of Beef, ISS, Heavy Metal, Klint, The Garden, Victor, Spyroids, R. Clown, Paulo Vicious and Kerozine.
Don't expect anything groundbreaking here 'cos with Power Pants you always know exactly what you're gonna get and even the freakin' early Ramones arguably had more stylistic breadth than this group. Yet, their songs never miss the mark and this entirely unfussy formula of catchy garage punk remains insanely appealing to me and as long as we continually get delivered tunes as potent as May I Rest or You're Invited, i'm gonna gratefully devour each new sugary health hazard Power Pants throw at me. Woof!
