Awful - 4 Songs

Speak­ing of Deluxe Bias… here's the newest cas­sette of minis­cule run­time from that Wyoming la­bel spe­cial­iz­ing in ex­act­ly that one kind of thing. An­oth­er com­plete­ly blown-out as­sault on the sens­es walk­ing a thin line be­tween ul­tra-rough LoFi fuzz-, garage- and egg­punk re­sult­ing in some ex­quis­ite may­hem which may plau­si­bly get de­scribed as a cu­ri­ous blend of the likes of Print Head, Warm Bod­ies, Snoop­er and Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

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Sun Children Sun - Bizarre Feverre

The lat­est LP by this Tokyo group, orig­i­nal­ly re­leased last year in Japan and now be­ing reis­sued by Bal­ti­more, Mary­land la­bel SPHC Records, kicks things off with not just one, but two max­i­mal­ly corny faux-or­ches­tral in­tros seagu­ing in­to a cheesy faux-met­al pas­tiche as if hell­bent on one-up­ping any of the re­cent dun­geon punk de­vel­op­ments. Then, the ac­tu­al fun starts in the form of equal­ly ba­sic but all the same un­pre­dictable and in­ven­tive hard­core punk bursts, the afore­men­tioned tongue-in-cheek dungeon/​metal flour­ish­es be­ing coun­ter­bal­anced by a free­wheel­ing cre­ative spir­it rem­i­nis­cent of, among oth­er things, ear­ly Crass! There's no use ar­gu­ing with this kind of in­san­i­ty, just em­brace the weird and en­joy the wild ride.

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Lamictal - Hard Pill To Swallow

Cal­i­for­nia group Lam­ic­tal fol­low up last year's in­sane pair of EPs with an­oth­er strong tape, their over­all vi­sion com­ing across a lit­tle more fo­cused on here which might in part be a re­sult of ever-so-slight­ly in­creased pro­duc­tion val­ues… al­though pol­ished would cer­tain­ly be the wrong word here as their cu­ri­ous mix­ture of garage punk, hard-, post- and weird­core is still filthy as fuck, up­re­dictable and hy­per­ac­tive, over­whelm­ing the sens­es for just un­der four min­utes be­fore get­ting the fuck out as quick­ly as they turned up. Manda­to­ry shit for friends of, say, Big Bop­per, Rolex or ear­ly Pat­ti.

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Warp - Automatic Gratuity

I'd al­most for­got­ten about this San Fran­cis­co group yet here they are fol­low­ing up their im­pres­sive 2019 de­but al­bum with a new EP show­cas­ing their quirky and in­ven­tive sound on the fringes of noise rock, hard- and post­core in a shape both rougher and more re­fined at the same time, echo­ing some of the great­est noise-/weird­core re­leas­es of re­cent years in­clud­ing those by the likes of Warm Bod­ies, Snif­fany & The Nits, Vexx, Dots, Judy & The Jerks or Mys­tic Inane.

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Atol Atol Atol - Koniec sosu tysi​ą​ca wysp

This thing isn't ex­act­ly new at this point, hav­ing been self-re­leased last fall on their band­camp page. It took a cas­sette edi­tion via Leipzig la­bel U-Bac for me to ac­tu­al­ly re­al­ize its qual­i­ties though, which are re­al­ly no sur­prise with hind­sight as there are folks from pol­ish post-/art-/math punk pow­er­hous­es Ukryte Za­le­ty Sys­te­mu and Kur­ws at work here. This promis­es some smart and beau­ti­ful­ly struc­tured chaos and on this record, it comes in droves, call­ing to mind, along with the afore­men­tioned groups, the oc­ca­sion­al flash of Spray Paint or Lithics and even some Fara­quet and Swell Maps to boot!

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Advoids - Advoids

Mem­bers of Diode and Frea­kees gift us yet an­oth­er at­tack of de­li­cious­ly off-the-rails noise, this time close­ly scrap­ing past the rough co­or­di­nates of post punk, post- and weird­core. Some repi­ti­tive The Fall-es­que riff leads in­to pure hard­core an­ar­chy in All the World. Give Me Mine then has a dis­tinc­tive ear­ly Min­ute­men-meet-James Chance kind of en­er­gy to it. Fur­ther you might find some traces of Flip­per, Sac­cha­rine Trust or The Pop Group in there or al­ter­nate­ly, you might iden­ti­fy bits and pieces of more re­cent shit á la Rolex, Big Bop­per or Gay Cum Dad­dies.

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Fugitive Bubble - Delusion

The Olympia, Wash­ing­ton group's first long­play­ing cas­sette, fol­low­ing two equal­ly awe­some tapes on the fab­u­lous Im­po­tent Fe­tus la­bel, still de­liv­ers the goods of un­pre­dictable, free­wheel­ing hard- and post­core with ad­di­tion­al in­gre­di­ents of garage punk and mild in­san­i­ty, stub­born­ly re­fus­ing to fit in­to your pre­con­cieved no­tions of what this thing called punk rock is sup­posed play out like. A fair­ly eclec­tic, genre-bend­ing ap­proach which you might, if you re­al­ly had to, com­pare to groups as di­verse as Das Drip, Warm Bod­ies, Vexx, Judy & The Jerks, Mys­tic Inane, Hot­mom, Gen Pop or Snif­fany & The Nits at one point or an­oth­er.

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Sniffany & The Nits - The Unscratchable Itch

The full length de­but of this Lon­don group is a per­fect storm of de­light­ful­ly off-the-rails hard- and post­core, of­ten per­me­at­ed with un­ex­pect­ed­ly melod­ic sub­cur­rents and at first glance kin­da play­ing out like a mid­dle ground be­tween weird­core pow­er­house Warm Bod­ies and fel­low some­one-and-the-some­things group Judy and the Jerks… but theres more than just that go­ing on here with mo­ments rem­i­nis­cent of an eclec­tic clus­ter of am­bi­tious hard­core groups á la Acrylics, Cri­sis Man, Mur­der­er, Kalei­do­scope or Straw Man Army.

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Soft Torture - Soft Torture

This Philadel­phia group's line-up brings to­geth­er gen­er­a­tions of punks, hav­ing Chuck Mee­han of hard­core di­nosaurs YDI among its ranks as well as mem­bers of more re­cent acts like Blank Spell, Hal­dol and De­Struc­tos. Their first EP ex­plodes right in­to your face with eight-and-a-half bursts of un­pre­dictable, chaot­ic and noise-in­fused hard-/post-/weird­core rough­ly in the ball­park of what you might've heard in re­cent years from bands like Kalei­do­scope, Day­dream or Fugi­tive Bub­ble.

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Big Jar of Mayo - Big Jar of Mayo

More qual­i­ty shit cour­te­sey of Deluxe Bias. This ab­surd­ly short cass­in­gle of noise in the realm of KBD-in­formed weird­core, garage- and post punk will sure be a de­light to folks who've al­ready de­vel­oped a huge bon­er for Mys­tic Inane, Rolex or Fried E/​M.