For review and radio play consideration:
Please send vinyl (preferred), CD, or cassette releases to MRR, PO Box 3852, Oakland, CA 94609, USA. Maximum Rocknroll wants to review everything that comes out in the world of underground punk rock, hardcore, garage, post-punk, thrash, etc.—no major labels or labels exclusively distributed by major-owned distributors, no reviews of test pressings or promo CDs without final artwork. Please include contact information and let us know where your band is from!
Latest six-track effort from this power-pop-punk California surf trio. The opening track pretty much lifts the style and pacing of “I Wanna Be Sedated” and layers the trademark HAYLEY bubblegum sass vocals on top, and the disc closes with a surfy cover of “Suzie is a Headbanger,” which pretty much sums up the band. The four tracks in between are pretty damn good, too.
Artwork for this looks like some random release on Bluurg Tapes, which is pretty much a red herring, or maybe one of your meta-referential EXITHIPPIES joints, which is getting warmer. HORRENDOUS 3D is a Portland band on a LEBENDEN TOTEN member’s label and they sound every bit as up for popping eardrums with pure tone filth on their debut 7″. That being said, the guitarist conjures up some interesting noise textures and blaze-past solos, as opposed to just cranking the dentist’s drill; the bass is textbook ’80s noisecore and chunky as anything; and the vocals could be imported into a grind band or AUTOPSY-type sludgy death outfit without sounding out of position.
For the last few years, the German underground scene has been spitting out one killer combo after another. These groups range from hardcore units finding new wrinkles in their chosen style to genre-defying post-punk projects that utilize new ways to incorporate electronics into a rock format. I.G. is a duo attempting to update Germany’s early ’80s Neue Deutsche Welle scene for today’s hyperspeed reality. This initial offering’s title (and presumably the band’s name) translates to English as “Isolation Community,” so you know they’ve got the quarantine blues something fierce. The music errs more towards OMD’s mersh aspirations than DAF’s razor-sharp electronic come-ons. This kind of understated new wave pomp (a contradiction in terms) needs really strong songs to pierce my veil of indifference. The aggressive “Gelande” comes close but is still betrayed by keyboard lines that sound straight out of a Sega Genesis game. “Schockstarre” is grimy and foreboding and probably my favorite track here.
Straight from Hiroshima, KYOSANTO has been lurking in the hardcore shadows for three decades. Thanks to Bitter Lake, this gem of Japanese hardcore punk sees the light of day. Finally! This is a compilation of two demo cassettes from 1984, the Communist cassette and うじむし cassette. Brace yourself for high-energy and highly political hardcore punk akin to the STALIN or TYPHUS. For Japanese hardcore aficionados only!
Many record and band reviews (mine mostly) spend space name-dropping other bands and styles that a reviewee sounds like and borrows from. It’s a kind of connect the musical dots. Because let’s face it, we’re all influenced in some way by what we’ve heard before. But there are those trailblazers and avant-gardes who every now and then create something strikingly new from the same twelve notes we’re all shuffling around, using nothing but their own instincts. LOS SAICOS were operating out of Lima, Peru from 1964–66 with limited access to outside music or the happenings in England or the United States at the time. Their proto-punk sound with sharp guitar riffs and screaming vocals pre-dates the STOOGES, SEX PISTOLS, and RAMONES by a decade, though the band remained in obscurity, almost as an in-the-know secret among garage punkers. The early-aughts saw a brief reunion, along with numerous articles and a few documentaries that brought them back into current consciousness. BLACK LIPS and many many other similarly-styled bands cite them as a major influence. This 7″ is a reissue of two of their early singles, a great musical artifact that couldn’t care less if punk was born in London or NYC.
Musically, this almost rips at times, but the whole release is so overly chock-full of puns, plays on words, paragraph-long song titles, ’90s movie and music references, and goofy lifted riff parodies that it’s hard to look at just the music. I imagine this is a band of really fun people to be around who have wonderful senses of humor, and if you’re in on the goof this is probably side-splittingly hilarious. I, however, just find the novelty aspect of it a bit confusing, off-putting, and distracting.
I love getting assigned a record I’m already loving. The Tasmanian duo NATIVE CATS return with two tracks, with the first, “War of the Roses,” a hard and steady bass-driven mid-tempo backdrop to Chloe Alison Escott’s confrontational, manifesto-like vocals. I appreciate the gall of bands who print their lyrics directly on the front cover. NATIVE CATS sound hungry and unapologetic. The urgent delivery of lines like “I’ve felt my body happening to people on the street” and “Walk the breadth of human experience, howling, what of this is mine?” sound bracing against the dark and steady music. On the second side, “Sanremo” is sonically consistent but tonally a more melodica-tinged, almost shoegaze-y number that calls to mind BOWIE’s “Warsaw.” But don’t get me wrong, I’m not into shoegaze and I’m not even the biggest BOWIE guy, but I am really really into this. Two songs, both killer. A double-A, as they used to say. Love to see a band that’s been around for a little bit but knocks one out of the park anyway.
Fuzzed-out and catchy as hell. The MARKED MEN meet DINOSAUR JR at a bar somewhere and get hammered together while professing their mutual love of fuzz pedals, pop songs, and everything Sub Pop not named NIRVANA.
Sometimes it’s refreshing just to be somewhere familiar, and that is proven deftly by these Toronto traditionalists on this ten-track full-length. The tempo is up there, the guitars are dirty, and the snotty energy doesn’t let up from beginning to end. There’s not much to wax philosophical about here, it’s just one of those bands that has the punk fundamentals down and executes again and again. In a genre full of pretenders, it pays to do your homework and these fine folk have done just that.
PUSHUPS evolved from AURORA PUSHUPS, who themselves were something of a continuation of ZOLAR X. This previously unreleased debut LP takes the new wave sensibilities but sheds the sci-fi weirdness for an unabashed pop direction. The end result is eight tracks of some of the sharpest, catchiest power pop you’re likely to hear. It’s great—song after song is a bona fide shoulda-been hit, but with the two slightly demented tracks from the AURORA PUSHUPS “Angels on Runway One / Victims of Terrorism” single tacked on at the end (with all their art-punk fizz), it’s hard not to think that something was lost along the way…
RUBELLA BALLET is a crucial UK anarcho group that came up with bands like POISON GIRLS and CRASS, and was also a major influence on the goth scene. This album incorporates two early ’80s Peel Sessions with a 2018 radio session. The time span of this record made me a bit wary upon first listen (seamlessly spanning three decades is no easy feat). Although I’ll probably always be biased towards the sound of older recording technology, the newer tracks definitely hold their own. I appreciate that the band has stayed true to their hard-hitting roots, while remaining open to the musical evolution that happens over years of playing. The Peel Session tracks capture the raw magic of a band at the height of their influence. The 2018 recording finds them exploring group vocals, and a greater range of instrumental tone/experimentation.
The SARCASM tape—already half-a-decade old, I’m alarmed to read—and 2017 EP were glorious artefacts of their type, bare-brick rhythm-first punk that was somehow both punishingly direct and gnomically elusive. You didn’t expect or want this band to “progress,” whatever that means, and they haven’t exactly done that on Creeping Life (one of its six songs, “Digital Colony,” also appeared on the demo), but I just don’t see how their sound could get more platonically ideal than this. It’s not DESPERATE BICYCLES UK DIY or BAUHAUS goth or FLUX anarcho or GANG OF FOUR post-punk or even INSTITUTE updates on any combo of those things, but trace elements of each float around like the algal scum Luke McGuire sings about. His lyrics are neither reductive slogans or indulgent poetry, but use repetition really smartly and deploy imagery that haunts. I’m only half-sure what “Blinding scream, locked-in gaze / Creeping, breaking, a furious haze” is about (nuclear paranoia?), but damn if it doesn’t sound like deep shit when he intones it. All that, and bassist Alexandra Graves is still probably SARCASM’s M.V.P., in that their songs sound like they build from the basslines up.
SATÉLITE is a Spanish band with a dark, melodic, and beautiful post-punk sound. Otra Era was released in February but it missed my radar. The album’s second song “Estado Hipnótico” condenses the themes and sounds of the whole LP: prominent bass lines, chorus pedal guitar, gorgeous melodies, and vigorous drumming with lyrics that paint paranoiac landscapes of capitalist desperation and the urge of getting the hell out it, into a new era, with new ways of living. There’s a sense in all of these songs of trying to escape the new systems of control. Some of my favorites are the pretty “Otra Era” and the disquieting “Nuevas Maneras.” If you’re into Spanish post-punk bands like DÉCIMA VÍCTIMA, or early CURE, this is for you. You can get it both digitally or on vinyl. Really cool cover design, too.
Okay, the longest song on here is thirty-five seconds. The shortest is five. Yeah, it’s powerviolence/fastcore, with an emphasis on the power. A lot of vocal effects went into this. Vocals sound shouted out over the loudspeaker at Caldor or the drive-thru through an ugly sweater. Drums do the same roll over and over, though blisteringly fast, and then blast off a lot, too. I’m not sure what the story is here but I feel like I’m being drilled by an officer and forced drugs at the same time. It is extremely repetitive for a five-minute PV release and fucking clean. I want more slop and more mess. I want more grind, more surprises. It is heavily edited. Or maybe it’s not at all? I don’t have a moment to tell. I’m kind of nervous about this. If that makes you comfortable, go get it. You will. Understand.
Four songs of melodic hardcore punk. Socially-charged lyrics. The song “MORT420″ is the stand-out track for me. Solid effort from these Manchester lads.
Après-punk Chicago-style, triangulated somewhere between the loopy contempo new wave of various Lumpy-backed outfits (PINEAPPLE RNR, NATURAL MAN, etc.) and the recent Midwestern iteration of cutting, tightly-wound post-DEVO precision (think URANIUM CLUB, but with a major Rough Trade fixation). Briana Hernandez’s giddy, animated shrieks and matter-of-fact narrations have a definite Su Tissue edge, slipping into German on the brightly Neue Deutsche Welle-tinted “Kanst Du” and even subverting the “don’t you want to wait around” vocal hook from KLEENEX’s “Ain’t You” on “Unoriginal” (with a knowing wink in that title?)—if you’re going to steal, steal from the greats. Ten songs in under fourteen minutes, truly econo-jamming, but when the anxious, spring-loaded rhythms relent just slightly and SPREAD JOY hits a looser, spiraling art-punk scratch on “Ba-Ba” and “Music for the Body,” I can’t help but wish that some of those minute-long tracks had been stretched to at least double or triple their running time for maximum human movement potential. Indulge!
Churning, metallic Russian metalcrust. Like a blast from the early 2000s, STEP TO FREEDOM bulldozes their way through seventeen pieces of pure guttural filth, combining two earlier releases. 2017’s Cemetery For The Humankind is a ripping speed metal dervish with MISERY lurches throughout, while 2014’s Social Zombies opts for a more streamlined AXEGRINDER approach. To have all of this mania on one tape is nothing short of a gift.
What words come to mind after my first listen of this demo, you ask? Disturbed, psychotic, nightmarish, motherfucking insane, maybe? Yes, all of those words do come to mind, but don’t let it scare you. This is the psychotic nightmare of a tape we’ve all been waiting for. Something that appeals to the GG ALLIN inside us all. The soundtrack to your bad acid trip. The tape you play to get pumped up for your satanic baptism. It puts you in an existential mood and inspires you to read a book about death. Wrapped in a lo-fi jumble of noisy guitars and distorted vocals, the demo quality only adds to the crusty vibe of the tape. Overall, it’s some of Denver’s finest hardcore. Looking forward to hearing more from these guys.
Fun tape from Chicago hardcore weirdos TUMS. These eleven tracks are bookended by what I can only describe as punk vaudeville routines, opening with grandma one-liners over a Casio beat and ending with “Yer Auntie Grizelda,” which sounds like a punk band covering an elementary school sing-along. It’s an odd frame that holds in the unexpected raging hardcore of the rest of the songs. The main tunes are short, lo-fi hardcore basement bangers with an emphasis on fun. These energetic bursts have sung, melodic vocals over the musical aggression that are really catchy (almost sing-songy in parts) despite sounding so raw upon first listen. From what I can tell without lyrics, the content is pretty light on the seriousness scale with songs about girls’ trips, beaches, and drugs (the track “TAQN” stands for “Take a Quaalude Now”). It’s telling that the angriest song centers its rage on a certain video-streaming app (“HBO GO”). Listening to this is like overhearing inside jokes among friends that are frequently pretty funny, even if you don’t fully get the context. I’m here for it—this type of lighthearted hardcore is a welcome break during these dark times.
The ladies in TWISTED THING stir up an enchanting and chaotic buzz on their pounding sophomore EP. Displaying a new level of maturity compared to their excellent debut cassette from 2018, the songs on this 7″ are sophisticated and unforgiving. There’s some aspects to the sound that makes the record sound like it could have come out on a label like Sub Pop in the ’90s, but nah, maybe it’s a little too cool for that. They could probably play a great show with TANTRUM and maybe a couple of other bands in the city with similar dark and compelling auras. This is another strong entry in what seems to be a powerful new surge of female energy building in the NYC punk scenes, and I look forward to seeing how this particular plot thickens.
UNIT X gets straight to the point and continues reinforcing that point (forcefully) for ten minutes. Then you can breathe. Gnarly SXE hardcore from London, Ontario—killer breakdowns and no tracks over 90 seconds, but the lyrics go way deeper than the traditional core fare. This is the kind of “posi” I’m after these days—realistic, honest, and not always positive: “All that I am, all that I said / The years pass by, but still I feel it’s a lifetime of regret / All that I’ve seen, all that I’ve done / I keep pushing forward, past the memories of when I was wrong.”
Four tracks of synth-fueled punk rock pop that harkens the weirdness of early B-52’S with the angular-ness of GANG OF FOUR. It also has that current knowledge and feeling that “everything might fall apart at any moment” that one gets from NO AGE. Hoping they put out a full-length at some point. During my own travels and playing shows, I have often visited Rockerill in Charleroi, Belgium on European tours. Rockerill is that kind of place, not infrequent in Europe, where a huge industrial factory is tuned into a true DIY art/music/cultural center hosting art events and punk shows, and also, as it turns out, a recording studio and record label where this album was made.
New Zealand fucking rules, doesn’t it? I present to you the latest in a long lineage of NZ punk winners: ZHUKOV. Playing garage-y hardcore tunes with grooving guitars and exasperated growls for vocals, this band gets your head bobbin’ to an authentic and original sound. With a blunt anti-establishment motif that’s illustrated quite vividly on the album art as well as in the songs, these Christchurch lads urge you to “Join the Brick Throwers’ Union Today,” and I’ve already submitted my application.
This is a great collection. It is an assortment of songs from Linnes’ bands the STUCK UPS, ROYAL PAINS, the BUFFETS, the PAPER DOLLS, and the KILLER-DILLERS. Each one is a rollicking, garage rocking fun time. Linnes’ vocals are full of life, high-pitched and powerful. She’s my favorite kind of singer. You just want to sing along. Humorously, the STUCK UPS’ “Suicide” from their debut LP suggests drinking bleach. Hello 2020 from 2001!
In a world filled with overproduced post-punk, the “punk” aspect of the genre seems to be getting more and more subtle, giving way to indie-inspired tendencies. Enter ALTAR OF EDEN, a lo-fi post-punk band that contradicts this statement with its raw recording, deathrock undertones, gritty drum machine sound, and overall crude atmosphere. More akin to French coldwave bands like LEITMOTIV than to the typical post-punk references, The Grotto Screams is a beautifully ugly piece of dark punk that translates well to the suffocating atmosphere of modern life.
Stoner-psych-fuzz-death-garage-rock with rotating vocalists that I’m sure would leave that high-pitched tinnitus lingering in your ears for several days when (if?) live shows happen again, and one forgets or has a credence against ear plugs. The ringing would be a subtle reminder that you saw a band sweat, scream, and destroy a set leaving it all on the stage. I used “stoner” as a description because if the band were from Southern California or signed to Castle Face Records, that’s a term that may get dropped around. But the band hails from Weinfelden, Switzerland and is too tightly explosive and punky energetic to really be stoner per se, more like a triple espresso with a heavy pour of kirsch brandy.
This is super catchy, dance-y rock’n’roll. It’s got an ’80s sound without sounding dated. High-energy and bouncy with some politics thrown in for laughs. Standout track is “Fun Police”—”Who made you the fun police?” A good question. Pretty swirled, tan-colored vinyl, too.
Fiery Colorado crust with near-constant vocals in line with Japanese greats and almost too many leads. Two solid D-beat bangers and one stoner/grind ripper, but the breakneck “Bastards Will Pay” steals the show here, noteworthy because it’s the track where they seem to burst out of their comfort zone and really unleash. Recording is appropriately raw, and CALTROPS fall in line with late ’90s US political crust, which is a compliment.
Copenhagen’s new hardcore outfit CESSPOOL sets a very simple goal for the listener: a boot to the face. We Hide Among You is composed of eight tracks of slam-dancing, pit-clearing anthems of mid-paced hardcore in the fashion of WARTHOG or TARANTULA. Their strong suit is the heavy groove they achieve and a strong sense of musicality. Clear your room and feel the stomp of CESSPOOL.
This sounds like a SAMIAM record. Like almost to a T. The only difference is this band is from Finland. So I suppose take that however you’d like. In fact….this is their bio on the internet: “We are a band. We make melodic music that makes us happy. We sound like Sergie Loobkoff having a knife fight with Matt Pryor and Mike Carter in the ’90s!” So it’s totally intentional, I guess. Fortunately I happen to thoroughly enjoy SAMIAM, so that helps.
Portland’s hairy exponents of leftist Oi! return with four new ones and three covers. This may be the best thing I’ve heard from them so far. The songs are catchy as hell, especially the excellent 4 SKINS-inspired, menacing “Let Them Know.” They feel like a more tuneful CRIMINAL DAMAGE that’s less obsessed with BLITZ here. The drums are snare-heavy, up front, and the wailing guitars are nice and buried and shitty-sounding like a proper Oi! mix. “Always Darkest” excelles with pandemic-inspired lyrics like “Can’t go out without wearing a mask / Cuz people are in fear for their lives / You see me on the street / But you’d never guess I’ve been wearing one my whole fucking life!” LOL. The covers (BIG BOYS/7 SECONDS/WIRE) are pretty straightforward and don’t add much to the originals, but are well-thought-out and untraditional while remaining street in spirit. The overused term “banger” could be apt verbiage here, but without a side of mash it falls flat as pavement. See you fucks at the microbrewery!
This cassette is the answer to the age-old question, can you combine the sound of the JESUS LIZARD, MELT BANANA, and JOY DIVISION? Well, apparently you can, and it sounds goddamn amazing. The riffs are angular, thick with distortion, and catchy as hell. The vocals spit with attitude and remind me heavily of Siouxsie Sioux or the RAINCOATS. DESTRUCTOS prove here that they are one of the most creative and badass punk bands coming out of Philadelphia, and that means something because I’ve heard a lot of stellar bands from Philly recently. This tape is a melting pot of sounds from across the spectrum of punk and noise, and all of the sounds come together to create something really special and unique. Give it a listen, I promise you won’t regret it.
I’m a DROPDEAD fan, but I’ll admit they’re a band with a far too big catalogue and that I have quite gladly picked and chosen the specific few records and comps I think they excel on. When I sat down to listen to Dropdead 2020, I ended up digging out and relistening to è½ã¨ã™æ» (which is still an absolutely stellar HC record), and I guess that was a mistake. Revealing a band in its adolescence at the cusp of their prime no doubt colours what I imagine crossover fans would call an alright crossover thrash record, if you’re into that sort of thing. Included in a write-up for this record was a statement about how they have (vocally) moved away from the “raw screaming” of previous releases, and with that I guess I’m out. Mind you, there are some catchy tracks on this and some really good drumming, it just doesn’t hold a candle to their earlier records.
One of the most influential bands for the Spanish and Latin American punk community, ESKORBUTO has a special reputation that has only grown with time. After the classics Eskizofrenia and Anti Todo, they released Los Demenciales Chicos Acelerados originally on Discos Suicidas in 1987. This is a band way ahead of their time and that had a huge impact, making this the very first “punk opera” ever about a corrupt politician who finally sees his demise because of his ego. Housed in a controversial gatefold sleeve, this double LP reissue of this classic album contains the original artwork complete with a political satirical work against any kind of dictatorial regime. Still relevant and still resonates with modern days.
Two fun songs from this Japanese power-poppy garage band. The FADEAWAYS’ sound is steeped in ’60s style. The A-side is a 21st century take on the 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS classic. The B-side is a cover of KIT AND THE OUTLAWS.
This Northwest duo creates rudimentary witchy goth with repetitive programmed drums and melodies carried by single-note guitars, while both members float in the top of the mix with airy, oft-spoken vocals. Their target is in plain sight, and the fact that they land just off the mark in some places only serves to make FLEUR DU LOUVE feel more honest, more real. I’m wondering what a sophomore effort might conjure.
G2G is a DIY band out of Sydney, Australia. In this age of overproduced, over-saturated, and at times overly self-indulgent music, G2G embodies a bare-bones intensity that stands out. With songs that bring to mind various late ’70s/early ’80s female-fronted punk bands, their song structure is simple, and unadorned by instrumental frills. It sounds like three friends having fun and talking about things that are important to them—the recordings feel intimate, as though you’ve stumbled in on a practice. As a whole, this record transmits an energy that is both joyful and fierce, in a way so fitting for this moment in time. I hope there is more to come from this band.
Back in 2015, I read an MRR review of Vintage Future (the INTELLIGENCE’s previous LP) where the reviewer lamented the band’s pivot to “blog rock.” At the time, I was hitting the Lars Finberg Kool-Aid pretty hard—not only did he helm one of my favorite active bands in the INTELLIGENCE, but he had been involved in so many other projects that I loved (A FRAMES, DIPERS, PUBERTY, THEE OH SEES)—so I had trouble understanding how someone could dislike anything he’d put out. A lifetime has passed since then, which has allowed me to see this as a fair assessment. I’m probably still higher on that LP than the reviewer, but it’s certainly a much more sedate affair than you would expect given their past trajectory. Unfortunately, this latest album travels even further down the soft rock avenue, and I’m having difficulty finding much to enjoy. It pains me to say this, but the LP sounds like BECK at his sleepiest or some of the lamer FUGAZI records that appeal to folks who go to Burning Man. I’m willing to grant that Lars’s songwriting has matured in ways that I should learn to appreciate, and I wouldn’t want to sentence him to a life of endlessly cranking out iterations of Icky Baby or Males. Still, I need something with more bite than this.
The ’80s tried its hardest to kill rock’n’roll. In 1984, KLICK & AUS didn’t give a fuck about rock’n’roll per se, but still they managed to tap into its eternal well-spring of possibility and indulge in reckless, ramshackle sounds. KLICK & AUS stitched their music together while adjacent to quarantine (West Berlin gazing at East) and that patchwork existence influences their output. This is human music, as modern as a car phone and thirty times more useful. At times, KLICK & AUS recalls similar collectives such as HANS-A-PLAST (“Halt Mich Fest”), LUCRATE MILK (“Gebt Mir Schnaps”), TUXEDOMOON (“Slow Virus”), and FAUST (“Das Schicksal Der Lymphozyten”). Unfortunately, due to format constraints, the entirety of the original hour-long cassette is relegated to the web, but the material that shows up on this LP is more than enough to kickstart your own scene where the rules get chucked out the nearest window (and of course that is recorded for future use).
Tuneful indie-punk from the UK, with strains of later VISIONS OF CHANGE, DESCENDENTS, or even SENSELESS THINGS. The record avoids the pop punk tag because although the guitar lines provide a lot of melody, the vocals themselves are somewhat deadpan (rather than sung) and the choruses aren’t particularly hooky or catchy. The vocal delivery draws welcome attention to the slice-of-life lyrics, which have a tongue-in-cheek humor not unlike a punk version of HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT. Good stuff.
If you like BLITZ (which you fucking well better had like), you’ll like this, simple as, end of. No pissing about, it’s about as perfect a slice of UK82 skiiiiinhead rock’n’roll as you are likely to find. Anthemic, euphoric, and bleach-stained as they come, could have easily booted its way onto a No Future release. One that will be in heavy rotation chez yours truly for the foreseeable future.
MOTH is a new recording project from Darcy Berry, whom you may know as the drummer from Melbourne acts GONZO or U-BAHN. He’s playing all the instruments on this four-song EP, and the sound basically splits the difference between those two bands, like he’s pulling the tight, DEVO-esque start-stop rhythms from the former and the synthy post-punk atmospherics from the latter. The end result brings to mind a less wacky URANIUM CLUB or meaner AUSMUTEANTS. These songs are all covering very well-trodden ground, but the execution here is pretty flawless and elevates this EP to something worth seeking out (Mikey Young also mixed and mastered this, so of course it sounds great). Standout track is “Jealousy,” which features Veeka Nazarova (from indie pop band KOSMETIKA) providing lyrics and vocals (in Russian!).
Cool split between Buffalo’s NERVOUS TICK AND THE ZIPPER LIPS and SCIENCE MAN where each band contributes one original song, a cover of the other band, and two collaborative tracks. The groups have a pretty different sound and energy, but this tape works and is a hopeful document that the spirit of artistic collaboration can thrive in this time of isolation. The first three tracks show off SCIENCE MAN’s no-frills/no bullshit rock’n’roll with sleazy vocals and meaty STOOGES instrumentation. “The Mask” is three minutes of slow churn proto-punk with a full-ass guitar solo. The next two from them are a little faster but still have OG hard rock vibes with a throaty menace. Tough! The three NERVOUS TICK songs are forged in jerky new wave rhythms, complete with a drum machine under the trebly guitar work. “Don’t Know Where to Go” has stiff, robotic vocals that sound like GARY NUMAN on punk. This tape is a great idea done well, and I look forward to future volumes (hopefully after COVID).
Five songs of plodding, synth-heavy punk from Germany. Mid-tempo and dirgy, this falls somewhere in my mind between post-punk and slower peace punk stuff like POISON GIRLS. I really dig it. The strange occasional synthesizer blip-bloops are really cool and kind of push this over the top for me. Between the stuff here on Phantom Records and the handful of things I’ve gotten to review on Billo Records, it seems Germany has a wide array of killer stuff going on currently and I am thirsty for more.
This short dose of PÄNIKA is flush with a menacing and pounding sound. Blasting sparse riffs with a mocking tone, haunting echoed vocals, and overt political themes, its got all the ingredients for a captivating hardcore experience, even if it only lasts a couple minutes. They kinda remind me of a female-fronted version of Italy’s KOBRA, which is great praise, and I’m thinking this has got to be one of the hottest bands in Wroclaw, Poland.
Punk isn’t about competition, it’s about community, but if I had to pick a band that best represents the vibrancy and creativity of the current renaissance of NYC punk, PINOCCHIO would be near the very top of a short list. Simply put, this is one of the most confident debuts in punk in at least a decade. Self-assured, fearsome, and downright odd where it counts—it makes you start to wonder if starving to death in the big city might be worth it just to get a taste of what’s going on over there. Somewhere between new wave and hardcore, with some detours into a dimension we’ve yet to fully explore, PINOCCHIO has already proven they belong in the pantheon of greats, and they only needed eight tracks to do it. Essential listening for yesterday, today, and many tomorrows to come.
Pretty decent shocking pink hard-wave from Sweden that looks and sounds damn fine under a black light. EPOXIES, X-RAY SPEX, the DAMNED, and VAGEENAS are good places to look if you’re needing that feeling of control by comparison. The title track excels and smokes on this platter and being a former “dipso” myself, it gives me that fuzzy feeling inside. “Bite Me” has a much bigger and theatrical sound and is no slouch in itself making this EP flow like luminous paint down the gutter.
The album art is a kitschy, psychedelic take on classic B-movie horror images. PRIORS from Montreal return with their particular strain of garage punk with a pop sensibility. Mixing freaked-out fuzz, abrasive synth, and vocals that approximate the later output of JAY REATARD. Familiar elements to be sure, but they keep it interesting. The opening tune “Brew Ha Ha” is mostly direct and pummeling but it leaves space for eerie melodic touches. It’s sonically saturated to all hell and sounds like a party. TOM WAITS had a schmaltzy song called “The Piano Has Been Drinking.” PRIORS should have a song called “The Synth Has Been Dosing.”
“Melodic skate punk” from Spain. Fast, kinda dark, poppy. The more I listened to this the more it felt like a Spanish version of the LILLINGTONS. The singer’s voice is a bit more high-pitched and the production isn’t as polished, but you’d be hard pressed to think of anything different.
This one’s a marathon of solo noise grind diarrhea out of New Orleans. It collects a bunch of SHITLOAD split appearances and live recordings on one CD-R, and it goes on for what feels like hours. All of this sounds pretty much the same, 30 seconds of drum machine blast with unintelligible bass and shouting, followed by a few seconds of feedback and repeat over and over again. They do switch it up for the last couple of tracks with some noise dirges, which are not so bad but it sure took a lot to get there. Highlights are the “Takeshitload Collab Session” and when it’s over. SHITLOAD… it’s not just a clever name.
