Anxious Pleasers is a new band from Hamilton, Canada, featuring
three veterans from the local garage punk / "77" punk scene. It's common
knowledge that most local scenes are totally inbred families and
Hamilton's one doesn't seem to be different:
Anxious Pleasers that's Matt, TJ and Nathan, three hyperactive
members of that scene, but you rather see... the three of them play in
Rocket Reducers, TJ and Nathan play in
TV Freaks, Nathan plays in
Flesh Rag, Matt plays in
Plasticheads
and in
The Vapids
since 2008 and TJ is also a graphic designer on the side working under the
name
Don't Try.
Three busy lads yeah.
Anxious Pleasers does not fall very far from the garage punk tree,
taking its roots in early punk groups like
The Pagans,
The Users,
The Depressions
(to mention only bands from three different English speaking countries),
in classic silly garage punk bands like
The Carbonas,
Teengenerate,
The Cavemen
but mostly in what I call the "77 revival scene" I've mentioned in my post
about Laxisme a few weeks ago with bands like
The Briefs,
Küken
or
The Celetoidsetc.. they also got a slight power pop touch and have been compared to
Tommy And The Commies
and
Priors.
So yes it's fast, it's melodic, it's catchy, it got a strong rock'n roll
groove and it's extremely predictable (but who seriously cares?).
An enjoyable album!
At first released as
a tape by the band, Anxious Pleasers record should be available on wax very soon
thanks to Neon Taste records (a label that's become a regular on this page).
A short one today about this raging demo hailing from Lismore,
Australia.
Bust features members from
Masochist
and
Controlled
and made the choice to play extremely angry hardcore (feminist angry to be
precise).
Indeed Bust's demo that's six tracks of raging hardcore punk leaning a bit on the heavy side with super pissed-off snarling female vocals that don't neglect some melodies on parts that are too few and too short in my opinion (I'm not a big fan of the "super forced I-wanna-sound-like-a-50-feet-tall-monster" kind of female vocals to be honest). It's reminiscent of recent hardcore bands like Soakie and Nekra (that's probably bad examples as I'm not a big fan of either band for various reasons but you get the idea).
The tracks are short, fast (not soo fast though), straight forward and in your face in a more "hardcore" than "hardcore punk" vibe but I don't mind.
I don't understand a lot of the lyrics but there is a strong feminist side for sure and it does sound bloody angry!
The tape was released on Defy Records (the label very first release) and I would not be surprised to learn that it's managed by some Bust's members.
I'm curious to see what comes next, I would be stoked if melodic vocals gain ground on their future records.
Gluer is
a new punk band from Stockholm, Sweden, which was born like a "playful pandemic project" during the Covid lockdown (even
if Sweden's been really easy on the lockdowns compared to almost all
other European countries) just like a whole generation of new groups actually. Fortunately (and hopefully) these dark times are behind us (until next time!) andGluer's been kicking it on stage a few times already over the past months, finding an enthusiastic show-craving public.
Featuring members from several other punk and garage punk acts from the Swedish
capital (Gestures,
Dead Geins
and the furious
Wails, go check them out), Gluer is not the first try of these four
young men and benefits from a serious experience you can easily feel in
the only two tracks we have access to. Despite its (very)
short discography (for the moment), Gluer sounds by far like the
most accomplished project of all those mentioned above in my (very) humble
opinion.
That tune rips right?
Indeed Gluer has found the perfect balance between punk, hardcore and a
little bit of rock'n roll: it's catchy as hell, it's fun, it's fast and
it's furious without falling into the raging wall of d-beat noise a lot of
modern hardcore bands tend to adopt these days. It makes me think of a
slower mix between the best
Wilful Boys
tracks and the more USHC-influenced side of Swedish hardcore punk (Regulations,
UX Vileheads,
Damaged Head
etc...). Yes it's that beautiful...
This one is just a pure HIT. So catchy, so energetic and so silly and funny as the same time, what else do you want?
These guys mention bands like Armor, Beta Boys, Lumpy and the Dumpers and Ex-cult as influences (American bands only, I notice) and yes there is definitely a lot of those great hardcore bands' energy in Pumping The Iron, but contrary to all of them (except for Ex-cult ok), this song has a little "clear" side, a more punk than hardcore side (just the right amount) that makes it just perfect.
I'm a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger as an actor (a lot less as a political figure) and in a way he's managed to make his bodybuilding career to not look completely like a big heap of stupid shit (to me at least, which is quite a challenge for any kind of bodybuilding activity) thanks to his movies, he's simply become a cool pop culture character. Anyway that's cool AND silly AND fun to see him star in a killer punk track video-clip and I love it!
According to the band's members themselves (who were nice enough to
answer a few of my nosy questions) these two tracks are just a little
appetizer before the real deal, an EP AND a LP in the not too
distant future. Vic, aka Sick Vic (Gluer's drummer,
Gestures' vocalist and player of (?) something in
Dead Geins), is also the founding member of
Bad Beat Audio, a DIY association/label which organizes punk shows in Stockholm and
will probably release a few killer records very soon. The rest of the
band is probably deeply involved in BBA too and the coming EP (which should be recorded in a few weeks) should be out on BBA whereas the LP will be released by Push My Buttons from Stockholm (like Gestures but also like the early, and best, Viagra Boys records and Henry Fiats Open Sore for example) and Svart Ljud.
Ok I stop here that's a lot (too many?) words for a band with two tracks only, but at least you know now how excited I am to hear more from Gluer!
Cochonne is a quartet hailing from Durham, North Carolina, which
existed between 2019 and late 2020 or early 2021 something like
that.
For the (unlucky) non French speakers Cochonne originally means
female pig but is mostly used as a slightly gross, but not really
offensive word to describe a sexually dirty girl (the kind of word used in
porn you know).
You're welcome.
I don't know much about the members of Cochonne except that
Mimi Luse (the bassist and vocalist) speaks French and recently
released a solo album under the name
Permanent.
First self-released and then out on Sorry State,Cochonne's debut tape burst into the world in late 2019.
I did not pay much attention to this tape at the time (I don't know why
really) but I'm glad I got back to it now, it's a very good piece of
post-punk with solid female vocals which recalls many great bands from
different eras as I will be pleased to detail in the coming paragraphs
(yes ma'am).
Cochonne plays some kind of sleek mid-tempo songs with really
upfront female vocals (Mimi's high pitched voice and perfectly
mastered singing technique is impressive), upfront jerky drumming and minimal
guitar and synth layers. The whole thing gives a very strong (and
charming) teenager punk band atmosphere (in the sense of clumsiness and
"honest" naïvety of a young persons' band) to a tape that is not nearly as
flimsy as this sentence might suggest.
I said post-punk but I hear as much early Pylon as early classic
US punk (X and Avengers in a track like Body Bag for
example) as European
punk
(The Slits, The Raincoats and Las VulpeSS but most of all
Kleenex/Liliput in tracks like Omega and
Horror-Scope) and anarcho punk (a bit of Crass and Lost Cherrees in the
vocals maybe?) in Cochonne's six tracks (ok I could add a bit of no
wave here and there with the
Scissor Girls
for example). But as I'm into heavy name-dropping let's get into more
recent ones: ok I can think of
Autor
from Vienna, of some
Spam Risk
tracks and, of course, of
NOTS
and
Table Sugar.... ok ok I stop here it's way more than enough I know but names and
references just keep popping up in my mind when I listen to
Cochonne, what can I do?
After hours of trying to figure out what
Mensonge Humain (Human Lie), sung in French,
reminded me of (except for a discrete
Lucrate Milk
influence in some parts), I finally remembered the Maraudeur (from
Leipzig) track called
C'est Caché
and yes yes there's some common ground here. I still feel like something
else's gonna pop up from the back of my mind any time soon... well anyway
let's move on!
I have to mention the very surprising (and very good) F21 which
starts like a beautiful "punk ballad" where Mimi can let burst all
her vocal knowledge in what could sound at times like a tribute to
Darby Crash by
Quix*o*tic. Fun fact, the track
"comes back to life" after six minutes of silence after its end for a good old
hidden track (damn it's been a while) full of heavy bass lines, offbeat
discussions and high pitched humming... a kind of modern and deviant
Cramps song ?
Let's make it short, I love Cochonne's minimalist post punk: It
is good!
I still can't understand how I missed it two years ago, this is absolutely
brilliant.
After a little change of line-up (the drummer) and for their first
vinyl but final release (RIP female pig), Cochonne is back on
Sorry State with a 5-track 12" called Emergency and a deeply
disturbing cover artwork made by
Jack Thegen-Crowley.
And the atmosphere has changed quite a bit (influence of the new
drummer?), the rhythms are more frantic, the vocals are more "dazzling",
more all over the place in a kind of "arty punk" way if you know what I
mean, making Cochonne's new materials probably even closer to what Nots has been doing for years than the "old" one.
It starts with Qu'est-ce que t'as fait? (What have you done?) and
Asking For A Friend, two perfect arty/no-wave songs in the pure
spirit of bands like
Lucrate Milk
(for the 80s French version) or, more recently,
Preening
for the US version (even if there is no saxophone yes I know). Then comes
KGB, probably the weakest song of the record in my opinion, which
lacks of something to be really striking. But then there is
Trop (Too Much), my favorite Emergency track where
Mimi loses her mind, falls into some kind of delirium where she
repeats in loop, like a mantra, that "it amuses her" or that "she enjoys
it" (ça m'amuse) like a little brat playing with a dead cat or
something like that. Unfortunately the song comes back for a "second
round", avoidable and a bit painful, whereas the end was obvious after two
and a half rather pleasant minutes.
And the band concludes Emergency (and their recording career as it seems) with Vampire, which 3D animation video clip is right above this line. Although I find this kind of 3D animation particularly ugly, the video is rather amusing although it doesn't fit the music at all in terms of rhythm. The song is not bad but not great either, a bit like the whole record in the end in my opinion.
Yes to be honest I'm not as enthusiast about this record as I am about the tape, once again the whole thing is not bad but it does not sound like something I will enjoy going back to regularly, it lacks consistency between the tracks and I'm not really hooked.
You know the kind of highly-anticipated bands featuring members of
already-accomplished and well-respected acts in the punk rock
tribe?
Well that's exactly what During is and, don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing.
And these members are three.
There is Steven Fisher, from
Ballroom,
Dozers
(from the time he was still living in 'stralia) and the almighty
Wilful Boys
(go check them out NOW if it doesn't ring a deafening bell), who also
plays in a couple of new projects called
Pyrex
and
Big Kiss, there is Jordan "Lovelace", from
Pampers,
Tournament,
Snoopy and The Who
and "king of rock'n roll"
Brandy, who's recorded a couple of bands you may have heard of at
Spice World Studio and, at last, the third leg of the bar stool,
Cory Plump from
When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth
and
Spray Paint,
from Texas, that became quite famous in the scene a few years back (I've
personally always found them overrated but hey! taste and colours you
know).
Yes, I warned you, that's a hell of a resume for a trio.
But let's come back to During and their first EP released on
Chunklet Industries (an eclectic label from Atlanta I already
talked about in my posts about
Vangas) earlier this year.
Birds Of Juneau starts like a Brandy track, with a lot of "chorus" on the vocals and a "haunting" drum beat (which is always a good start) but During's identity comes quickly into play with some well placed synth layers, not at all built in a "new wave purpose" but rather as a support to the whole and as an additional layer of "space surf" atmosphere (if you know what I mean). Of course Birds Of Juneau is catchy as fuck (I couldn't expect less from this trio), another very good example of sleek and ultra effective song construction that Brandy masters perfectly.
Big Farmer is quite different: built like a mid-tempo noise rock song reminiscent of Brandy's early materials and of some Running's tracks, the song also perfectly mixes a heavy dose of post-punk (distant vocals, gloomish atmosphere etc...), Cory's influence I would say, without ever compromising the catchy side. Of course I could not help but hear "Big Pharma" all along (would it have been a topic in the air for about year or so hmm?).
Unfortunately it's a two track 7", two tracks only yes... but two bloody solid tracks which display two musical aspects the band may choose to develop in the (very) near future. It does sound like the Brandy influence is dominating the whole thing, which is real good news to me...
I also have to mention the artwork made by Ben from the great Cuntz, it makes me think a lot of some of the Pablo Picasso's freehand sketches (Ben will appreciate the comparison I guess ahah) he used to sow everywhere in his path... a taste of early 20th century decadence in a sense. Great artwork in my humble opinion.
Chunklet announces a During's full length before the end of the year... based on this 7'' it's not unlikely it gets out just in time to make it to my year's top! Can't wait!
Imploders is one of those "new" bands born during the COVID era
which had a record ready before being able to play their first live show.
We all know how difficult last year and this part of this year have been
in terms of musics shows and hopefully it will remain only a kind of weird
souvenir from a fucked up year.
Anyway these guys are from Toronto, Canada and played in bands like
First Base,
Vicious Cycle
and
Average Times
before getting together as a hardcore punk band. And if you spare a few
minutes to listen to their debut EP, you will surely agree it was a great
idea.
Based only on the very "horror oriented" cover art (made by
Kenneth MacLaurin) I assumed at first that Imploders was another furious dark
d-beat hardcore act as there's been so many popping out from everywhere
lately. But it's not. Imploders is better.
Released on the Canadian label
Neon Taste Records, that I mentioned a few times in my posts about Nutrition and
Headcheese, Imploders' five-track EP is a little gem of hardcore punk (and
the first Neon Taste's record not made by Lewis Podlubny I
am reviewing here!).
In the pure tradition of 80's north American hardcore, the band throws to
the face everything that made the success of the genre, frank and direct
riffs, simple but catchy lyrics and most of all perfect tracks' constructions combining energy and fun. Fun yes! Imploders got this silly but super catchy punk thing which takes their sound away from the raw hardcore side, and I love it. Did I already mention that it was punk and catchy as hell?
Imploders recalls
numerous bands, probably mainly from the California side in the early 80s (but not only), what about
J.F.A,
Circle Jerks
or the recently repressed Hated 7"s for example? but also
Regulations
(damn I'm always mentioning my all-time favorite suedes when it comes to
tell how much a band rips) and a big part of the Deranged catalogue
(Damagers,
Flowers Of Evil,
Career Suicide,
Leisure World
etc...) to stay with a Canada based label. I can think also of the
already-mentioned Headcheese,
Fried E/M
or some of the
Beta Boys' releases.
Ok let's stop here, you got the idea and nobody gives a damn about all my
rantings anyway, so just pump up the volume of your shitty smartphone and enjoy the
ride!
Another good news is that this EP is only a start, the band is ready to record a 12 or 14-track LP very soon, probably on Neon Taste again.
Judy And The Jerks and I have always had, for some reasons I can't
really understand, a quite distant relationship since the very beginning
of the band from
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 2017. If you've read a few of my posts
here you may have noticed that I'm really into punk and hardcore punk
bands with strong female vocals presence and
Judy And The Jerks (JATJ) ticks all the boxes to become a
personal favourite of mine. But it never was. Not that I don't like
their sound or their attitude or anything, I was just not "attracted" to
their records and never gave them the chance they deserve.
It may be the donuts thing on Music for Donuts released on
Thrilling Living
in 2019 (I hate donuts) or the too high pitched vocals I did not enjoy at the time or maybe just the fact that the quartet's career started
at a time when I was too "busy" and less into new punk
records.
But whatever it was (nobody gives a damn after all) it doesn't matter anymore because I've stumbled
upon their last tape, Live In NWI, a few weeks ago
...
and it totally blew my mind.
Recorded on Jan 6th 2020 in a basement in Hammond, Indiana, by
Erik Hart aka
Erik Nervous, this 10-track live tape is the 22nd release of
Earth Girls Tapes, a punk label from Hattiesburg managed by
Hampton Martin who plays the bass in JATJ and used
to play in
Big Bleach
and
Baghead, two bands you should check out and whose records were released
on his label as well. I've mentioned Earth Girls once
before, it was in my 2020 post about the Mississippi UFO
Mspaint, and it was great.
By the way Live In NWI is also the 7th JATJ release
on Earth Girls. This being said let's take a dive in the
pit!
Perfectly catching the tremendous live energy of the band, this
recording sums up exactly what you want from a hardcore punk band, it's
fast, intense, sharp as fuck but also fun!
Covering most of their Music for Donuts EP, Judy and her mates
also go through some early materials like Slugarama and
Sweet Treat from their
demo
but also the hilarious Dog fromRoll On Summer Holidays and Specimen A and Buford fromBone Spur,
which gives a great overview of their discography.
With only one track out of 10 making it beyond the 2 minutes mark,
it's a really short set (but aren't the shortest things the greatest?)
but it does not matter, it's a great flash of perfectly mastered punk
in your face and that's all we bloody want after all right?
Only one negative point, I don't really understand this thing for
cover artworks evoking failed drawings of kids in total lack of
inspiration but well, for a cassette I don't mind in the end I will
never own it anyway (I refuse to support the trade of this outdated
and dead format, call me a moron if you want).
Anyway here is the live video footage of (most) of the show and also one older video.
Half is hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and started as a
two-men studio project around 2018 if I'm guessing correctly. I assume the
name of the band comes from being a duo, but after all, who gives a
damn?
Demo Of Half, released in 2018, starts like you'd
expect, with some straight forward, simple punk songs full of 1-2-1-2
drumming and angry vocals. Some faster parts break the mid-tempo pace most
of the songs are based on while the guitar brings the little extra
interesting something that hook you up enough to want to come back in a
couple of years to see how it's evolved.
Ok that was just the start, there is also the painful Razor which
drags us deep in some parts of the cold wave world I don't really want to
visit and there is Time Will DestroyIt which is probably a
good private joke making fun of some weird EBM drone stuff but turns out
in the end to be a pain in the ass.
So I can clearly feel that these guys are in between the world of
hardcore punk and some darker shores, closer to post-punk, goth and other
weird electronic scenes, and it's an interesting mix after all. This demo,
despite being not very convincing (but that's a demo after all), makes me
wish that they will keep digging in the right direction.
The duo comes back one year later with their first full length (if a
7-track 19-minute long record can ever be called that) which is, like the
demo, a digital-only release if I'm not mistaken.
As the first track makes us clearly understand, the Philly duo maintains
the focus of their 2018 demo (which was mainly hardcore punk) but their
home recording and effective songwriting abilities have clearly improved
in a year. Far from sticking to the "let's play some fast hardcore, dude"
motto, Hype I and Burt Murder (great names by the way) don't
hesitate to venture in a slower, more US punk-minded area with tracks like
Just Tell Them You're Still A Student (great track's title dude)
which ends slow enough to perfectly introduce the pace of
Skin Trashers and its old-school horror punk vibe.
These two guys successfully explore the land of 80s US punk (I can't help
but think of Circle Jerks on tracks like George Town for
example) but they're far from limiting themselves to heat up the same old
formulas (which is sometimes more than enough to make a good punk band by
the way), no they manage to successfully play with the codes, to bend the
genres' edges and to distort all that shit to make tracks that come really
well together in a "harmonious" whole.
What I mean is that I am particularly sensitive to albums that
manage to build a "journey through various levels of intensities",
building ascents and descents, bridges between rage and speed, gateways
between several levels of emotions and, above all, "rest areas" that allow
you to inhale a well-deserved breath of air after a steep hardcore track.
And I do believe that's what Half has successfully managed to
create with The Years of Time.
As on the demo, they can't help but conclude with a dark, slow and rather
boring track that probably fills a need for coldness and gloominess that
this rather successful punk record (so far) was lacking.
If you ever feel the same urge here is a little tip by
Burt Murder himself:
The snare sound on track 7 was achieved by placing a large turd on the
drum's surface. It was wrapped in many layers of saran wrap and masking
tape.
And I would add: please skip the baked beans in the morning.
Summer 2020: it's a two-track single we get this time, the hard to describe Three Animal Bones whose slow punk vibe and
distant "radio" vocals don't really convince me but which got nevertheless
something from the Half I know, and the "surprising"
3AB whose haunting and strange beginning makes me think of
Twin Peaks until the tortured, twisted, heavy and desperate vocals,
sifted through a rather ugly "radio" filter, come to add an extra layer of
discomfort it definitely did not need.
To make it short: not the release I'd recommend to anyone who wants to
get into Half.
And here we finally reach the record which introduced me to Half's
sound and convinced me to lay down the few words that your eyes have the
pleasure of reading right now.
Wiss is a record you gotta listen to a few times. Don't be
mistaken by Fast, the opening track, which may make you think that
Half is just making once again this good old mix of old school US
punk and modern sound, nah: Half has taken off and spread its wings
to the fullest.
Probably benefiting from the best recording and mixing quality of its
"career", the duo develops its "art" with care and subtlety in the
different directions already briefly explored in the previous records.
There is the "classic punk" side of course that has now turned into well
mastered songs called Fast and Damn for example, songs which
recall a lot but don't make any names immediately pop into mind (which is
a good point I guess).
And then comes the 4:46 long Firepit. Ok I have to admit I have
not been really nice with the dark-wavish tracks from their
previous releases, but surprisingly I find this one quite enjoyable. It
probably comes from the strong post-punk side gently built up all along by
the guitar, even imposing itself during the 3:45 mark explosion and its
downfall. But there's news here, we don't get a lonely darkish track only
this time, Laphroaig follows quite naturally as another good
post-punk track.
Belltower appears like a hybrid monster between the punk Dr
Jekyll and the heaviness of an indescribable Mr.Hyde, it's slow and fuzzy
as fuck and then it's fast, the vocals are upfront and in your face and
then distant and lost in the mist, it's angry ok but it's also sad and
full of despair... and what about this insane piano part which takes us
into the mental image of the haunted house that we all have in our
subconscious, an image built during childhood evenings spent alone in
front of
more or less cheap horror movies
while dad and mum were out...
But it's Projection which really put me on my knees, starting like
a ballad taken from The Stooges first album it turns into a highly
deranged soft song recalling the
Reverend Beat Man
/
The Monsters
and their obvious lack of sanity. I love it.
Ok that's already way too many words about a band called
Half.
Let me just recap: it's fucking time that a bloody punk label takes these
guys out!
Half rules!
PS: it looks like Half has turned into a real live band.
