Hehe I'm happy! my favorite Aussie label (Helta Skelta Recordsnamed after the almighty
Perth band of the same name) is back with the debut demo of a brand new band made of people from my
favorite punk crowd in the country: the Perth/WA punk scene!
Hell yeah it didn't take me long to recognize the voice of AshleyAck who's been singing and screaming in the great
Cold Meat (check out
their 7"s
and
their last year LP
if you haven't yet) but also in
the Debbie Downers
and in
Plastic Bags
before that.
This time she's teamed up with ladies from bands leaning on the post-punk
/ new wave side like
Nerve Quakes,
Product
and
Body Type
(And Helta Skelta also?), so some people have moved to the
thrilling state of Western Australia recently!
Anyway ASH IS BACK!
There're only two tracks available on their bandcamp page for now on so
let's take it as an appetizer before the official release of the tape on
the 15th of November.
Described as being influenced by early punk bands like the
Raincoats and classic post-punk / new-wave bands like Au Pairs and
Pylon I have to admit that Krimi sounds a lot less
in-your-fucking-face than Cold Meat for example but it doesn't
sound like soft new wave either!
Dressed For Distress got a strong early Bristish (anarcho?) punk
vibe, recalling immediately bands like
Faction,
Honey Bane
or more recently some of Rosie Davis' songs featured on
her 2020 12". I'm a lot more into anarcho punk than new wave so I guess that the
bells it rings for me. A great song anyway no matter which way you look at
it.
Friction adopts a more classic punk pace that takes us back closer
to Ashley's previous bands (and I'm not complaining!) but with some
slower parts (guitar solos/bridges?) which got that nice early
Pylon-esque vibe the label was talking about...
Two great tracks as an introduction to Krimi's demo: a very promising
teaser!
These guys released a demo and full length in a few months earlier this
year and guess what? they both totally rip.
Released on
Dirt Bag
in May this 4-track demo is pure aggression from start to finish, the
intro is a sample sounding like
someone opening the door to a bar, smashing a bottle, and immediately
starting a fight (another Saturday night in KC?), so consider yourself
warned: you're gonna get some!
D.Y.E's tracks are short, fast and angry as fuck hardcore punk
gems alternating between fast and heavy parts on which the vocalist never
stops throwing out hate and disgust. It's a demo so it probably sounds
heavier that it should (a lot of mosh parts reminiscent of the heavy side
of the early NY hardcore scene), sounding a bit like a "tough guy"
hardcore band at time.
It's a cool demo but slightly too "heavy" for me, thankfully the real
deal is coming next with... RULES!
Once again released on
Dirtbag Distro, Rules is the embodiment of everything that every hardcore punk
fan expects. It's short, fast and bloody aggressive! In a nutshell it
totally rips from start to finish!
Featuring a classic but cool and restrained artwork by
Swiasty, this record is not in bad taste overkill at all, just twelve pure
hardcore punk ripper tracks that's all! With nine of them clocking in
before the 1:30 mark this is done in total no-bullshit mode, no time's
wasted here ma'am, oh no! Recalling early 80s USHC or some bands from the
No WayRecords
catalogue, D.Y.E perfectly masters the recipe of a
great hardcore punk song, not forgetting to plant a few seeds of heaviness here and there but
in a much more subtle way than on the demo this time (and that's a lot better).
I can think of bands like
Glib
or
Discovery
but above all if you liked
Loss Prevention
(from KC as well), you'll love D.Y.E. The new hardcore sound of the Midwest?
Definitely one of my favourite record of the year.
November already, damn this year is going fast, and fast is this month's comp as well, a lot of hardcore punk from all over the world but also some post-punk and noise rock for you weirdos.
18 tracks, all killer no filler, 2021 keeps delivering ripping records from all over the place, no complaints here!
N,J'Oi!
01 - DYE - Count Me Out 02 - Fumes - P.S.S. 03 - Krimi - Dressed for Distress 04 - Enola Gay - Scrappers 05 - Bitchkiss - All Blondes Go To Hell 06 - Bart and the Brats - Check and Mate 07 - ConSec - Loose Screws 08 - Obsoletos - Inadaptado 09 - Total Nada - En Deuda 10 - The Monsters - Smell My Tongue 11 - Thought Partner - Trigger Gizmo 12 - The Byker Grove Fan Club - Slick Walker 13 - Schizos - Ugly 14 - White Stains - Blood On The Beach 15 - Nukke - Zero Chance Survival 16 - Urn - Grey Cassette 17 - The Kitsches 더 키치스 - Fuck Old Generation 18 - Maniac - Chance
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.
