Tag: garage rock

TRACK | M.A.Z.E. – Spread the Germicide

5/5 golden merles

II is a vital and frenzied Japanese punk/post-punk rock with enough energy and inventive instrumentation to make its own wave outside the new/no paradigms. Phrenetic and more fun than falling out through the bottom of your own confetti-stuffed coffin.

It is always acting, moving, while we’re all left cleaving to causation, digging about for clues from which actions can be derived, meanwhile M.A.Z.E. have become motion itself. It reminds me of another maelstrom of an album I admire, Black Bug’s 2010 s/t. Each track deviating, but also revolving around its own star and in its own solar system of songs.

It’s a little bit of a revelation that makes me slightly sick to my stomach, a solution that evades this sort of pretense; just lean into it and never stop enduring. Like any good media worth it’s weight in physical space, it creates a world of consistent rules and value and adheres to them. It can be got on black vinyl from Lumpy Records for $17 / $6 for digital folder in perpetuity.

TRACK | Ismatic Guru – I Didn’t Like It

5/5 golden merles

To my great and enduring shame, I didn’t catch it when it slithered out from the egg last month. II is garage punk with punch and experiment, all tracks wrapping promptly in an Irish exit, spun tight with purposes and unraveling in a spectacle. I think you’ll like it, it has a lot of good heart chunks floating in a flavorful lo-fi, protein rich gruel base.

There are 5 tracks in 6 minutes then a “so long, suckers,” and it’s off into the sunset. Replete with textured indulgence and with good causes, all the veins are soundly setup and pointed in the right direction. Lots of rhythmic harping and heaving, to my dismay outpacing even The Bouldermobile at times. It’s a sick set and worth your passive and active income.

This has no brainer written all over it, but, in a cruel twist of fate, without a brain I tragically could not decipher the language. Until now! Name your price. Or the physical is set at 100 Tapes with pins and transmogrifying art, from Swimming Faith Records.

TRACK | Catastrophic Dance Ensemble – Panko

5/5 golden merles

The assignment understanders have arrived. What do the rest of you have to say for yourselves? Cincinnati-found Catastrophic Dance Ensemble make rapid, roaming, detailed eggpunk. Gently putrefied, as a measure of gauging its place within the world, and thriving in the rot all around us. Its welts and warp mirror many of my own less convincing accusations; a fiery and balanced form.

In recent surveys most people claim they know when it is appropriate to twist a melody like pulling someone by the lapels out of the window. But in reality hardly 7 in 10 could do it if pressed. Beyond the hypothetical, these Ohioans have done it here. The instrumental backend is even an excellent melodic tumble, all of it finding some much needed humor in the hemorrhage and goes some way toward explaining why we can’t have nice things.

In league with the good goings on of Leipzig, Berlin, Melbourne and Montreal, the Cincinnati punk rock scene is strong, it seems, from afar. If you’ve recently granted positive appraisals to egg and experiment kings like Mesh, FIVE BUCKS, and C.P.R. Doll, I suppose this would be an easy affixation. Name your price at the bandcamp.

TRACK | Krul – Moon

5/5 golden merles

Melbourne-based punk rock with Japanese vocals, Krul’s “Moon” arises like an ungodly hour, with drums like a stake through the heart. It’s made for inciting, the riot or the unvarnished reverie. In any case, a recipe for revolt and some finely constructed contents for the small hours.

Having lived under the reign of both the sun and moon, I tell you I prefer the moon: a great curator of the light, and patron saint of less is more. That is much like the instrumentation and production here, everything piled and cutting but not running the cup over.

There’s an old saying where I proport to be from, “He who burns bridges, builds mausoleums.” This is the soundtrack of that sentiment. You can name your price to own the set as we await a work at greater length.

TRACK | Honey Radar – Puppet Scripts by the Month

5/5 golden merles

Philly-situated Honey Radar’s newest release is lo-fi rock in line with the high ethic and aesthetic of their own catalogs admirable forebears. Never disappointed, I’ve either always enjoyed it or the first dose quickly mutated me to favor it. There is pathos without treacle, it lives like an apple built around the core. It’s denser at the center. Not like these other songs generated by a team of maestros in a lab, those built without stems, excised from history.

The melody walks along the tops of fences as you drive past. An astutely stagnant vocal core adroitly falls into that melody’s creased fold, the bass is quietly breathing down the barrel of the amp somewhere off camera. Friends and concerned citizens telling me to turn the vocals up: no. This is what a successful version looks like of what I am flailing towards; that restive lurch that contains a furtive narrative, somewhat secluded, intelligible enough; a lyric sheet later to be read at leisure.

Please also see Medium Mary Todd and Scorpions bought me Breakfast, if your fond. A family affair, the full split with Smug Brothers is out presently on Indy’s Third Uncle Records, black vinyl for $10 or $6 for the file share.

TRACK | Belly Jelly – Half Fluorinated Man

5/5 golden merles

From the neonatal subsection of the Discontinuous Innovations Inc. archives, 2022‘s The Universal Language is a cohesive wreck of a record. Certified synth punk, it has leaky guts. It has a kind of belligerent whimsy that seems for all intents and purposes indefatigable. It’s probably best paired with eating gravel off an ill-advised grind to save face after some prior cataclysmic blunder; the botches compounding, proudly multiplying.

Make no mistake, it is a corpulent peach of a series, bleeding blood we don’t rightly recognize as such. You’ll break a nail picking some of the hooks back out of your brain. I haven’t technically been the same since, for better or for blurst.

“Half Fluorinated Man” is the pick of that litter for me, it opens with misdirection, some foaming at the mouth before a tall drink of water. Half a century of pop rock is recontextualized as having been a terrible mistake, and all in about 90 seconds. The digital album is $1 USD. The Audio Cassette Tape is $5. These are reasonable requests.

TRACK | S.U.G.A.R. – Heartbreaker

5/5 golden merles

Berlin-based gargoyles S.U.G.A.R. have returned with an insultingly good garage punk record, II. Selected track “Heartbreaker” is beaming through a patina of crud and graced with a few golden riffs. It meets the criteria of control achieved through a willing proximity to its loss, shakes and thuds with ease and comfort within that chaotic coil.

The production is aiming for and hitting the best live show you’ve ever seen, coherency emitting from the swell of reverberations; that sort of rare swill composed of bottled blood and lightning. It is perched on the peak of something that is crumbling, all the boys say so.

If you want an informed and competent review, look to Groschi, I’m just here to belch up my impressions and fill a bit of space. It comes in solid gold and/or black vinyl, or digital for the mark of the beast (EU style) from Alien Snatch Records.

TRACK | Why Bother? – Cut to Pieces

5/5 golden merles

Devolving, sonorous synth punk from Mason City, Iowa. There’s a lot more warmth than seems warranted to these melodic forms, fixated fondly as they are around the horror-themed act, telling of and centered on America’s real past time. The production is agreeably amending the timeless proto garage, a pleasant and productive mutation in the lineage.

There’s sufficient synth warble and echo apportioned gluing all other components together. The drums fan the hammer, everything tuned to the clang. It’s all calibrated to killer sensibilities, stylistically/tonally, and the additional morbidly themed track titles offer heaps of promise for the full release.

The files can be got for $1 preordered or white/black vinyl variations are $20. The full album set is arriving September 16th from the highly reliable plague of contents administered by Feel It Records.

TRACK | Germ House – Gum Up The Works

5/5 golden merles

“Gum Up The Works” is the closing track of a striking set of lo-fi garage rock emanating from Rhode Island (Germ House EP). Parenthetical phrasing, scourge and buzz, the nest of production is a silver lined pit. Transfixed in the ticking over, been savoring this one for awhile and finally got back to the buried thicket of lost tabs it was stranded in.

Stinging drums plonk amongst the wired, rasping guitars and everything feels like a field fogged over; you stagger into its melodic turns, feeling out phenomena. The doubled/repelling vocal lanes are unquestioned in their melded merger, coalescing with force. There’s a really skillful wielding of the lo-fi pallet. These are ideal conditions to steep in and an excellent closer to the set.

At the time of writing there are four clear vinyl EPs left through Chunklet. I first seen it on JohnnySick, a great curator of the youtube ilk.

TRACK | itches – Sticky Fingers

5/5 golden merles

itches’ Kingdom Upstairs bequeaths a new and real solid set of Belgian garage punk tracks. In “Sticky Fingers” frank and oblique guitar lines cut through the mesh crux of the motion, the bass anchoring it to the earth, averting a prompt drifting into the sun. There’s great breadth to the soundscape, faithful to a live performance of the thrashing and full of that life.

There’s a lot of merit to the scorched earth policy on display and its presentation here. The drums delivering a tactful clobbering, indivisible and yet unified. Everything breaks together and twists apart soundly. The pieces of individual segmentation compile harmoniously, each era of accrued influences compatible within the context of the subsequent sectors modular mutations.

It was found on the reputable and upstanding roundup and reliable culling from manierenversagen.de. The general dearth of global infrastructure to produce vinyl has also delayed this disc, a lost technology. But, when reinvented through reverse engineering the artifacts found in our great uncle’s basement, it will be coming from Ronny Rex and Hopvil Records under that beautiful cover graphic. The end.