Featured Releases: December 8, 2022

Phil & the Tiles: S/T 7” (Anti Fade Records) Australia’s Anti Fade Records once again thrusts their hand into the silt of Melbourne’s fertile punk scene and pulls up gold. If you’re partial to the current sounds of the Australian underground, Phil & the Tiles should be on your to-hear list because they bear an immediate resemblance to bands like the Shifters, Spiritual Mafia, and the UV Race, nailing the delicate balance of melodic appeal and arty repetition that makes those bands so irresistible. A song like “Elixir,” with its repetitive structure and cryptic lyrics, leans toward the arty end of the sound (and it’s a track you’ll love if you were partial to that Spiritual Mafia album that came out a while back), while “Nun’s Dream” represents the poppier side of the coin, with a sound that is dead ringer for the Brix era of the Fall… you could slide it right into Perverted by Language’s track listing and the only real tell would be the singers’ thick Aussie accents. So many cool records are coming out of the Australian underground that it can seem hard to keep up, but this isn’t the place where you want to get off the train… this record is too damn good. And with 4 meaty tracks, it more than justifies the import price tag.


Chainsaw: When Will We Die? 7” (Roach Leg Records) Roach Leg Records skips the cassette stage and brings Boston’s Chainsaw straight to vinyl , which makes sense because the band is full of experienced musicians who know what the fuck they’re doing and they have a fully realized sound that rips. I’m sure there are plenty of Scandinavian and d-beat comparisons to throw out in relation to Chainsaw’s sound, but the one I’m going with is Totalitär. While When Will We Die? is nastier-sounding than all but Totalitär’s earliest records, Chainsaw has a similar way of weaving together straightforward Discharge-style bashing (see “Alcohol” or “Knife”) with songs that are no less raging, but are a hair more musically sophisticated, even slightly melodic (see “Emergency” and “Anti Police”). The rough production and gnarly, shouted vocals keep things intense, and I love the wild lead guitar overdubs that appear on most tracks, giving an unhinged, anything-can-happen sensibility to what is, otherwise, a very dialed-in record. It’s killer, and I’d particularly recommend it if you’re into bands that lean toward the hardcore (as opposed to metal, crust, or noise) end of the d-beat spectrum.


Special Branch: Lethal Force 7” (Roach Leg Records) Roach Leg Records takes the 2020 demo from this Dublin, Ireland project and puts it on vinyl. I’m thankful for Roach Leg’s service, because I didn’t hear about this the first time around, and there’s even a Sorry State connection since Eddie from the Number Ones is in the band. Special Branch’s songs are built on rock-solid mid-paced riffs that wouldn’t be out of place on a Warthog record (high praise!), and those riffs are so strong and memorable that I imagine you could put just about any kind of window dressing on them and they’d still sound good. Fortunately for us, I like the drapes Special Branch has chosen. The rough, 4-track-y production sounds great, and the songs are shot through with interesting flourishes of lead guitar, sometimes wild and dissonant and other times more structured yet still compelling (see the NWOBHM-esque intro for the title track). I also like the record’s short intro and outro, which mix droning guitar noise with traditional Irish singing, tying the music to the project’s geographical roots. Come for the fuckin’ epic riffs, stay for the art.


Stray Bullet: Factory 7” (Not for the Weak Records) If, like we’ve been encouraging you to do, you’ve been paying attention to what Virginia’s Not for the Weak Records has been putting out, you’ve figured out what they like in a hardcore record. High energy, fast as fuck, musically dense, virtuosically performed, and clearly and powerfully recorded. I think that description fits a good chunk of NFTW’s roster, Stray Bullet included. Stray Bullet is from Sheffield, England and shares members with Rat Cage, but the sound is a little different, taking less inspiration from d-beat hardcore and more from the straightforward pummel of US hardcore bands like Out Cold (though Stray Bullet’s music tends to be faster and more complex than Out Cold’s). While some hardcore bands string together a bunch of short, simple songs, each of the four tracks on Factory is like a mini-epic that flies by in fast-motion, squeezing a dizzying amount of twists and turns into compact, pressurized packages. The songs are so fast and so dense that they might be difficult to parse on the first listen, but once you lock into Stray Bullet’s groove, listening to Factory is like bombing a gnarly hill on a skateboard, feeling in control but just on the edge of danger and chaos. Isn’t that the feeling of exhilaration we’re all looking for in hardcore?


Rat Cage: In the Shadow of the Bomb 7” (La Vida Es Un Mus) These two tracks from Sheffield, England’s Rat Cage originally appeared on a limited lathe cut record whose sale benefitted the band’s hometown punk-run club, the Lughole, but I’m glad La Vida Es Un Mus did a larger pressing because these tracks are straight FIRE. While Rat Cage works with a lot of the same influences as other contemporary hardcore bands, their songwriting and execution are just on another level. “In the Shadow of the Bomb” is a case in point. The song’s massive and memorable main riff and shout-along chorus would have, on their own, outclassed 90% of hardcore bands, but the song has this part in the middle with a subtle key change that takes it to a whole different level. It’s like a middle eight in a classic pop song… what other hardcore bands have songs with middle eights? Rat Cage changes things up a little on the second track, “Scared of the Truth,” though that song is built around a riff at least as memorable as “In the Shadow of the Bomb,” sounding like Diamond Head doing their own take on “State Violence, State Control.” This song also has a great middle section that employs some Adolescents-esque melodies in the upper octaves. Few hardcore bands can pull off the two-song single, but I’ll take two great tracks like this over eight shitty ones any day of the week.


GG King: Evoker 12” (State Laughter Records) Evoker originally appeared as a limited edition cassette that came as a freebie with some copies of GG King’s latest proper album, Remain Intact. The cassette garnered an enthusiastic reaction (including the offer of a future release on Total Punk experimental offshoot label Mind Meld Records), so State Laughter pressed up some copies on wax for us lucky GG King fanatics. On GG King’s main releases, they have a unique style I’d describe as classic punk stretched out with influences from black metal and krautrock, styles that provide a counterbalance to punk’s short and to-the-point songwriting style. Evoker, however, has an even more experimental and playful atmosphere. There are genre experiments like the pure second-wave black metal of “Evoker 2 (Circling Starmount)” and the hardcore punk of “Punxx Picnic Destinations,” a cover tune (the Television Personalities’ “Silly Girl,” which stretches that compact pop tune in drone-y and weird directions), and stylistic departures like “Leigh’s Castle,” a fuzz-drenched psych-pop song with a drum machine that sounds like it could have appeared on an early Guided by Voices record. There’s also more out-there experimental tracks like “Evoker 1,” an excellent atmospheric sound collage piece, and “Evoker 3 (Wotever Happens Next),” which channels the WTF qualities of Celtic Frost’s Into the Pandemonium, minus the self-seriousness. Perhaps there are people who like GG King’s albums but find this looser version of the group too weird, but given how quirky and unprecedented GG King’s sound is, I imagine that group is a pretty small subset of the band’s following. Thus, if you’ve followed our previous recommendations and gotten hip to GG King’s vibe, there’s no reason to pass over Evoker without a listen.



Leave a comment