Featured Releases: November 14, 2023

Stress Positions: Walang Hiya 12” (Iron Lung Records) We carried an earlier cassette version of the debut EP from this Chicago hardcore band, and Iron Lung has stepped up to immortalize these tracks on wax. According to the description, Stress Positions features everyone from C.H.E.W. aside from the singer… C.H.E.W. was a great band, and Stress Positions is off to a great start with Walang Hiya. As with C.H.E.W., the beefy drums are a highlight, with lots of snare and tom rolls that feel like quick gut punches, and interesting riffing that studiously avoids anything that feels familiar or unexciting. I love Stress Positions’ approach to mid-paced parts. Rather than having breakdowns that play some variation of one of the song’s main riffs in half-time, their mid-paced parts (which most songs have) are well-developed and rhythmically distinct from the other parts of the songs. It’s like Stress Positions is both a great hardcore band and a great noise rock band, only their noise rock side comes out on the breakdowns. That is until the final track, “Unholy Intent,” which stays slow for the entirety of its three-minute runtime, not stomping as is the current hardcore fashion, but dragging you through the mud a la early Swans. An outstanding record.

Chalk: Beat Session Vol 13 cassette (Shout Recordings) I have zero background on the band Chalk, but the attentions of Shout Recordings and their Beat Sessions series is enough of an endorsement for me to check out a band I haven’t heard of. And, like the handful of other bands with whom I wasn’t familiar before they recorded a Beat Session, Chalk is great! The cover art for Chalk’s Beat Sessions tape reminds me of Institute’s Salt EP, and Chalk sounds like Institute in places too, particularly how the singer drags out their syllables in this halfway-in-the-gutter, drunken-sounding snarl. Tracks like the opener “New Mexico” and “My New Gun” take on dark post-punk influences like the Chameleons and Siouxsie and the Banshees, but by the time you get to “Wyoming,” the sound has widened to include acid-fried rockabilly of the Fall / Country Teasers persuasion. But while Chalk evokes the late 70s and early 80s, their music doesn’t sound like pastiche… it just sounds like honest, dense, heavy, and interesting music. As with the entire Beat Sessions series, the heavy and clear-sounding recording suits the band perfectly, too. Perhaps one of the lower-profile entries in the Beat Sessions series, but not one to skip.

Eye of the Cormorant / Eye of the Heron: demo cassette (Roach Leg Records) Roach Leg Records brings us a new EP from this solo project by Donna from Chronophage and TAZ, with the project’s first EP on the b-side. Rather than having a single band name and titles for each release, I read somewhere (though I can’t find it now) that this project’s name will change with each release, keeping the “Eye of” part consistent and substituting a different bird for each release. Pretty cool. Eye of the Cormorant sounds to me like they have one foot in the lo-fi experiments of groups like Chronophage and Blue Dolphin and the other in the more melodic end of UK anarcho-punk, particularly Zounds and the Mob. The result, though, is something that doesn’t sound quite like either, and it’s all the better for it. While “Rag Warfare” reminds me of Straw Man Army, the lo-fi execution and pop sensibility of “He Found Me” wouldn’t be out of place on an early Sebadoh record. The sound differs from track to track, and some experiments are arguably more successful than others, but for me the project’s eclecticism is a huge part of its charm. Certainly, if you have a taste for the more experimental sounds of the aforementioned groups, you’ll be able to hang with this, as it sounds straightforward by comparison. While it may not be for everyone, adventurous-eared punks out there will love what this project is up to.

The Cowboys: Sultan of Squat 12” (Feel It Records) Sultan of Squat is the 6th full-length from this prolific and long-running Indiana group. The Cowboys have always seemed like a band from another time. While so many of the current bands I listen focus their energy on carving out a specific stylistic niche—a kind of sonic branding—the Cowboys are a throwback to when rock music was all about the song. When you hear a new Cowboys track, you can never predict what it’s going to sound like—its tempo, its rhythm, the instrumental arrangement—but you know there’s going to be something songwriterly at the core of it, whether it’s a musical hook, a story, a turn of phrase, a memorable character, or something else entirely. After 10 years and six albums, the Cowboys as a band are at the top of their game, flexible and powerful as players, but always dedicated to the song. Sultan of Squat has some real toe-tappers, too. The Cowboys are such a world unto themselves at this point that it’s hard to imagine what a newcomer to the band might think if they heard Sultan of Squat, but anyone who has developed a taste for the Cowboys’ unique approach to underground rock music will find it another worthwhile addition to their discography.

Insane Urge: My America cassette (Stucco Records) Stucco, for me, is one of the great unsung underground punk labels of our time. They’ve released music by bands like Electric Chair and Straw Man Army (who are relatively huge in the underground) alongside under-the-radar hits by bands like Fugitive Bubble and Pilgrim Screw, much of it packaged with distinctive pale pink j-cards that scream “collect ‘em all” to a neurotic freak like myself. Yet, despite through-the-roof quality, I rarely see the label’s name mentioned, and their new release drops seem to fly under the radar. Those who know know, though. Stucco’s latest release is the second tape from Texas’s Insane Urge. Insane Urge’s blistering tempos and dense-with-hooks songwriting style remind me of Koro, but they’re also kind of snotty, with early Gang Green or Career Suicide in the mix too. The delivery is loose and chaotic a la their fellow Texans Nosferatu, but the tone is lighthearted… as with their label-mates Fugitive Bubble, I wouldn’t be shocked if someone referred to Insane Urge as “egg punk.” To me, though, this is pure hardcore punk… underground, alive, and vital. Get this, then investigate the rest of Stucco’s catalog for more similarly exciting underground punk.

The Steves: Making Time / In a Room / Jerk! 7”s (Iron Lung Records) Iron Lung Records just put out three EPs by this early 80s Boston group; they’re available individually, but work pretty well as a single body of work, so I’ll write about them as a unit here. Boston’s music scene has always seemed to be something of an island with its distinct sounds and cultures, and I think that holds true whether you’re talking about trying-make-it-big rock music or more niche underground musical flavors. Certainly the Steves were a unique band. While they were temporally of the post-punk era—the synthesizers and jittery rhythms in their songs are sonic hallmarks of that time—they don’t sound like a post-punk band. There’s something about the Steves that reminds me of Oingo Boingo; like Danny Elfman, it sounds like they have a broader range of influences than rock / new wave music, but they’re happy to adopt tropes of that era and style when it suits them. Also like Oingo Boingo, there’s something about the Steves’ music that seems auteur-driven. Rather than a democratic band where each member’s veto power inches the sound a little closer to the middle of the road, the Steves’ records are idiosyncratic. There are moments that have the symphonic grandeur of prog rock, but there are also songs like “Making Time” that evoke the Screamers in both the gnarly synth sound and the blunt and confrontational performance. While fans of early synth-punk will enjoy the Steves, I think these singles will hit for people who appreciate the out-of-time / ahead-of-their-time quality of groups like Pere Ubu, Mission of Burma, and Devo and the work of cracked-up auteurs like Dwarr and Jandek.