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The Shifters: S/T 12” (Future Folklore) Debut 12” from this Melbourne band. Their previous 7” on Market Square sold out in a flash, and I believe these tracks actually come from an earlier cassette full-length. There’s no getting around the fact that the Shifters owe a heavy aesthetic debt to the Mekons and the Fall (they even crib the lead guitar lick from “Older Lover” off of Slates on one of these tracks), but they sound uniquely Australian too… in fact, moments remind me a whole lot of the UV Race, perhaps because they use melodica prominently. Like a lot of the best Australian bands, there’s a sophisticated sense of songcraft and musicality that you might expect from a big indie band, but the whole thing is very homespun, DIY, and uncommercial at the same time. It’s no wonder that so many Australian bands are catching our ear in the US, because this combination seems all but unique to Oz, and the Shifters are a perfect example. As for the songs, I think they’re totally great. They’re definitely mellow, but there’s a tension that keeps these songs, despite their relatively slow tempos and almost uniformly quiet demeanor, from sounding lazy or boring. Again, the tone is very much like dark and tense fall songs like “Older Lover” or “Iceland,” or perhaps like the second and third Mekons albums (when they really started to find their voice and come into their own as a band). I’m probably not doing a good job of selling this record to the die-hard punkers, but if you’re looking for more than just aggression and/or grandiosity in your music I really can’t recommend this highly enough.

Fetish: S/T 7” (Beach Impediment) So, this debut 7” from Portland’s Fetish is pretty much a tease, but boy is it an effective one! If you haven’t heard, Fetish consists of three former members of Poison Idea (including Thee Slayer Hippy and Vegetable) and three members of Long Knife (the world’s premier Poison Idea imitators), and (perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not) manage to beat any and all post-Pig Champion versions of Poison Idea at their own game. Even though the lineup leans heavily on the War All the Time version of PI, the a-side, “Take the Knife,” sounds more like Feel the Darkness-era… it’s an explosive hardcore track for sure, but it also has a really striking sense of dynamics that I associate with Feel the Darkness. PI were great songwriters, but they were also the masters of arranging a hardcore song, and “Take the Knife” shows that that ability to manage the bells and whistles is alive and well with Fetish. Then there’s the b-side, which is a cover of Love’s song “A House Is Not a Motel,” and while it’s a significant downshift from “Take the Knife,” it hints that there will be a sense of depth and ambition to Fetish’s music and that we can count on them to deliver more than just a bunch of crowd-pleasing thrashers. Yes, this EP is a frustratingly short tease, but the rush of adrenaline it provides has me waiting with baited breath for the full dose that is hopefully to come.

Physique: Punk Life Is Shit 12” (Iron Lung) One-sided 45RPM 12” EP from this band out of Olympia, Washington. Iron Lung is generally known for releasing hardcore that’s on the bleeding edge of the genre, so when they release a record by a band that is a little more straightforward you know it’s going to be something special, and that is definitely the case with Physique. Actually, I think that IRL’s description, which makes this seem like straightforward Discharge / Disclose worship, undersells this record because there’s clearly a lot more going on here than aping the classics. Yes, Physique obviously owe a heavy aesthetic debt to Disclose in particular (which you can tell not only by their artwork, but also by their strangely industrial guitar sounds, which recall Disclose’s Disbones era), but to me they sound like a more modern hardcore band bouncing their ideas off of some of Disclose’s. One thing that always struck me about Disclose is how simple and stark their songs and arrangements were. Their songs remind me of Japanese calligraphy—where the entire piece is made with just a couple of deft, confident brush strokes—and the almost Zen-like minimalism of the composition creates this rich contrast with the equally extreme maximalism of the production. Physique, however, take a much more baroque approach to the songwriting process, and these songs tend to have much more elaborate riffs and more complex arrangements than Disclose ever had… so, rather than Disclose’s minimalist / maximalist dialectic, here you just kind of do your best to navigate the maximalism, and rather than meditating upon the waves of noise you duck and dodge them like jump-scares in a horror movie. So, even though this may sound like a Disclose record at first listen, the experienced d-beat connoisseur will tell you it’s something entirely different, not to mention an exciting and noteworthy contribution to the genre.

Witchtrial: S/T 12” (Beach Impediment) Demo-on-a-12” from this new all-star band out of DC featuring members of Warthog and Protester among many, many others. However, if you’re coming to Witchtrial looking for the raging hardcore of the aforementioned bands you are going to be disappointed as Witchtrial is pretty much 100% metal to my ears. Interestingly, though, I can’t really place the exact style, though that could just be because I don’t know metal nearly as well as I know hardcore. The cover of the record reminds me a little bit of Morbid Tales, though, and the music does too in some respects, particularly the non-intuitive changes in tempo (some of which, like Celtic Frost, are like the auditory equivalent of trudging through wet sand). There’s a lot of rock and roll in Witchtrial’s sound too… some of the riffs are very Motorhead-esque and the singer’s rock and roll drawl and Rob Halford-esque falsetto wails both invoke the more rocked-out end of metal. I do find myself wishing it were just a little more extreme, like I want the band to be faster, heavier, weirder, or just more over-the-top in some respect, but if you’re looking for metal that’s a little more measured and cerebral this might tickle your fancy.

Riki: Hot City cassette (Commodity Tapes) Debut release from this new wave / synth band out of LA. The description pretty much says it all when it compares them to Depeche Mode, Belaboris and Strawberry Switchblade… like those bands, Riki contrast cold, synth-based rhythms with big pop hooks and the results are pretty darn infectious. To my ears, there are basically two ways to approach this style… you can make krautrock-esque zone out jams or you can make pop songs, and Riki are decidedly in the latter camp, and they’re damn good at it. If you dug those Siamese Twins records from a few years ago this will be right up your alley, but moments are so hooky that they remind me of Madonna’s first album more than anything I can think of from the punk world. If this band keeps putting out music this good they are going to be freaking huge.

Yves Bernard: demo cassette (Future Folklore) Really cool demo from this French project… actually, I’m kind of surprised that it’s being sold as a demo as it’s quite long and fully realized in my opinion… the songwriting, recording, and artwork are all top-notch and really cool. I would call Yves Barnard, broadly, synth-punk, but they (he?) definitely have a unique take on the genre, combining the quasi-industrial elements of Metal Urbain with poppier elements, some of which have a dark pop-garage, Marked Men-type of thing going on and some of which go in more of a Screamers-type direction. The drums are all acoustic, and the vocals are in this sing-speak style that really accentuates the paranoid quality of it all, not to mention the French-ness. For as familiar as some parts of it sound, it all adds up to something really unique. Perhaps this isn’t for everyone, but if you’re intrigued by the above references give it a try… it’s well worth hearing.

The Dark: Demons 7” (Darker) 80s Japan has proven a fertile hunting ground for contemporary hardcore bands looking for hip influences, but I feel like most bands tend to focus on the tougher and more hardcore elements of that sound… in other words, there is no shortage of bands who imitate Sakevi’s growl, Kuro’s wall of sound production, or Confuse’s loose and manic pogo beats. However, while the Dark are clearly inspired by 80s Japanese punk, they take a different tack, leaving behind those “tough” elements in favor of bringing out the spooky and haunting qualities on records like the Execute’s Criminal Flowers EP or G-Zet’s killer 12” EP on ADK. In particular, the Dark separate themselves from a lot of the pack with their vocal sound, which largely eschews the Sakevi grunt-growl that you hear appropriated by modern bands like Blazing Eye or Odio in favor of a kind of tortured, semi-yodeled howl… it’s a really difficult sound to describe, but if you’ve heard Criminal Flowers you know exactly what I’m talking about. As for the rest of the instruments, they tend to burrow into a mid-paced, metallic kind of sound that makes me think of Zouo or Gudon, never breaking into full-on Gauze / Systematic Death-style thrash. And yes, there are a couple of the requisite guitar leads, but they’re not a main focus, hanging back in the mix and contributing to the overall sense of atmosphere rather than hogging the spotlight themselves. I know that I’ve referenced a big ‘ol stack of Japanese punk records in this description, and while the Dark are clearly inspired by the music of that era, they’re combining the ingredients in a way that still feels fresh and exciting to me. Further, this record feels real and underground and not like a band imitating a cool style so that they can get a spot near the middle of the bill on a regional punk fest. Highly recommended.

Impotentie: Demonstratieve Opnamens 7” (Drunken Sailor) It’s not often that I listen to a new band and think “what the hell IS this?,” and far less often when said puzzling band is identifiably punk. Montreal’s Impotentie is, indeed, identifiably punk, but it’s punk like nothing I’ve ever really heard before. There are elements of things I know: the claustrophobic, straight-into-the-board guitar sound recalls obscure KBD and euro-punk (particularly when the lead overdubs come in super loud), the singer is somewhere between a hardcore barker and the intimidating shouts of Metal Urbain or the Screamers, and some parts sound like a band playing extremely loose and slightly out of tune Warsaw covers. However, it all adds up to something that is utterly singular. Maybe this is what early Zounds would have sounded like if they did acid all of the time? Really, I think Jonah Falco’s description says it all: “It's the sound of a greyly lit kitchen in some nothing town with pitched roofs and gables, the smell of stale cigars and vinegar and the taste of meat in a tube on moist bread with watery coffee.” More than recalling any particular era of punk, Impotentie capture a real vibe here, and it’s bleak and dour, but with moments that are distinctly beautiful. A very special record that I recommend highly to anyone who values originality in their punk.

The Fritz: S/T 12” (Drunken Sailor) Debut 12” from this Chicago-area band that boasts members of both CCTV and Liquids as well as a bunch of more hardcore-ish bands. The Liquids connection particularly makes sense because the Fritz have a similar way of bouncing back and forth between hardcore and more song-oriented styles, though the Fritz don’t ever get straight up poppy in the way that Liquids sometimes does. There’s also a distinct rock n roll element to the riffing, which brings to mind a number of different 90s garage-punk bands like the Rip Offs, Teengenerate, or even New Bomb Turks. Like all three of those bands, the Fritz straight up rip in the manner of a hardcore band, but at the same time they seem to be reaching backward to an earlier, even more primal era of rock and roll. And of course the production is piss raw in all of the right ways. I don’t know if the Fritz is going to blow up like Coneheads or Liquids because they don’t put the melodies right at the forefront like those bands do, but if you like your punk raw, ripping, and riffy listening to this record will be just as lovely as having your back scratched in exactly the right spot.

Preening: Greasetrap Frisbee 7” (Ever/Never) Latest 7” from this Oakland-based punk / no wave group. I really like Preening a lot, as they seem to have so much to say… as the label’s description indicates, everything that I’ve heard from them is just bursting with ideas, like they’re trying to cram an entire album’s worth of music into every single song. That can be disorienting if you just want to pump your fist and sing along, but if you like complex music that is intricately composed (or at least intricately improvised) with parts weaving across, between, into, etc., one another this is going to be right up your alley. One of the things I love about No Wave is that it’s more of a conceptual framework than an actual music genre, so the pallet of sounds available is theoretically unlimited, and Preening take full advantage of that… there are bits that recall the danceable new wave of Gang of Four (or newer bands like Shopping), the skronk of outsider jazz, and even a few moments that are pretty straightforwardly punk. However, none of these moments stick around long enough to get stale, and it always feels like the band is pushing forward, trying to do something as interesting and exciting as possible. If you’re looking for pop songs then skip this one over, but if you like your punk wild and skronking this is highly recommended.

No Babies: Someone to Watch Over Me 12” (Upset the Rhythm) Latest 12” from this Bay Area no wave / punk band (oddly enough I just wrote a description for the new Preening 7”, so it’s a good week for Bay Area no wave fans!), and it’s a wild ride. Musically, No Babies sit somewhere in the area where no wave, avant-prog, and hardcore overlap… there are elements of all three styles in the band’s sound, but it feels like an organic combination rather than a superficial pastiche. From no wave you get the cacaphonous arrangements, with instruments playing wildly clashing melodic lines that still stick to a coherent—and occasionally even danceable—rhythm… it’s the musical equivalent of a chaotic Jackson Pollack canvas done in wildly clashing colors. From avant-prog (I’m thinking of bands like the Flying Luttenbachers) you get the incredibly intricate compositions, like you gave King Crimson an entire month’s prescription of adderall and forced them to play their complex compositions at hardcore tempos. And from hardcore, obviously you get said blistering tempos, but also a confrontational, aggressive attitude that finds the band lurching, lunging, and careening with the deft power of Damaged-era Black Flag. The musicianship is uniformly incredible, to the point where I find it kind of amazing that the musicians can even remember these compositions, much less play them all together at such crazy tempos. I also have to point out that the vocals here are particularly exciting (BTW said vocals are handled by Jasmine Watson, who you may know from Torso, Neo-Cons, and numerous other bands), not just punctuating the songs with rhythmic shouts (which is an approach No Babies certainly could have gotten away with), but creating rhythmic and melodic lines that are just as complex and exciting as anything the other players are doing. Someone to Watch Over Me is a real adrenaline rush of a record, and while I’m sure it’ll be too much for a lot of people out there I find every second absolutely gripping.

The Child Molesters: (I’m the) Hillside Strangler 7” (Meat House) The debut release on Meat House Records is an official reissue of this well-known KBD gem… the a-side was comped on Killed by Death volume 1 while the b-side was on volume 2, so there’s a pretty good case for them being the ultimate KBD band. Anyway, “Hillside Strangler” is pretty much what you’re looking for if you’re into raw KBD punk… lyrics about serial killers, music that sounds like an inept MC5, and production straight out of the bargain basement… it really has it all. And of course if that’s not “out there” enough for you there’s always the b-side, which is a Yoko Ono cover (!!!). You probably know both of the tracks, so I’ll just say that this reissue is all class (good sound and hand “blood” splatter on the sleeve just like the original) and that 90s (bootleg?) pressing is even going for $$$ on Discogs so ditch your copy there, pick up this version, and then go to dinner at Applebees with the money you have left over. Jalapeno poppers! Yum!

Fried Egg: Beat Session Vol 4 cassette (Shout Recordings) As much as I have loved every Frieg Egg recording so far, I’ve always felt like there was something more lurking beneath the surface, waiting to break through, and on this new cassette that bubbling undercurrent finally reaches the surface. First, though, for the uninitiated, the Beat Sessions are sort of like a modern, DIY version of the Peel Session. From what I understand, bands stop by Shout Recordings when they’re on tour in California and do a quick recording. While I don’t think it’s necessarily “live in the studio,” there isn’t time for obsessive retakes and overdubs, so you end up with something that melds the organic, “people playing together in a room” quality of a live recording with the clarity and power of a polished studio recording. So far, all 4 volumes have been excellent. Now, back to Fried Egg. They’ve always been a furious USHC-style band (and they still are! Just check the killer Mecht Mensch cover here, as well as original tracks like the blistering “Teeth”), but they seem to be pulling from a wider set of influences now. “Bite My Tongue” is the real standout—and I’m glad they made it the first track—with its insanely catchy main riff, which takes a classic-sounding descending rock and roll riff and twists and distorts it into something entirely the band’s own. Later in the track they hit on some lurching, later Black Flag-style rhythms (which they break out in other songs as well) that really showcase the tightness and power that the band has developed. Not many bands can transition from full-bore thrash into those kind of heavy, in-the-pocket rhythms in the space of a single song without it sounding forced, but Fried Egg knock it out of the park. I think I remember hearing that the next official release from Fried Egg will be an LP, and these five tracks hint that that record is really going to be something else. In the meantime, though, I’ll be wearing out this tape.

Midnite Snaxxx: Greedy Little Thing 7” (Goodbye Boozy) Latest 7” from this Bay Area band, and I think that at this point we can start affixing adjectives like “long-running” and “veteran” to their name. Midnite Snaxxx have a lot of records out at this point, and they are all absolutely killer… in my opinion you should own every single one of them. They don’t really sound like much else that’s around these days, crafting short and snappy garage-punk songs that recall the glory days of Rip Off Records (and indeed the singer Dulcinea was in the Loudmouths, who were connected to that scene), but really these songs could have been made at any point between the early 60s and now. Midnite Snaxxx effortlessly combines the adrenaline rush of classic rock and roll (think the Beatles doing “Twist and Shout”) with the big melodies of 60s girl groups and the explosiveness of vintage 70s punk, and the result is just perfect. I kind of doubt they’ll ever be a big hype band because they aren’t “on trend,” but if you like this kind of straightforward, poppy garage-punk you should simply buy every single record that they put out. I know I’m going to.

C. Memi: Heavenly Peace 12” (Bitter Lake) Official reissue of this delightful 7” as a great-sounding 45RPM 12” courtesy of the archival label Bitter Lake Recordings. While the foundation here is what we’d now call minimal synth—which I can’t imagine was a framework that C. Memi was working with at the time this was created—there’s also a distinct element of French “chanson” music, which the label description notes was kind of a “thing” in Japan at the time. Regardless, I just love the unpretentious playfulness of the record. Judging by the label’s description as well as this piece on the BandCamp blog, this recording was essentially an experiment, and that sense of discovery shines through every moment of the EP. In other words, you’ll come for tracks like “Hitojichi” that recall the post-industrial synth-punk of Metal Urbain or SPK, but you’ll stay for the overall vibe, which is infectious and singular. I have to admit that I was a bit puzzled by this record the first time I listened to it, but it reveals itself a little more with each spin and despite the relatively minimal aesthetic I continue to find more to love each time I listen.

End Time: S/T 12” (Fullyintercoastal) Debut record from this Bay Area, California band. I probably wouldn’t have paid much attention to this record, but something about the label’s description stuck out… maybe it’s the fact that the band took two years to put together a 6-track EP, or maybe it’s the waist-deep sarcasm in said description, but something told me to check this record out and I’m glad that I did. I don’t know for sure, but I would guess that the members of End Time are a little older as their music betrays a wealth of influences… I hear the motorik propulsion of Neu!, the catchy, angular guitar lines of early Joy Division, the slightly shambolic feel of Pavement’s early records, and the way that the songs build up, calm down, and build up again even recalls Drive Like Jehu or Fugazi. That probably sounds like a big mishmash, but it comes together really well here. I also love that the recording is extremely warm and somewhat raw and analog-sounding, like it could have been painstakingly recorded on a cassette 4-track. There’s no denying that End Time have a real 90s vibe—they remind me a lot of what was called “emo” before that word came to signify emotional pop-punk—but if you regularly listen to Dischord releases past #25 or so I imagine you’ll like End Time quite a bit.

Rixe: Cassette Promo cassette (La Vida Es Un Mus) Limited 3-song cassette by Rixe… what is it promoting? Perhaps they’re finally going to make the jump to 12” vinyl? Who knows! All that I can confirm is that these three songs are the Rixe you have come to know and love with little in the way of left turns or surprises. Since they started releasing 7”s on LVEUM, Rixe’s aesthetic—sonically and visually—has been completely airtight, and all three tracks here stay very much within that framework. One would think that that framework would be constricting, but now that Rixe has a substantial number of tracks out in the world it’s kind of amazing that they’ve managed to stick to such a consistent sound without sounding like they’re just rewriting the same song over and over. Anyway, enough of the pontificating… the point I’m trying to make is that Rixe keep doing their thing and it still doesn’t feel played out or redundant, so incorporate these three burners into your playlist and get pumped for whatever it is that they’re promoting.

Mint: demo cassette (self-released) Demo cassette from this Philadelphia band. The recording is super raw and DIY, but the music is well-written and catchy. Even though I don’t think this is what they’re going for (if, indeed, they’re going for anything at all), but I’m reminded of the early, raw demo recordings by Zounds or the poppier Crisis songs. Like that stuff, there’s pop music at the core of what Mint is doing, but they wholeheartedly embrace punk’s raw, primal, and aggressive posture and also (in places at least) adopt some of the more sophisticated arrangements of post-punk. I have a feeling that fans of bands like Good Throb, Frau, and Priests’ early material will also like this quite a bit.

Snob: S/T 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus) After a couple of outstanding 7”s, here’s the debut 12”er from London punks Snob. It’s funny, I generally expect bands to get more complex and spread out a little when they move from small vinyl to large, but Snob seem instead to have streamlined things, making their music even more direct and concise. The lyrics remain a highlight and they’re as confrontational as ever. Lyrically, the most intriguing songs (at least in my opinion) take buzzwords like “consent” and “ally” and examine how the concepts behind them play out in an actual person’s life. In both of those cases, the enlightened political attitudes that are supposed to be part and parcel of using these buzzwords is just a fiction that allows people to continue to disrespect and dehumanize one another behind the shield of political correctness… or at least that’s how I read it. Musically, the noisiness and looseness of Snob’s 7” recordings is largely gone, replaced by a locked-in, metronome-steady rhythm that significantly changes the overall character of the band’s music. While Snob sounded animalistic and uncontained on the 7”s, here they sound disciplined, even mechanical, an impression that is accentuated by the much clearer recording. It’s a slightly different Snob, for sure, they remain just as worthy of your attention.

Absolut: Hell’s Highest Power 12” (D-Takt & Rapunk) After numerous splits and 7”s, here’s the debut full-length from Montreal’s Absolut and it RIIIIIPS! I feel like an idiot because I let a whole week go by between when this thing arrived in the store and when I listened to it, and a week without Hell’s Highest Power in my life is a week wasted! It’s fitting that one of the splits I mentioned above is with Sweden’s Paranoid, because Absolut seem, along with Paranoid, to be part of a trend of crusty punk bands rediscovering their metal influences (see Paranoid’s covers LP, where they took on metal classics by bands like Sepultura and Celtic Frost). Absolut have done more than just superficially add a guitar solo here and there, though. Hell’s Highest Power is a complex hybrid of crust, death metal, and thrash metal (with a few touches of black metal here and there, particularly on the epic closing track “Last Corpse”), all wrapped up in the magically raw production favored by death and proto-death metal bands like Hellhammer, Master, and Mantas. Indeed, at times Hell’s Highest Powerseems more like a metal record with some heavy crust influences than vice versa, and I’m fine with that because when they’re in “metal mode” Absolut are never cheesy… if they dropped the crust influences entirely I’m pretty sure they would still be the most exciting metal band I’ve heard in years. I’ll leave it there and just say that if you’re a crusty or a metalhead you need to hear this record… highly recommended.

Cadaver Dog: Dying Breed 12” (Youth Attack) After a flexi and a couple of tapes, here’s the proper debut vinyl from Denver’s Cadaver Dog. It’s funny, Youth Attack’s description does its best not only to locate Cadaver Dog’s debut in the long arc of hardcore’s history, but also to self-consciously bill it as some kind of a culmination or conclusion of hardcore’s existence. Not only do they call it “the most negative hardcore album of all time,” but they also note that this record “can be considered the end conclusion to hardcore's aim.” Honestly, I think that’s complete hogwash, and even if you agree with the author’s premise that Cadaver Dog has “out-negative’d” every other band in the entire history of hardcore, the argument that Cadaver Dog is the “end conclusion” of hardcore only really works if your conception of what hardcore is is only about an inch wide. All of that being said, my gripe is really with the record’s description, not the record itself, which I must say is excellent. Basically, it’s Negative FX filtered through the Youth Attack aesthetic. In other words, these are a bunch of short (many hover around the 30-second mark), fast, and punchy hardcore songs with the raw, nasty, black metal-influenced style of recording and slightly unhinged looseness that are perhaps the most consistent sonic aspects of Youth Attack’s brand identity. It’s a thrilling listen, and feels authentically angry and explosive in a way that many of the more mannered and composed hardcore records coming out in this day and age don’t. I’m sure that Youth Attack’s whole aesthetic will continue to be divisive within the punk scene, but if you can’t get down with a hardcore record that rages this hard I feel bad for you.

Vile Gash: Nightmare in a Damaged Brain 12” (Youth Attack) Long-awaited new record (seriously, I think they’ve been talking about / working on this thing for several years) by this flagship Youth Attack band. While it’s somewhat overshadowed by the Cadaver Dog LP released at the same time (which is just a hair meaner and more explosive than this), this is still a blistering slice of hardcore that’s well worth the wait. While Cadaver Dog is Negative FX filtered through the Youth Attack aesthetic, Vile Gash are pretty much the epitome of the Youth Attack aesthetic, perhaps even more than the bands that Mark McCoy is actually in. Like a lot of Youth Attack’s best bands, Vile Gash transcend their influences and sound like wholly their own thing. Even if you can make comparisons across elements of their sound (I’d put them at something like 50% furious Scandinavian d-beat, 30% USHC, 15% black metal and 5% sludge), it all adds up to something that doesn’t sound quite like anything you’ve ever heard before. It’s also—again, like a lot of Youth Attack bands—overwhelmingly negative and nihilistic. Whether you’re coming at this because you like to hear hardcore bands that are original, innovative, and exciting, or just because you want to find the grimiest, ugliest music possible Nightmare in a Damaged Brain will absolutely satisfy you.

Profoss: S/T 7” (Adult Crash) Debut 7” from this Swedish band that features members of a bunch of other bands… I’m not really good at keeping track of that sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure Jeff said that there were members of Herätys and Fy Fan here? I could very well be wrong about that, so don’t quote me! At any rate, this record sounds to me like the guitar player from Totalitär gave a bunch of riffs to Anti-Cimex, who recorded them all with the lineup and production from Victims of a Bombraid. Whether you want to call that a catchier version of Cimex or a meaner, noisier version of Totalitär is up to you, but regardless it’s an extremely potent combination. It seems like Sweden has been spitting out records of this flavor (with relatively minor variations in sound and style) at an absolutely furious pace lately, and if you’ve been having fun picking up records by the likes of Katastrof, Exploatör, and the bands mentioned above then you’ll be stoked to pump your fist along to this one as well.

Snor: Scandinavian Heartbreaker 7” (Adult Crash) Second EP from this group out of Malmö, Sweden. As on their earlier EP, Snor seem to walk the line between noisy pogo-punk in the Gai / Swankys tradition and noisier d-beat, fusing the two styles in a really effective way and adding in some nice little touches like reverbed-to-hell vocals (that still carry a little bit of melody) and complex arrangements with a lot of starts and stops and cool little changes that gives it a slight USHC flavor as well. Like the Profoss EP released at the same time on Adult Crash, this has an absolutely perfect recording with exactly the right balance of fuzz/noise, heaviness, and clarity. I feel like this is one of those records that, when you put it on, you think it’s going to be kind of a one track pony, but when you listen closely you realize there’s actually quite a lot going on and plenty to love. Because of that complexity it’s not likely to become the flavor of the week (people tend to prefer things that are simpler and immediately graspable), but if you seek out the interesting, innovative and strange in your hardcore I highly recommend this one.

Ubik: S/T 7” (Aaarght!) Debut vinyl from this Australian band that plays a kind of catchy anarcho punk style a la Crisis or Zounds. I remember listening to their demo tape quite a lot when that came out, and this is even better than that! There are a couple of familiar tracks from that session, but the production is clearer and more powerful, and the whole thing just feels more articulate and fully realized. This is a very difficult sound to pull off because it requires the perfect balance of pop songwriting chops and the ability to generate that sense of atmosphere that is peculiar to this particular strain of anarcho, but Ubik totally nails it while also sounding like their own band and not just a tribute act. If you’re a fan of this style this one is highly recommended.