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Gee Tee: Death Race 7” (Neck Chop) Third EP from this Australian project, and last time I wrote about them (which was regarding their 7” on Goodbye Boozy) I thought they had kind of a D.L.I.M.C. / Coneheads vibe going on, but this new EP seems to go beyond that and hit upon something a little more distinctive and original. In particular, it reminds me a lot of Brian Eno’s first two solo albums, when he was still making pop music but started to be really aggressive about bringing different sounds than just drum, bass, guitar, and vocals into the mix. Death Race is similar in that it feels a bit like some of the best neo-garage on the surface, but upon closer inspection it’s made of different ingredients. There are a remarkable number of different tones and textures here, but they’re all wrapped up in a completely infectious package. The whole new Neck Chop batch is very strong, but this one might be my favorite of the bunch.

KNOWSO: Look at the Chart 12” (Neck Chop) If the artwork wasn’t enough to clue you in, about 30 seconds of listening to this record will make it clear that it spawns from the some of the same minds that have recently brought us bands like Cruelster and Perverts Again. While all of those bands are similar in some ways, they’re also different in others, and that’s certainly the case with KNOWSO as well. Instrumentally, the thing that seems the most notable to me are the surprisingly melodic guitars, which are double-tracked in this Greg Sage kind of way that could be really melodic and beautiful in different hands, but of course KNOWSO continue the artistic exploration of moron headspace from their other bands. Some of my favorite lyrics on Look at the Chart include “They sick the dogs on my people / They sick the people on my dogs,” and “I keep seeing you around / Why? / This is my town / Me and my friends’ down / Me and my mom’s town.” On this record smart and dumb are used like sweet and salty to balance one another out and give the whole thing a unique flavor. If you’re really averse to one or the other the whole thing might fall flat for you, but I think this record is totally great.

Parsnip: Health 7” (Anti-Fade) Debut 4-song EP from this Australian band, and man is it killer! The retro sleeve design looks super cool, but for me it simultaneously raises and lowers expectations… since it looks like an old Kinks single I get up my hopes that this will be some great pop music, but then when I think about how few retro-60s bands actually pull that off I have a kind of mental backlash before I’ve even heard the record. However, once the needle drops on this thing it’s hard not to fall in love… Parsnip sound to me like the perfect mixture of sophisticated 60s pop and charmingly rickety late 70s post-punk… like the Raincoats or Kleenex incorporating some hammond organ, taking a stab at Zombies / Box Tops / Left Banke-style baroque pop and arriving at something I feel like I’ve never heard before. The sound of this EP is wonderful in its own right, side-stepping the modern habit of having every frequency in the range of human hearing occupied. However, the real treasure here are the songs themselves, which are fabulous… try your best not to hum along with “Health!”

Very Mental: Misconstrued 7” (Total Punk) Debut single from this band out of Olympia, and that’s pretty much all I know about them. However, I know that Olympia hasff a very high standard for punk rock and Very Mental very much meet it… this isn’t one of those throwaway garage singles that seems like it was conceived, written, and recorded in the space of an hour. Very Mental have serious pop chops, and when Total Punk compares them to the Dangerhouse set it’s an apt description, both because they have some of that X-esque vocal interplay going on and also because these songs feel sturdy and meaty in the same way that many of the tracks on those classic singles did. Throw in a perfectly gritty recording and you have another keeper from Total Punk.

The Celetoids: Pupal Stage 12” (Drunken Sailor) Debut 12” (I think it was released earlier as a cassette) from this Croatian band. The Celetoids have a sound that’s tough to pin down, combining elements of hardcore, post-punk, and the darker end of garage-punk (like the Marked Men and Radioactivity) into something that’s really beefy but also super catchy. I’m reminded of countless darker, heavier, pop-infused punk bands over the years, from the Buzzcocks (particularly Steve Diggle’s tracks) to the Wipers to later Government Issue and Naked Raygun to Pegboy… the Celetoids are a pretty comfortable fit in that tradition, and they have the songwriting chops to warrant the comparison.

Chemotherapy: S/T 7” (Time Change) If you’re the type who chases after the rawest, most inept punk rock you can find, let me introduce you to your new holy grail. I actually hadn’t heard of this Chemotherapy EP before this reissue came out, which I suppose makes sense because 1. the original vinyl is insanely rare and 2. it’s really only noteworthy because of it’s horribleness. This is, quite frankly, one of the most inept musical recordings I’ve ever heard in my life… it’s like a punk rock Shaggs, with the bass and guitar completely and totally out of tune with one another, a drummer who clearly has no idea what they’re doing, and a singer who nevertheless sells it like he’s fronting the second coming of Minor Threat. A lot of music that other people describe as inept I actually think is quite beautiful, but there’s nothing beautiful about Chemotherapy. I honestly can’t tell if they’re joking or if it’s merely the best they can do (and the must-watch video on YouTube of them playing in their high school cafeteria doesn’t provide any further clues), but if you want to see just how raw, abrasive, and ugly music can get this is a record you need in your life.

Rolex: demo cassette (B.L.A.P.) Debut cassette from this band out of LA, and man it’s a ripper! Very much in the “weird hardcore” vein, Rolex have a clean guitar sound, a noodly bass player and a lot of quirky (but really, really fast and tight) rhythmic changes. It sounds a lot like early Die Kreuzen played about 20% faster, which basically means that it sounds a whole lot like Nasa Space Universe in places. In particular, it reminds me a lot of NSU’s first EP which had a much brighter, clearer recording than their other records. This one has a similar vibe, and the production being so clear and open just gives more room for the quirkiness of this one to shine. Highly recommended.

The Mark Vodka Group: The Debut EP cassette (Big Dunce) Big Dunce gives us another hit, this time from Halifax’s The Mark Vodka Group. Unlike a lot of the other Big Dunce bands, Mark Vodka doesn’t rely on synths or drum machines, but instead turns in an EP of organic, poppy (but still quite noisy and messy) rock music. My favorite here is the first track, “Shadow of Your Former Self,” which reminds me of the early Television Personalities stuff in the way that it brings a kind of 50s influence to the post-punk DIY raw home recording style, and like the TVPs the pop hooks on display here are first rate. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there’s a Booji Boys connection here because Mark Vodka has a similar ratio of pop to fuzz, but these tracks are a little more straightforwardly pop. If you dig the kind of neo-DIY being put out on the Market Square label I’d highly recommend checking this EP out.

Pobreza Mental: Demo (self-released) Demo cassette from this new New York band that, judging by the names, features a bunch of familiar faces. While Pobreza Mental sing (mostly) in Spanish and will certainly scratch your itch for Toxic State-style hardcore punk, to my ears they have more of an early Italian hardcore type sound… wild, raw, and just a little bit loose. Like a lot of the early Italian bands (Negazione or Upset Noise, for instance), they’re also a little bit metallic, which comes out on tracks like “Are You Ineffective.” That track almost has an Agnostic Front Cause for Alarm vibe in the way that it dumbs down and hardcore-ifies thrash metal. Much like the Μάτι demo we got a few weeks back, Pobreza Mental’s demo shows that New York is not done giving us innovative and exciting hardcore punk bands.

Fragment: In the Dust 12” (Desolate) Debut full-length from this Canadian crust band, and boy is it intense on the ears. Honestly, I don’t have much time for middling crust these days, so something needs to be really extreme and over the top to catch my attention and Fragment certainly fit the bill… there’s a real Framtid / Gloom-type “everything louder than everything else” sensibility at work here and the production is surprisingly rich and detailed for such a loud and noisy record. This is one that you can either listen to and pound your fist along with the drums or you can get lost in the swirling layers of noise and feedback. While the whole thing is really enjoyable, my personal favorite part of the record is the latter half of side two where they really cut loose, incorporating some surprising mid-paced riffs as well as some more abstract, riff-less parts (there’s one intro where the only noise you hear from the guitars is picks scraping against the strings for a good long while). Whether you’re coming to this one looking to rage or looking for some high concept art I think you’ll be pleased.

Bib: Moshpit 7” (Pop Wig) Latest 7” from Bib, which finds them moving (rather unexpectedly) to Pop Wig Records, which I know primarily as the home of the band Angel Du$t. Is the title of this record, Moshpit, a backhanded reference to their new sub-scene affiliation? Who really knows, as Bib were and are a pretty inscrutable bunch. Anyway, scene politics aside Moshpit is a fucking killer record. Seth nailed it when he said that it sounds like a record comprised solely of intros, and while that might sound like a bad thing, really what it means is that Bib have cut all of the fluff and filler out of these songs and reduced them to the parts that people want to hear. That, and the echo-drenched vocals, remind me quite a lot of the latest S.H.I.T. EP, to the point where I feel like Bib must have been inspired by that record… but, suffice to say, both bands do it very well and if you like one of the two records you should make it a point to check out the other. Another reason why these songs kind of sound like intros is that Bib really seem to be taking advantage of the potential for dynamics offered by their three(!)-guitar lineup. It’s easy to see how three guitarists and a bassist all bashing away at even a mildly complex riff would immediately sound like mud, so Bib keep things simple and open. Speaking of the three-guitar setup, I think my favorite track here is “Hypnotized,” which features all three guitarists scraping their picks against the strings, which adds up to this completely magical, psychedelic swirl of sound (which is accentuated by some really cool effects on the vocals). Comparisons to S.H.I.T. aside, Moshpit is a strikingly original record, and the full realization of Bib’s voice imbues this record with a completely infectious confidence and swagger. I really can’t recommend this one highly enough.

Μάτι: demo cassette (self-released) Demo cassette from this new hardcore punk band out of New York. In a lot of ways this recording reminds me of the glory days of the Toxic State / NYC scene (which seems to have died down over the past couple of years), but as with most of the recordings that came out of that scene this definitely has its own voice. In particular, Μάτι have a chugging, quasi-thrash metal element to their sound, with the guitarist doing a lot of speed picking and palm muting while the vocalist rants with the bile of your nastiest hardcore band. I’m reminded a lot of mid-80s metallic hardcore classics like Christ on Parade’s Sounds of Nature or Final Conflict’s Ashes to Ashes, or maybe even a much rawer, punker Cro-Mags at times. Definitely one of the more metallic things I’ve heard come out of New York in the past few years, but it’s no less killer for it.

Wash: demo cassette (Scavenger of Death) I guess that this cassette is a solo project from Chris Van Etten, who you may know as the bass player for numerous Atlanta bands like Carbonas, Bukkake Boys, GG King, and many, many others I’m sure. Van Etten has always seemed like a reliable side man, but this is the first time I’m aware of that he’s taken center stage, and my only question is why didn’t it happen any sooner? This tape is, without a doubt, one of the most unique and coolest things I’ve heard in some time. I’m really struggling to find points of comparison because it’s so totally unique. It’s thoroughly melodic, but it’s also really tough, but not in a way that’s pop-punk, post-punk, or any other currently fashionable punk subgenre. The closest thing I could compare it to would be late 80s bands who maybe started out as hardcore bands but tried to follow Husker Du’s lead toward music that’s a little more melodic and song-oriented… I’m thinking of bands like Squirrel Bait, later (i.e. self-titled LP-era) Government Issue, or HDQ… though honestly those aren’t great points of comparison because this is much more aggressive than any of those, and also much more angular and jagged. Maybe Husker Du’s Everything Falls Apart LP has kind of a similar vibe and approach? I don’t know man, this tape is a real head-scratcher, but 1. it’s really good and 2. I really love head-scratchers, so if any of this rambling appeals to you I’d highly recommend checking this out.

Machine Gun: S/T 7” (Double Man) Debut EP from this ripping hardcore band out of Philadelphia. After a bit of a drought it seems like ripping fast USHC is back in style (at least among some people), and Machine Gun are right up there with Nosferatu, Dagger, and Alienation as one of the best bands currently doing it. If you’re looking for something weird or different this probably isn’t for you, because this is about as pure as early 80s US-style hardcore gets. The singer sounds like Springa and the music is blisteringly fast and tight, with the quick and complex changes of bands like Koro, Neon Christ, Jerry’s Kids or early Gang Green. There is not a note on this record that I don’t love, and if the records mentioned above are as close to your heart as they are to mine you absolutely need this. Seriously, this is as top shelf as hardcore gets in the year 2017… highest possible recommendation!

Louder / Beat Generation: Split 7” (Ra-Ma) Four-song split EP from these two Japanese garage-punk bands, and I’m pretty sure that Sorry State is the only US distro to get copies, so if you want one don’t sleep! You may remember Louder from their excellent 12” on Sorry State a few years ago, and they’re still at it, playing a slightly less manic and more refined version of the classic Japanese garage-punk style that will forever be associated with Teengenerate and the Registrators. Their two tracks here are real corkers, and they also have one of my favorite song titles I’ve heard in a while in “Frantic Stuffs Are Never Ever Let Me Down.” As for Beat Generation, they’re very much along the same lines and just as good, so if you follow this particular strain of Japanese punk you know you need this one.

No Sister: The Second Floor 12” (self-released) Seth set himself the challenge of writing about this new No Sister album without mentioning the words “Sonic Youth.” Well, as for me, I don’t live by your rules, maaaaaan! I’ll make the most obvious comparisons I can and I won’t worry about it! Seriously, though, as I noted with their last LP, No Sister does seem to have discovered the secret sauce behind records like Daydream Nation, and they’re pounding out track after track like a restaurant called McDouglas’s cranking out bootleg Big Macs. The thing is, though, that No Sister not only sound a lot like vintage Sonic Youth, but they actually have a lot of the same qualities that I like about those records. In particular, there’s a kind of a tension between melody and dissonance that’s really striking… actually, at times it’s more that they have a tendency to take really melodic guitar riffs and overlay a dissonant, eerie-sounding harmony over top of them. If you checked out their previous record and liked it I’d highly recommend this one as well as it continues along the same lines but is just a little more focused and fully realized in terms of its execution.

Deletär: S/T 7” (Kick Rock) Debut 7” from this French band… are they going to be the first in a wave of Totalitär-inspired bands to signal their allegiance in much the same way bands like Disclose, Discard, Disaster, et al adopted their heroes’ prefix? Only time will tell. Anyway, there are basically two reasons that one would want to listen to a genre exercise like this: 1. you simply want to hear more songs in this style because there aren’t enough bands / records out there to sate your appetite or 2. the band does something conceptually or in execution that improves or elaborates upon the original (as Disclose explored every nook and cranny of Discharge’s aesthetic across their much larger discography). At least at this point, I’d put Deletär in the first category, so what you really need to know is, “how well is this executed?” The answer is quite well. They really nail the classic Totalitär guitar tone here, the singer sounds a lot like Poffen without doing an outright impersonation, the riffs themselves are totally ripping, and the recording leaps out of your speakers and punches you right in the face. If you’re really splitting hairs, I’d say that Deletär sound more like the relentless riff-barrage of Vi Är Eliten than the denser, more in-the-pocket Sin Egen Motståndare, but I’m not sure how nerdy you need to get about it. If the idea of a new band that sounds just like Totalitär doesn’t excite you I can totally appreciate that position, but if you’re in the market for this kind of thing I’d be hard-pressed to name a band that does it better than Deletär.

Negazione: Tutti Pazzi 7” (No Plan) Official reissue of this absolute classic of Italian hardcore, with a faithful reproduction of the original fold-out poster sleeve no less! Make no mistake, Tutti Pazzi is one of the greatest hardcore records of all time. If you’re not familiar with early 80s Italian hardcore, the records from that time and place tend to be marked by an approach to hardcore that is both raw and wild, sort of like they took the sonic parameters of the early Discharge singles and tried to funnel them through the unhinged sensibility of the wildest free jazz. There are a lot of great records from the period, but Tutti Pazzi is in a league with a very few (along with Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers’ 400 Fascists, the Wretched / Indigesti split, and at most a couple of others) that qualify as the wildest, loosest, and most fully realized records of the period. I wouldn’t even know where to begin trying to figure out how to cover one of these songs (but then again, I’m no Mike Patton) because the riffs are unlike anything I’ve ever learned to play and the song structures are so fluid as to be virtually transparent. Listening to Tutti Pazzi is like walking through a well-executed haunted house where you have no idea what is going to come next, but you do know it’s going to be totally intense. If you like your punk rock chaotic and wild this is a record you simply must hear, as it’s rarely, if ever, been done better before or since.

Andy Human & the Reptoids: Kill the Comma 7” (Emotional Response) The Andy Human records have been arriving fast and furious lately, and I wouldn’t dare complain about that, but I have noticed a pattern wherein I tend to sift through these releases for the big choruses (like the monster for “Refrigerator,” for instance), anoint these tracks my favorites, and then never really digest what doesn’t fall into that category. Well, Kill the Comma breaks that pattern by not really giving us any of those catchy choruses, and paying attention to the more drone-y aspects of Andy Human’s sound is making me appreciate that side of the band a lot more. The aesthetic here is less ’77 and more ’79 to my ears, recalling Rough Trade Records classics like Swell Maps, Subway Sect, Essential Logic, and Cabaret Voltaire in the way that it incorporates the dense layering of psychedelic music into the nervy excitement of first-wave punk. These tracks strike me as being for people who like both the Lurkers and Can, a group in which I very much fall into, and consequently I like this EP quite a bit.

The Repos: S/T 12” (Youth Attack) Lavish reissue of the debut full-length by this Chicago hardcore band. In the years since this record came out (“bought it new,” as the old folks say) the Repos have become one of my favorite hardcore bands of the past decade or more, but listening back to this record for the first time in a while it’s interesting how little of what I came to love about the band is apparent here. For instance, the band who popularized the trend of releasing ultra-raw, limited run rehearsal tapes gives us an extremely clear recording and a tight performance here. I don’t think I ever would have said so at the time, but nowadays this honestly sounds to me quite a bit like Direct Control’s You’re Controlled LP, which was recorded around the same time… both records have a clear, powerful sound, an avowedly 80s aesthetic (the Repos even cover “Straitjacket” by Jerry’s Kids here), and riffing that sounds like a slightly more metallic take on the classic 80s USHC formula. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolute ripper of a record and time has not diminished its power, but it’s also strange how different this document is from the later ones that the Repos / Ropes would produce. Oh, and I should also mention the crazy packaging. There’s a larger outer sleeve which houses a regular LP sleeve that is a pretty much a faithful reproduction of the original sleeve, and then there’s an additional inner sleeve inside that. So there are three layers of paper between you and the record, but it all looks pretty boss and it’s kind of cool that the reissue comes with some stuff that the original didn’t.

The Repos: Hearts and Heads Explode 12” (Youth Attack) Reissue of the second Repos full-length, wherein they truly became the band that I love. The Repos’ first record (which has been reissued concurrently with this one) is a really good hardcore record, but Hearts and Heads Explode is a different beast entirely, and as such it’s the first truly great Repos record. From the very first second you can tell it’s a different beast… the locked-in rhythms of the first record have been replaced with a sound that is loose and unhinged, and the clarity of the S/T recording has been revised as something denser, rawer, and meaner. The Repos’ unique songwriting approach also fully takes shape here. Part of what’s so unique about this band is that they seem to be simultaneously deconstructing hardcore songwriting while also taking a more baroque (at times even psychedelic) approach. The normal fast part / mosh part dynamic that most hardcore songs rely on disintegrates here, with the songs moving from part to part with more of an intuitive, organic feel that keeps you guessing as to what might be coming next without ever seeming “wacky” or like weirdness for its own sake. And many of the songs also feature crazy guitar overdubs that sound like a really talented thrash metal guitarist heard the song once, recorded a lead overdub, and gave exactly zero fucks about how well they played it. Throughout, the Repos sound like a smart, musically adept band trying their best to play dumb and only partially succeeding. I suppose it’s a matter of taste as to whether you think that the Repos have topped Hearts and Heads Explode on any of their later records (though I’d argue that, at the very least, they’ve given it some serious competition), but I dare say that history’s long view will anoint this one of the greatest hardcore records of all time. The fortuitous timing of this reissue should help as it arrives at a moment when a lot of bands are picking up the Repos’ decade-old project of divesting hardcore of its cliches without losing any of its trademark intensity or aggression.

Combat Force: Demo 7” (Youth Attack) More Denver-area hardcore from Youth Attack Records, this time from Combat Force, a very Iron Cross-esque oi!/hardcore hybrid. I can’t help but notice the disjunction here between the recording quality and Youth Attack’s typically lavish packaging. The recording is incredibly raw, with audible tape hiss throughout, yet it’s packaged in this gatefold matte jacket and pressed on heavyweight (whatever the 7” equivalent of 180-gram is) white vinyl. I’m not saying that Combat Force don’t deserve it or anything, but there does seem to be quite a disconnect between the visual and auditory presentation here. As for the actual music, Combat Force play it pretty much by the book here, and if you’re into oi!-inspired hardcore like the aforementioned Iron Cross or perhaps more recent UK stuff like Violent Reaction or Arms Race this will probably hit the sweet spot for you, particularly since it’s quite raw and the analog recording, for all of the “faults” I mentioned above, is rich with texture. If you’re looking for something that’s going to reinvent the wheel, though, I would look elsewhere, as it doesn’t seem like Combat Force are particularly worried about interrogating or deconstructing the conventions (cliches?) of oi! music. In particular, lines like “we’re the working class / the spine of this land” not only strike me as kind of trite, but also point to the uncomfortable way that anglophilic US oi! bands struggle to adapt the conventions and talking points of British oi! music to American culture… the term “working class” means something quite different in the US than it does in the UK. If none of that bothers you then this is a pretty good record, but if you’re prone to overthinking you may well convince yourself not to like this one.

Fuerza Bruta: Verdugo 12” (Foreign Legion) Man, the label’s description of this record is pretty intense, drawing a line in the sand and calling out all of the new jack skinheads that have made oi! one of the hottest punk fashion movements of the mid-2010s. I mean, it’s hard to deny that it’s a trend, but what separates Fuerza Bruta from the pack? Have they been around the scene longer? Do they have a deeper knowledge of the genre and the culture’s history? What is more authentic about them? Honestly, I have no idea… I don’t know anything about the members of this band, but I do know that in Verdugo they have written an excellent oi! album. I will say that whereas a lot of modern oi! seems to be rather one-dimensional in the sphere of influences that it draws from, Verdugo feels like a mature synthesis of a lot of oi!’s sub-sub-genres. The label’s description mentions that this is inspired by Brazilian hardcore and Japanese oi! (I know a bit about the former and all but nothing about the latter), but I’m inclined to hear all of the connections to the skin sounds of yore… not only is there the primitive chug of brutal classics like Nabat or Red Alert, but there’s also a lot of pop in the mix too… nothing quite as overt as, say, Cock Sparrer, but there’s a lot of the melodic, beefy guitar riffs of American oi! bands from the Templars to the Beltones or even UK pop-oi! classics like the Business’s “National Insurance Blacklist.” At the end of the day, to me this is just a beefy, muscular, and melodic punk record, so I’d say forget the scene divisions… whether Verdugo is the 3rd oi! record you’ve heard of the 300th I think you’ll enjoy it quite a bit.