The last time I stepped foot into the Ukie Club, it was for Hollertronix some twenty years ago, the hip-hop DJ night thrown by Low Budget and a pre-fame Diplo (he hadn’t even linked up with M.I.A. yet) where I moshed to fresh-at-the-time anthems like “Still Tippin'” and “Get Low”. It was a moment pulsing with excitement in my life – Clockcleaner’s John Sharkey even punched out some guy outside at the end of the night – yet tonight’s gig felt just as vital, even in my steadily-advancing age. A packed hall of weird youths (and a handful of ex-youths) experiencing the joy of new musical ideas will do that, even when it’s forty degrees and raining outside.
Unlike many of the shows I’ve recently attended, I was actually familiar with the recorded material of Morgan Garrett and YHWH Nailgun, and eager to see both. I also hadn’t yet seen a clear photo of either, and wasn’t sure if Morgan Garrett was the tall redhead in the satin jacket / cropped Juicy Couture hoodie combo, adorned with multiple silver rings (and grill to match) until the music, or glorious absence of music, kicked in. Supported by Jackie McDermott (of Urochromes) on drums and a bald-headed, sleeveless-shirted guitarist named Zach Darrup, Garrett’s set kicked in with startling intensity, the whole room suddenly caught off-guard. Performing over a loud, direct-input backing track, Garrett pantomimed his own voice, screamed silently, gesticulated madly and shuddered as if his pinky ring touched an ungrounded circuit. Wearing his black sunglasses at an unbelievably downward angle, Darrup grimaced madly as he played his electric guitar, the visual strumming rarely corroborating what my ears were hearing. McDermott slammed through Dale Crover-esque fills and beats amidst Garrett’s anti-riffs, resulting in the sound of sludge-metal dropped in one of those landfill trash compactors that gets millions of YouTube views, or a nu-metal as gaseous whale corpse exploding on the shore. The intensity never relented, nor did the ingenuity of the performance, nor did the songs themselves, gleefully dramatic, neurotic and ready to strike. After a few minutes, my show-going buddy commented, “I don’t think he actually sang a single word” – I’m fairly certain Morgan Garrett did, though whether or not that was what I had heard would remain gloriously unclear. It struck me that Garrett and Darrup’s performance conjured a wild, unprecedented weirdness/greatness the likes of which I can only compare to Tom Smith and Rat Bastard in To Live And Shave In LA, whose first No Fun Fest performance shattered the dimensional limits by which I thought music had to abide. I’m going to go crazy if I can’t see Morgan Garrett live again, and soon.
babybaby_explores came next, and I’m honoring their net-speak stylization as I’m still riding high from Morgan Garrett’s stellar performance. This trio comes from Providence, long-running hotbed for weirdo hand-stitched experimental music, and they served that pantheon well. I love when people play drum machines by beating out the pattern in real time with their fingers on its pads (Providence noise-pop weirdos Football Rabbit did exactly that some twenty years ago); babybaby_explores member Ramona Cano-Daly is on her way to an early Carpal Tunnel diagnosis with her rapid-fire, on-the-spot beat-making. Sam M-H played guitar over these beats, ringing-out seasick chords that sounded like cute burps with a little vomit in the back of the throat, and vocalist Lids Bday hopped in place, shouting and squeaking into a mic riddled with the same thick reverb gravy as Extreme Animals (another notable Providence-based “rainbow rock” act from years ago). They had some technical difficulties, which is to be expected when you have that many small electronic boxes linked by easily-malfunctioning cords on a DIY budget, but the crowd didn’t seem to care when they stopped a song halfway through and restarted it, and neither did I. A youngster in a tucked-in “Public Castration Is A Good Idea” Swans tee was going absolutely buck wild a few feet in front of me, next to a couple who danced so furiously in schooled, modern techniques that they’d keep it going a few seconds after a song ended. The crowd was shedding their clothes, but babybaby_explores kept their many layers on, hoodies over capes with a sideways t-shirt improbably tucked in. M-H wore thickly knit, fingerless orange gloves, a bold move for any guitarist in need of their fingers, but this entire show was defined by its bold moves.
The crowd was thick (three hundred people, maybe more?) from the drop, but everyone packed their way up front for the fresh stars YHWH Nailgun (which I learned is pronounced “Yahweh Nailgun”, not with the initials spoken as I was previously doing all boomer-like). Apparently hailing from Philadelphia at some point, but now Brooklyn-based, I had quickly fallen in love with their debut AD 93 twelve-inch, and was excited to see how it worked in person. On stage, the band looked like identical triplets with a bald-beard-glasses guy – you would’ve needed a dozen extra clicks or less to create all four of them in Fallout 4‘s character creation mode. Gangly with home-cut brown hair and the indescript clothes of professional art movers, they sufficiently milled about on stage before Sam Pickard ripped into one of his band-defining rototom rhythms. The music would be dazzling in any circumstance, but vocalist Zack Borzone (second wild n’ weird Zack/h of the night!) pushed the performance into a higher energy field. Looking like Cillian Murphy playing one of The Strokes, Borzone’s sore-throat vocals and high cheekbones pushed an emotional madness to the front of the stage just as often as he popped off to emphasize the rhythms, parts Charles Lavenac of Golden Teacher (the swagger), David Yow (the forehead and throat veins) and Waste Man’s Jack Long (the hoarseness). The crowd was in full throttle, one of those unmitigated nerd-pits full of involuntary thrashing the likes of which I recognized from Lightning Bolt’s national touring post-Ride The Skies. Pickard’s drumming was relentless – Lance Armstrong performance-enhanced by Obolon Premium (the Ukie Club beer of choice) – and the rest of the band, through their purposefully-limited sound palette, absolutely dazzled. An exhilarating moment for all in attendance, I sweated through my Acronym J91-WS from simply buzzing in place, thrilled by the uniquely physical music of YHWH Nailgun and Morgan Garrett. As I exited back up the club’s stairs into the freezing early spring weather and feeling so inspired by what I had witnessed, I could tell others felt the same – if you didn’t already have a band going into this gig, you were desperate to start one on your way out.
In this digital age where we all groomed to perceive ourselves as the central character of the narrative, it’s nice to see a record as inherently ego-less as this new split from two groups who share the same “core members”. (I’d like to send a shout-out to the non-core members – respect.) The insert doesn’t even specify who plays in Blammo and who plays in Riboflavin, listing all the members together, and the bands aren’t separated by side, instead having their songs seemingly shuffled at random. There are eight Riboflavin tracks to Blammo’s six, and one track credited to both groups. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a split record this scattered and mashed-together, and I certainly appreciate both the concept and execution. As for the music, both groups share a penchant for scrappy, non-binary pop, a sound that recalls cherished touchstones like the K and Flying Nun labels as well as more obscure delights like Chronophage, Alternative TV and Ruth Garbus. The melodies twitch with a weird optimism, like they want to put a smile on your face and a quiver in your belly – I still wince at the line in Riboflavin’s “Don’t Delete My Love Note” about sitting on the toilet wiping toe-jam off their feet. Definitely an indie-pop outlier for the demon-screaming hardcore label State Laughter, but we’re all old enough to understand that punk is more valuable as an ethos than as a formulaic sound. The camaraderie and collective creativity on display here has more to do with my definition of punk than, I dunno, the umpteenth Dickies / Dead Boys / Christian Death / etc. reunion tour. 
Jim E. Brown has been a welcomed distraction in my life over the last few weeks of bad and worse news. His whole deal hearkens back to the carefree late ’00s, when people were figuring out how to garner a pre-social media virality through their internet stunts, weird videos and funny characters, the golden age of Tim and Eric. As I spin The Sky Is Ugly, Jim E. Brown’s debut LP, I’ve been trying to figure out precisely how much of his deal is meant to be understood as an act, or if not an act, a deliberate hoodwinking, and I think the answer is “most of it”, but who knows besides the lad “from Manchester” himself? I’ll ask you to Google a picture of Jim E. Brown now, or better yet, pull up the video for the opening song here, “I Want To Open For Foo Fighters”. Brown pairs the over-the-top self-humiliation of Neil Hamburger with the first-thought wonderment of Wesley Willis, all while sounding like the suicidal love-child of Ian Dury and Robert Smith. His bio (clearly written in 2024) states he’s nineteen years-old and born “one day before the 911” (I chuckled), and he seems to reside in or near Philadelphia, though of course his questionable British accent says otherwise. Regardless, he knows how to turn phrases/song-titles such as “I’m A Pre-Diabetic” and “I’m About To Fall Over In Asda” into replayable sing-along pop hits, elevating his jokes to full-band indie-pop far more catchy and pleasant than it has any right to be. Looks like another LP of his came out recently too, and while I feel satisfied with playing The Sky Is Ugly over and over, I do kinda need to hear what the song “My Urine Is Foamy. Do I Have Kidney Damage?” is all about.
Following the bombshell that was the FATHOM EP, Carrier EPs quickly became a buy-or-die proposition for those of us in the market for extreme forms of propulsive dub-techno refractions. Tender Spirits is the second twelve-inch on his own Boomkat-distributed label (they know where their bread is buttered), and unlike prior Carrier recordings, this one takes a more reclined position. The a-side’s “Light Candles, To Mark The Way” enters with the flicker of those aforementioned candles in a digitally-rendered ice cave. Dub-techno on its face, the rhythm convulses and snaps, like the frantic, oxygen-deprived final contractions of an astronaut with a spacesuit leak. “Slow Punctures” opens with an electronic interpretation of icebergs cracking, and then the kicks arrive, as if Echospace and Andy Stott co-authored a track that was then stripped of anything beyond its rebar and metal joints… the faint ringing of one of Harry Bertoia’s “sonambient” sculptures. I was ready for Carrier to drop a few drumkits on my head for the last track, “Carpathian”, but the pensive mood continues, as if there is an ominously watchful eye hovering over the proceedings. “Carpathian”‘s unintuitive kicks pair up with a ninja clan’s frantic sharpening of knives, as empty of a track as that recent Sa Pa EP yet bearing a decisively killer instinct. It points to a fresh path for dub techno, its familiar gaseous clouds wrapped tight in razor wire. 
Placed alongside that fantastic new Darkside LP, is the new home for boundary-pushing experimental pop… Matador Records?? Stranger things have happened, but either way I’m loving Darkside’s Nothing as well as this new one from Haley Fohr and her long-running Circuit Des Yeux project. She’s always been a curious outlier of scenes, and while I can’t say I’ve followed her career much outside of her formative Midwestern noise days, Halo On The Inside is blowing me away. I can’t help but hear Scott Walker and Diamanda Galas in her astounding voice, a weapon I didn’t know she had until I saw her perform with Bill Nace last year, howling through like four different octaves (and a few Phil Minton-esque tongue-tortions too). Her voice is so deep and forceful throughout, extreme confidence bursting through songs that imagine a future where Nine Inch Nails leaned into nu-metal following The Fragile, or an appended track-list to the original The Crow soundtrack that featured The Prodigy, Jarboe and Nurse With Wound. If you recall the theme-song to the Buffy spin-off Angel (and I certainly hope you do), much of Halo On The Inside dwells in a similar romantic gloom, any residual cheesiness replaced by high artistry and bold, fearless intentions. Quick, throw on “Canopy Of Eden” right this minute and you’ll hear all the artists I mentioned thus far wrapped up into the cyber-goth dance track of the year. 
I have a small cohort of old friends who listen to hardcore and only hardcore, among whom the name Combust is frequently lauded. Figured I should join in the fun so I peeped Belly Of The Beast, the New York hardcore group’s sophomore full-length. From the name (and my own mental biases), I was expecting something in the Warzone / Gorilla Biscuits school of hardcore, but Combust operate on the metallic / gym-playlist end of the NYHC spectrum. They are not alone these days, as the resurgence of “ignorant” beatdown hardcore has persisted like a Cold As Life pit bruise, so it takes a little more to stand out from the thick-necked pack. After running through Belly Of The Beast a few times, I can’t say that Combust necessarily stand out, but they do keep up with the big dawgs, presenting a fine-tuned collection of bouncy, metallic hardcore that wears its influence on its full-tatted sleeves. The title tracks opens with a full on Best Wishes-esque Cro-Mags tribute, weaving through progressions, drum patterns and mosh breaks in a manner clearly indebted to Breakdown, Killing Time, Trapped Under Ice and the occasional Cause For Alarm-era Agnostic Front flourish. If that’s what you want, I can’t imagine Belly Of The Beast will disappoint, full of lyrics about how life is pain, enemies can’t be trusted, suffering builds the streetwise character necessary to survive, all those typical and timeless hardcore chestnuts. And with a long list of guest vocalists, from Terror’s Scott Vogel to Danny Diablo (on the self-explanatory “N.Y.H.C.”), you don’t even have to throw on a different record to hear all your favorite hardcore singers who’ve lost count of how many fools they’ve beaten to a pulp. 
The hype sticker here only reads “featuring Pedal Steel legend, BJ Cole”, and I can’t help but get hyped on imagining the scenario where some pedal-steel enthusiast is casually flipping through the bins and stumbles upon Cardiac Country. Halleloo! With this most recent batch of Sophomore Lounge releases, I’m realizing that this label is firmly Americana, and probably always has been to some extent. The thread between Tropical Trash and Equipment Pointed Ankh to American roots music is a frayed one, but I can still follow it, and with new records from Grace Rogers, Spectre Folk, Styrofoam Winos, Ned Colette and Jeffrey David Decicca, it’s like the modern-day DIY (or maybe “do it together”) answer to Nonesuch. Cardiac Country, unlike many of those other artists, bears zero relation to anything edgier than Peter, Paul & Mary or Starland Vocal Band… hell, even The Cherry Blossoms are rougher around the edges. Deccica’s songs are in the John Prine / Tom T. Hall school of ’80s singer-songwriter country made by guys in button-up shirts with sitcom-dad haircuts, as tender as a baby lamb in the arms of a grandmotherly librarian on Earth Day. It’s undeniably well crafted, and BJ Cole’s pedal-steel playing is certainly of the highest echelon, but it’s generally not a style of music I personally relish or gravitate towards, and Cardiac Country does not change my mind in that regard. Tempted to keep the album handy in case I ever find Jesus, but with all these Beherit and Venom records lying around it seems unlikely. 
The Destructors Club features a couple of dearly, dearly departed icons in its ranks: Lee “Scratch” Perry and Mark Stewart. It hurts to think about our loss, but thankfully these colorful geniuses left no shortage of music behind, including these three cuts in both original and Scientist versions. It’s dub, of course, but The Destructors function as a band – drums, bass, guitar, horns, keys, effects as-needed – playing songs that sidestep the two-dimensional hypnosis of classic dub. I like it both ways, and I’m certainly enjoying it here; “Orphans Of The Storm (Album Version)” almost has a touch of Pop Group stick-and-move to it, though at a far more relaxed pace. Of course, if you want relaxed, the Scientist versions on the flip are as loose-fit as JNCOs, the disembodied rhythms sputtering forward as tripped-out effects pan across the stereo. A soothing balm from the sweltering summer months that are soon to arrive, delivered by a variety of kind souls, some in body, some in spirit. “The rhythm rocks, and the rhythm rolls… Lee Perry, at the controls…”
If my Google search results are to be believed, both Charlotte De Witte and Amelie Lens command booking fees anywhere between $150,000 and $299,000 per gig. I’ve neglected to run the numbers for Mary Jane Dunphe or Beau Wanzer, but I think these two might be the highest grossing solo performers ever reviewed in these pages! For as vast as punk is in 2025, electronic music is far vaster, as people can spend their whole lives digging into wide swaths of electronic sub-genres and still miss countless other popular or pivotal artists. Charlotte De Witte and Amelie Lens are currently running victory laps through the highest-financed echelons of dance music, and while the cynic in me might point to their runway-model looks and brand-partnership willingness as obvious advantages in the Ibiza / Coachella / Tomorrowland circuit, I don’t really care – someone’s gotta be millionaire EDM celebrities, so why not these two? On this new two-song single, their simplicity is effective, both cuts bursting with streamlined acid squiggles, festival-shaking kicks and both of their whispery voices subtly mixed throughout. No frills, and certainly nothing new, but enough confidence and power to have me buy into it. A lot of amazing (and comparatively broke) artists built the sonic foundation that De Witte and Lens are capitalizing on, but that’s a tale as old as popular music itself. Spin One Mind and pretend you’re one step closer to a seat on their private jets. 
From the Absolutely Nothing To Prove Department comes a new one from the legendary Jad Fair and his younger outsider chum Samuel Locke Ward. Always one to zig when the rest of the world zags, Fair fills Pure Candy with ecstatic love songs. Songs about love, loving love, loving those who love you when you’re loving too, just over the top happy vibes (yes, he even finds a way to sing “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” in there). It’s a love-fest overload, to be sure, but it’s in that overwhelming maximalism that Pure Candy succeeds. “Geniuses Of Love” has an imposing post-hardcore sway, not the sort of thing you’d think could be covered in candy hearts, but Fair is persistent and committed, and most importantly, it really seems like he means every word, even when rhyming up a storm Dr. Seuss-like in “That Is That”. Locke Ward is responsible for all the music and he’s clearly relishing the freedom, trying on all sorts of different looks in the indie-pop strum, sparkling power-pop, slacker pop continuum, like an earnest Ween or a tightened-up Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Pure Candy is a big belch of sunshine in a time of widespread misery… let’s hope these guys remain blissfully unaware of what is really going on out there. 
There is nary a more positive scene than DC these days, yet the fury of Grand Scheme’s second seven-inch EP might have you scared to walk through Georgetown at night. This straight-edge unit plays an extremely traditional form of American hardcore, equally in step with first-wave NYHC, late ’90s youth-crew and ’00s mosh-forward stylings. Which is to say, they also sound like what they are: a young and excitable band that walks among us today. Maybe it’s the brawny vocals, but I’m picking up a sense of ’86 Mentality’s street-core on a few of these songs too, more so than I clocked on their debut EP. The opening monkey-beat blast of “Think Twice” is a fierce declaration of intent, followed with more speedy pounding on “Counter Culture”. They make us wait a full fifty seconds before the pit opens up (that’s all of “Think Twice” and half of “Counter Culture”) but our patience is rewarded. Closing cut “Marketing Budget” might be my favorite of the bunch, as it arrives with a hard-bouncing rhythm ala Breakdown that has me thinking of the fact that there’s an obscure NYHC band called Loud And Boisterous (whom I still need to hear one day). A solid, unfaltering second effort, and I’m not just saying that because Grand Scheme are the last band I actively moshed for. EP makes me want to smack the gin & tonic out of my own hand. 
The dividing line between studio-project, functioning band and unexplained hallucination disintegrates with Heavy Möther II. Keen listeners of intergenerational punk will recall Heavy Mother’s Feel It album from a couple years ago, featuring Eddie Flowers of first-wave punk goofballs The Gizmos alongside members of The Cowboys, and the updated Heavy Möther II has recently emerged. It features those same initial players now linked up with at least one Retail Simp and Craig Bell (of the damn Rocket From The Tombs) on bass and synth for an impromptu recording session, songs conjured from minimal (if any) rehearsal. I’m a fan of spontaneous rock music, and Heavy Möther II is more than you could reasonably hope for from such a conceit. These songs rip pretty hard – you can feel everyone leaning in – and amazingly, Flowers had ten songs’ worth of lyrics ready to go; cool ones, too. No one wanted to be the weakest link here, and no one is… it feels like the proto-punk answer to Endless Boogie, a fuzzy garage-beat slam where the players are fully locked-in with each other, led by a grizzled singer content to blather and shout with more confidence than a hundred twenty year-olds combined. If they’re taking requests for Heävy Möther III, could we maybe add Steve Turner of Mudhoney, Zac Davis and Kilynn Lunsford to the mix? Let me know if you need some phone numbers, Total Punk. 
Kim Hiorthøy helped establish the Smalltown Supersound aesthetic back in the early ’00s, where IDM and electro commingled with a willingness to dip into avant-garde, hip-hop, jazz, noise or whatever else might spring to mind. There wasn’t the same genre fluidity then that there is today, and I appreciated Hiorthøy’s freewheeling attitude, even if my younger ears sometimes found his records a little too inscrutable. My ears are eager for a record like Ghost Note right now, though, Hiorthøy’s first album in ten years, which feels very much in line with the current domestic room-noise ambient trends of today while also effortlessly transcending them. He grabs a variety of instruments, and while an enumerated list isn’t provided, I’m pretty sure I’m hearing pianos, synths, junkyard/homemade string instruments and metallic percussion. Lots of organic material in here, much of which sounds like it was played back on an early Victrola in a room full of dust, but whereas many artists get by with simply obscuring the sounds made by a similar selection of instruments, Hiorthøy really makes them sing. Harry Partch comes to mind, as does Ulla and that Salenta + Topu album, all favorites around here. There’s something about Hiorthøy’s approach to composition that sticks out, though: his crusty sounds are integrated so thoughtfully, so that a composition like “Book Legs” seamlessly veers from solo piano into charity-shop percussive jam while still maintaining a high-minded melodic touch. Only two hundred copies pressed of this one, and if any of those two hundred owners are unsatisfied, please, pass it on to someone who will cherish it. 
Someone must’ve dosed the Swiss water (or chocolate?) supply, as Fribourg’s Leopardo continue to dissolve into a sluggish psychedelia on this new full-length, the somewhat redundantly titled Side A, Side B. I’m pretty sure these folks are punks deep down in their heart of hearts, or at least once emanated from the margins of the punk scene, but their music here has more in common with Beachwood Sparks and Jennifer Gentle than Buzzcocks or Ramones (though if you squint hard enough you can hear all four). When they’re upright and buzzing, Leopardo’s sound approaches the “madman orchestrating a portable circus” feel of The Fall’s late ’80s material, and when they simmer down to a honky-tonk slow-dance, I’m reminded of Country Teasers if they found a cure for the hate in their hearts. There are horns, melodica, harmonium, all the hippie-dippie love-child accoutrements besides an artisanal kaleidoscope and a necklace of daisies, though I haven’t checked to see what Leopardo are wearing. I appreciate that they seem to have a lack of foundational rules regarding style and taste – all ideas considered, no matter how kooky or ostentatious – though it’s probably a little too sweet, sedate and silly to perfectly match my own personal taste profile. Maybe if my country had the best healthcare system in the world like theirs does, I’d be taking the right cocktail of drugs to lie in the green grass and stare into the center of the universe, Side A, Side B flowing from a nearby boombox. 
It seems to be widely accepted that Robert Beatty is the coolest record-cover designer of our era – I’m on board with this assessment – and he hits another homer here with this new Mazozma album (Michael “Ma” Turner’s current recording incarnation). I just love it, those airbrushed pastels used to depict an altered reality, in this case starring some funky Martian who stares out of a row-home under a cotton candy sky. It’s not a guarantee that I will love the music that comes with this cover, but I’m certainly primed to do so care of Beatty’s seemingly bottomless well of creativity. I’ve enjoyed plenty of Turner’s music over the years; his vision is consistently unique, as those Warmer Milks records operated on a different scale of time (long) and space (wide yet claustrophobic), in tandem with but not pandering to the “New Weird America” freak-folk of the ’00s. Weirdness wasn’t his goal then so much as a natural by-product, nor does it seem to be now as Mazozma, wherein he plays acoustic guitar and sings alongside the twelve-string guitar and bass of James Bandenburg. Wish I could say it’s hitting me with the same otherworldly satisfaction as the cover, but Bathing In The Stone isn’t really grabbing me, I’ve discovered. The guitars are patient and cyclical, folk as meditative practice and really quite beautiful at times, but his doleful voice is pointedly off-key in a way I find unpleasant and distracting. I’m sure Turner is fully aware of the sound of his pipes – even his haziest, dirtiest material has always felt fully deliberate – but his intentions here, unlike Beatty’s, do not inspire me with wonder and joy. 
There’s a dark, aging, depressing and unreasonably potent corner of the modern American social experience that, as far as I can tell, no agitational noise-rock bands have yet dared to plunder: it’s called Facebook. While Philly group My Wife’s An Angel don’t explicitly refer to the social-media giant turned abandoned internet strip-mall in their songs, Yeah, I Bet hits me like a CAPTCHA that refuses to believe I’m human. The group’s name sounds like something your forty-something coworker from the Northeast burbs would post to Facebook on his anniversary right before being caught cheating, and the songs here intertwine with samples of sad elderly voicemails, grown adults caught in the act of arguing, calls from jail… it’s the true beating heart of America (valves clogged with plaque and fear-based hatred) on painful display, under-informed people making poor decisions and doubling down on them, one unexpected hospital bill away from total ruin. It’s this stark social underbelly that My Wife’s An Angel digs into here, and their music is a perfect fit, which calls to mind Landed’s cyclical noise-punk combustion as well as the late ’90s, garage-y end of Load Records’ gleefully antagonistic roster, unreasonably aggressive and uncomfortable, with an attitude that might resonate with Clockcleaner fans. The most obvious punchline on the record is the opening of “Funny How That Works”: with the band dropped out, vocalist Garrett Stanton Vandemark asks “anybody ever think of killing their dad?”. Their laughter isn’t the best medicine, it’s the cheapest way to keep from crying. 
Perhaps some of my most obsessive readers can relate to the feeling of disappointment that arrives when you find out that one of your favorite artists just released new and exclusive material… as part of a limited-edition ten-cassette boxset. That’s what happened with Neutral, whose three full-lengths rank at the top of any worthwhile list of 2010s industrial music, but the very entity that released that brick-sized boxset, The Helen Scarsdale Agency, has mercifully reissued Neutral’s contribution on this vinyl LP. Only took ’em seven years! I’m just playing, it’s great news that Lågliv is now a stand-alone release, as the quality of these tunes is up there with the rest of Neutral’s stunningly corroded / corrosive discography. The duo utilizes guitars at their murkiest, hypnotically delivered and spinning in and out of focus as the crustiest, loneliest sounds of scrap-rot and human absence flutter about. The ambiance is unsettling and uncompromisingly harsh – akin to Anne Gillis in that way – where an outlying track like “Röda Sten” is notable for the warble of some dark-wave keys, a poisonous Muzak amidst so much grey, brown and black noise. If the disemboweled carousel ride turned occult-folk hallucination of “Ganska Lågt” and the cohabitating guitar abuse / church organ filled with mud of “Också” are the last tracks we get from Neutral, it’s been a truly stellar run, but I am hopeful that there is plenty more to come. 
It’s Olivia’s World, but we’re not living in it – singer/songwriter Alice Rezende seems content to keep her poppy indie-rock tucked away in her doodle-filled notebook, avoidant of the mainstream and its follies. Greedy & Gorgeous is the group’s full-length debut, and they use the allotted space accordingly, nine songs of guitar-centric rock-band that vary in volume, speed and emotion. I saw that Rose Melberg played drums on a previous Olivia’s World release, and while I’m not sure how that happened (seeing as Olivia’s World are located in Sydney), the shared aesthetic interest is a reasonable point of reference for what Olivia’s World is up to. There’s a little Tiger Trap in these tunes, very ’90s-coded in a way that has more or less become timeless in the decades since. Songs are about crushes, jerks, relationships, unreasonable societal expectations (ie. physical appearance, bank account status)… pretty par for the course with just enough quirk to keep things light. Reminds me a bit of Boomgates too, though Olivia’s World is more likely to employ sarcasm and abstraction than the exceedingly earnest Boomgates. “Sourgum” rocks – that’s a fun one worth playing a few times over – but the album on the whole isn’t doing much for me, as is the case with many similar-sounding artists. Two things can be true, I suppose: one, that I do not personally fit the intended listening demographic, and two, that it’s not a record that really stands out, for better or worse. Let’s face it, I haven’t bought myself a wool button-up cardigan in at least a dozen years…
Cheers to Steve Peffer for releasing so many different and fantastic records throughout the years. If my Nine Shocks Terror, Factorymen, Homostupids, Folded Shirt and Pleasure Leftists records fell on my head from a high shelf, it’d probably be enough to kill me, which might not be a half-bad way to go. Peer Pressure Zombies is a new project of his (great name, by the way!), handling bass / synth / vocals alongside Janet Yellen on drums and Noah Depew on guitar / synth. Much of Peffer’s non-hardcore material has tilted in a provocative / pranksterish direction ala The Residents and Men’s Recovery Project, a disposition that suits his weirdo perspective nicely – more weirdos could benefit from fine-tuning their personal approaches like this. Peer Pressure Zombies maintains a similarly off-putting vibe but delivers it in the sturdy form of actual songs, synth-centric music that’s not particularly wave-y so much as dark and antagonistic… a blacklight cosmic alien-abduction poster in the corner of an unfinished basement. Peer Pressure Zombies fuse the crustiest mixtape versions of Gary Numan, Chrome, Rah Bras, Nervous Gender and some accidental smudge of Klaus Schulze, made especially memorable by Peffer’s droll, repetitive lyrics. I’m already singing along to “Germany” after a couple listens, and while I can’t quite make out all the words to “Reeking Garbage Pile”, they repeat it enough that I’m singing along anyway. Recommended!
German punk band Pisse might seem kind of silly on face value: there’s the band name, the various amusing cover designs and the split ten-inch with a group called Perky Tits among other examples. And yet, their synth-enhanced punk remains as German-punk sounding as ever, as if the band, even at their happiest, are unable to muster a single smile, let alone laugh out loud. Dubai might look tough, its lettering befitting thick-necked hardcore bands like Speed and God’s Hate, but the music within is staunchly in the Zickzack school of disaffected art-punks slammed head-first into the grey drudgery of daily modern life in Wittichenau. Lots of punk bands are attempting a similar sonic aesthetic, the collision of speedy, arthritic post-punk riffs amidst a suffocating atmosphere of melancholic gloom, certainly an appropriate sound for our times. Pisse’s music connects with me because they emphasize the punk aspect, with the atmospheric part seemingly a natural by-product of their existence, not a trendy affectation. I love a 45-rpm twelve-inch like this, one that gets to the point right off the jump and wraps up before you have a chance to settle in, especially when it has me thinking of Abwärts’ debut EP, Computerstaat. 
Bruno Pronsato has been at the game of abstracted minimal techno for over two decades now, which places him far from the zeitgeist and in the sad purgatorial territory of artists who get taken for granted and semi-ignored simply for the crime of consistently existing for a long period of time. You won’t see Bruno Pronsato playing at Unsound or hyped up on Resident Advisor, but I’m always going to check out what he’s up to if and when I get wind of it. This new EP on French label Logistic doesn’t cater to today’s smudged-ambient trends, but I do wonder if his style is going to exist long enough to eventually return to flavor-of-the-month status. “Coupes 1” is sparse and airy: tightly-edited snippets of drum rolls, pitched-up clicks, meandering pianos and various taps mingle like it’s minimal-techno night at a warehouse gallery space. It has the feel of a Luciano production circa 2008 drained of blood and kept on ice. Unlike the a-side, “Coupes 2” offers a consistent rhythm track, a head-bobber that maintains the same spaciousness. A funny little man’s voice grunts his approval in time to the beat, various electronic squiggles snapping in all 360 degrees, some truly tiny wave-forms sprinkled throughout care of Pronsato’s software of choice. If I opened a coffee shop, I would license Bruno Pronsato’s music for continual and exclusive in-store play (and charge $12.99 for a 12 oz. cup to offset my generous royalty rate). Be thankful I put my efforts into music, not business. 
The fiery noise-punk of Pyrex has always entertained me, though I’ve found myself wondering what’s actually on the minds of this Brooklyn-based trio. Their vibe was always kind of like Metz – that is to say, vague – but at least on Body, their second Total Punk full-length, I’ve learned that they have been thinking about their bodies a bit. It’s a loose theme running through these songs, from “Protein” (“it’s absolute / and that’s all we eat”) to their eyeballs (“Cones”), insides (“Nerve Ends”, “Vertebrae”), reflexes (“Reflex”) and sleep (“Coma”). The blazing opener “Face Off” even fits the subject in some unclear way – how else to interpret the lines “I need the blood / give me the blood”? Maybe they’re accredited scientists, maybe they’re obsessed with their horrific bodies in the same manner as Pharmakon, maybe they’re getting old and feeling it, maybe it’s all a coincidence, but it’s nice to get some further grasp on what these guys feel compelled to play their loud music about. The songs are sharpened here too: “Vertebrae” reminds me of the dearly-missed Video (their Leather Leather is considered a modern classic around these parts), and Pyrex mix it up nicely between sounding like a garage band covering crusty hardcore and a hardcore band covering post-punk. It’s heat-resistant, time-tested stuff, unlike their shoddy imitator, Tupperware. 
Rest Symbol is a newly assembled British trio, its members previously lurking in the electro-occult allies of labels like 5 Gate Temple and Apron. Real present-day England’s Hidden Reverse moves here, where the ghosts of trip-hop and dubstep encircle London’s cell towers, resulting in poor reception. Rest Symbol frequently feels like a Portishead acid trip gone dark – you see Beth Gibbons down the end of a darkened alley, and as she opens her mouth to sing, she slowly morphs into the Momo Challenge. It’s unsettling, fractured music, somewhere between the outside-of-time curiosity found in some of Stroom’s low-key synth-pop offerings and Nina Harker’s world of dark avant-garde trickery. We live in a time of chill-out vibes and constant low-level terror, and Rest Symbol’s music reflects this back at us, snatches of beauty and calm (“Twelfth Hour”) rubbing up against horror-movie Muzak (“Darkness Settles In Perception”). “Ascending Shadows” pairs softly cooing vocals with eerie synth-drift, like a beautiful pair of lips smiling to reveal blackened teeth. You should allow yourself to fall into Rest Symbol’s gentle embrace, just be sure to take a shower immediately after. 
Sandwell District has gone through two phases: that of being highly influential to techno writ large, and that of everyone talking about how influential they are. This is the first techno album I’ve gotten that uses a Billboard quote on the hype sticker (“Sandwell District’s influence on underground techno can hardly be overstated”), and it’s gotta be at least a little annoying to have everyone talking about your overwhelming influence when you just want to make aggressive, precise, emotional techno music with your mates. End Beginnings seems to be the product of such a mindset, the group’s core members Regis and Function teaming up with Mønic, Rivet and Sarah Wreath for an all-hands-on-deck club affair. Chalk it up to whatever, but there’s less of a dimly lit closed-circuit vibe here; “Restless”, for example, busts out all sorts of shakers through its propulsive night-club rhythm. Sandwell District always felt like a purely after-midnight affair, but “Restless” and opener “Dreaming” allow for a crack of sunlight to sting their vampire skin. The majority of End Beginnings, however, is dank and sexual in a Rick Owens way, the dual acids of “Citrinitas Acid” and “Hidden” adding new-beat drama and eerie sensuality to their concrete techno forms. Ending on a stirring tribute to their sadly fallen friend and colleague, “The Silent Servant”, End Beginnings doesn’t reinvent, dramatically influence or shock the current state of techno music. It’s simply Sandwell District being Sandwell District, same / different as it ever was. 
Shit & Shine have entered their twenty-first year as a recording artist, and have sounded like at least twenty-one bands since that time. Craig Clouse has been at the helm since day one, and has presented the project as stoner / doom / techno / dubstep / minimalist / maximalist / noise / punk / noise-punk / electronic / drone throughout that time, kind of like a modern-day Butthole Surfers sans the body-painted nudity and inexplicable MTV hit. About a million records have been released, even though I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say the band name out loud, but maybe that’s because it’s not the sort of thing you say in polite company. Mannheim HBF is one of the newest Shit & Shine offerings, and as expected, it’s unexpected. Across four sides of twelve-inch vinyl, Clouse loops short rhythmic snippets until they build out into something else entirely… imagine Powell’s simplistic, chopped-up post-punk patterns extended, Water Damage-style, out beyond the horizon. It’s like footage of someone having a seizure drastically slowed down so that it looks like they’re performing avant-garde choreography. I love when music transcends a nervous tick into extended-release hypnosis, and that’s what I’m getting from the similarly-minded tracks of Mannheim HBF. I have to wonder, might a novel release like this get a little more traction in the world if it wasn’t released under such an aging and vulgar moniker? Tough luck, I guess: this is Shit & Shine. 
Respectable non-corporate pop music can be hard to find these days, so I’m offering you Sydney’s Skeleten. Mentalized is his second album, and its mix of well-labored studio details, heartfelt emotion and general-purpose pop enjoyability is an easy pleaser. If Phil Collins signed to Ghostly International, you’d probably get a similar result, electronic music that avoids pre-sets without seeking any sort of “experimental” tag either. I’m reminded of here-then-gone UK singer Jamie Woon, or a less star-powered Seal maybe… you know, well-dressed, strong-but-sensitive men who remain fully unknowable even if they end up on the Batman soundtrack. If these men are at all toxic, it’s mostly an inward toxicity, which might be the best we can hope for. Skeleten can trade tunes with the best of ’em, honestly – I did not think I’d ever want to hear any song called “Viagra”, let alone one where the chorus goes “violence is Viagra” over and over, but man, he did the unthinkable. I’m jamming it here, waving my hands over my head and stomping like I’m a background dancer in a stage production of Rent. Guitars appear but it’s not guitar-centric, dance beats permeate but it’s not a club record… like I said, sophisticated pop in direct opposition to the AI slop this genre of music is poised to become. 
Spy maintain their status as one of the top-tier three-letter hardcore bands of the post-Covid era, entering the scene with typical knife-and-chain flash-tattoo cover art and stompy, mosh-catering riffs. Their art has evolved – the smoky K-car headlights on Seen Enough‘s cover take me back to idle high-school parking-lot nights in a very cool way – while the music remains typical for Spy’s current time and place. Half-time breakdowns act as verses, and the metallic chug wields a crustier hardcore demeanor care of frothy, unintelligible vocals and a lack of melodic theatrics, or really much of any melody at all. I’ve yet to catch a Spy riff that wasn’t yoinked from the recycling bins of Gulch, Hoax or Trapped Under Ice, and while hardcore-punk has always succeeded at turning trash into treasure, none of these songs offer much in the way of novelty or thrill. That said, I’ve never seen Spy live, and I acknowledge that hardcore-punk is more of a living, breathing entity than say, pop-ambient or desert-psych. The art-form clicks when you’re in a sweaty room first-hand experiencing it, so perhaps by sitting at home listening to a record, I’m only getting a one-dimensional perspective of Spy’s whole deal. How many of my formative hardcore bands’ records would’ve held up if I had not seen the bands live? Imagine trying to explain the greatness of No Justice to someone by only sharing their lackluster seven-inch EP… it just wouldn’t work. And yet, while I concede these points, I can’t shake the thought that Seen Enough might simply be an unremarkable record no matter how you slice it.
René Pawlowitz AKA Shed has deservedly earned significant respect as a German techno stalwart, mine included. One of his appealing peculiarities is the staggering number of aliases his wall-cracking techno is delivered under – let’s add Storm On Earth to that hefty stack of monikers. I’ve been spinning Storm On Earth’s debut EP a bunch since it came out, and while I am not an authorized historian of René Pawlowitz, I can’t quite figure what sets these four Storm On Earth tracks apart from Shed (or Wax, or The Traveler, or…). They all bear his hallmark of brash, pounding rhythms, mixed up-front and center, there’s no doubt about that. Two-syllable vocal samples, thunderous synth pads and ominous background melodies are all true to his typical form as well, recalling the harder end of ’90s club techno (ala Jeff Mills and Underground Resistance), raving as countercultural practice that made mass-marketing difficult (intentionally or otherwise). Storm On Earth is less adventurous in that regard – perhaps his lens here was more towards the past than the future – but Pawlowitz is an experienced master of his craft, Storm On Earth being the newest sonic toolset for nights where condensed sweat drips from cement warehouse ceilings. 
Take a quick look at the cover of this record and tell me, does it look like TOTAL COW to you? I can’t be the only one seeing it! No offense to Total Con, but Total Cow would be a sicker name… makes me think of the Lärm / Stanx split, which I should probably think about more often. Total Con is the solo offering from British hardcore busybody Bobby Cole, who plays in The Annihilated and runs the Brainrotter Records label. Like many of these “hardcore guys doing a one-man hardcore band” records, Total Con goes fast and hard and one-directional, a smash n’ grab of Pick Your King, F.U.’s, Battalion Of Saints and Genetic Control, recorded with a roughed-up, home-studio sound befitting first-wave hardcore-punk. I’m going to assume this isn’t a case of Cole struggling to find Total Con bandmates so much as him having an abundance of hardcore song ideas slamming around in his skull and needing to expel them in their immediate and feral states. That said, the beauty of doing a solo project is that you can punkify “Riders On The Storm” by The Doors if you want and no one can stop you (it’s the last track here). It’s a little surprising how American this sounds, Cole’s vocals included, but let’s be honest, hardcore-punk is one of the few positive things America has bestowed upon the rest of the world, and Cole seems to be interested in getting it right here. If you are following that specific tradition, sounding like a teenager from Maumee or Orange County in 1982 is a feature, not a bug. 
Not for the weak, nor from the bakery, Yellowcake are Phoenix’s burliest crust unit, offering no unexpected sonic influences or half measures, simply six more tracks of noisy, hardcore crust-punk. The songwriting recalls Doom, whereas the recording style recalls Gloom, which is kind of funny if you think about it… you know, doom and gloom. D-beats are launched like drone missiles, not even a pumice-based soap could scrub the filthy guitar sound clean, and the vocals opt for a traditional, no-effects-needed throat scrape. I find myself raging under surveillance cameras to the noisy intro and slappy d-beat of “Vinyl Chloride Rain” (complete with sing-along chorus!) and wondering how many times the drummer played along to Framtid’s Under The Ashes in an unventilated basement practice space in order to pull off the rolls on “Maelstrom” and “Blood Soaked System”. Politically-oriented hardcore this raging always hits, but feels more pertinent than ever in this time of overwhelming global turbulence and cruelty. It’d be nice if the members of Yellowcake took things a step further and initiated their own violent uprise against the oppressors of their choice, but until then we can add this to their little stack of impressive seven-inch EPs. 
The music of Brooklyn’s YHWH Nailgun (short for You’re The Man Now Dog Nailgun) is a revelation. Rock music, or at least rock instrumentation, is extremely difficult to modernize in any meaningful fashion (and it’s usually best when rockers don’t bother trying), but YHWH Nailgun hit on something immediately distinctive and original with their debut, workshopping it over the past five years or so before actually putting out a record. Other bands take notice, this is a great way to do it: keep your demos private and blow us away when you’re fully formed! Their sound is driven by the stunningly propulsive drumming of Sam Pickard, who seems to own two cymbals and two dozen toms. His beats are comprised of Zach Hill fills, repeated over the blindingly-bright synth tones, alien-sounding guitar swells and the yearning sore-throat vocals of Zach Borzone. In my mind, this is what I wished Battles sounded like before I heard them, yet it’s also the first band to remind me of the excellent Carnivorous Bells, thanks to the tightly-wound rhythms that burst like toy snakes from a can over unorthodox melodies and a gruff singer impervious to the dazzling nature of his bandmates. They blaze through these ten tracks in like twenty minutes, as if they were a punk band, and maybe they are. Released on the always ahead-of-the-curve British electronic label AD 93, it’s a masterful coup for all involved. I would print this review in flashing red text to alert you to its must-hear status if I knew how, so instead I will just say: highest recommendation!
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