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Our latest album reviews, featuring the records we've most enjoyed (or not) over the past few weeks.

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Browse our album reviews according to score: Highest (9.5/10 or more) or Lowest (2/10 or less)

Groupie

Ephemeral
HANDSTAND RECORDS (2021)

This is music for a cloudy day. Titled Ephemeral, Groupie’s debut full-length is moody and fleeting and, to me, delivers a dream-like quality at its best moments.The songs are driven by a rhythmic staccato approach that has a hushed, sing-song quality and occasionally mixes it up with a call-and-response tandem approach. The guitars establish the tone with clean, pristine vibes that cut through foggy basslines. Sometimes that bass pushes to the front; it’s a back-and-forth sunshine vs. fog feeling over the 10 songs.The press sheet shouts out influences like Sleater-Kinney and The Breeders. Initially I was skeptical that those two bands had much overlap, but Groupie finds a way in those tempo shifts to sound like each of those influences equally. There are also hints of latter-era The Clash and Sonic Youth’s hushed vocals.As a big Breeders fan, the dreamier songs like “Thick As Glue” and “Daleko” grab me the most. The vocal tradeoffs and dynamic shifts in “Thick As Glue” are the standout on the album, capturing that Breeders atmosphere but with something of a post-rock wave-and-crash emotional climax that takes place throughout the song. I wish the whole record did this because it’s both beautiful and powerful. It’s … Read more

Buggin

Brainfreeze
Flatspot Records (2021)

Back in the early and mid-2000s, there was a subset of seminal hardcore bands that brought a particular brand of … Read more

Safety

Greetings From the Sunshine State
Jetsam-Flotsam (2021)

Safety are far from a new band, but they’re new me. Heck, Greetings From the Sunshine State even sounds like … Read more

Tribulation

Where the Gloom Becomes Sound
Century Media (2021)

This is not the record that I would want to be Tribulation's swan song. However, if that ends up being … Read more

LMI

Excess Subconscious
HANDSTAND RECORDS (2020)

Oh my god, where should I start with this one? Saying you’re something doesn’t make you that thing! Just because … Read more

DeeCracks

Serious Issues
Pirates Press (2021)

DeeCracks is not exactly new to the punkrock scene. Starting out as The Cretins in 2003, rebranding themselves to DeeCRACKS … Read more

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One from the archives

Bernays Propaganda

Vtora Mladost, Treta Svetska Vojna
Moonlee Records, Geenger Records, Pop Depresija, Ill in the Head, Balkan Ve (2019)

Nothing is certain except that everything will change. The fact that change is one of the only things you can count on in life is sometimes hard to deal with. Some bands present you a different nuance of the same sound on each album, which can result in the complaint they release the same album again and again. Some bands go with the flow and just release music they feel like making. This is an adventurous path: you may win some fans, but you also might lose them along your route.The past few weeks I have listened to Vtora Mladost, Treta Svetska Vojna (2nd youth, 3rd world war) over and over again. It made me philosophical about the change in their musical course and changes in general. My relationship with … Read more

More album reviews

The Dirtiest

Sovranista
Slovenly (2021)

Uno- Due- Tre- Quattro! Wowza, that’s a spicy meat-a-ball! A bubbling pot of Marky Ramone primo pasta sauce with a healthy dose of Calabrian Chillies will have this handful of Italian punk Rock traveling down your gullet, down to the cauldron of acid-eating liquids, and catapulted back up like a gigantic slingshot of acid reflux. Buzzsaw Johnny Ramone blistering cheese … Read more

Weekend Dads

Future Hangs
It's Alive (2020)

Sometimes it all comes together, even when you weren’t trying.I picked up this EP for review based, more or less, on its label – It’s Alive – which has released a lot of enjoyable records over the years. Then I thought, you know, this voice sounds like Future Girls. When you listen to the kind of DIY punk I do, … Read more

Jim Ruland

Do What You Want - Bad Religion
Hachette Publishing (2020)

Bad Religion recently rode an extensive virtual bonanza, where they celebrated their fortieth anniversary with a series called “Decades”. i.e. four episodes where the band played songs live from each decade since the 1980s streamed from The Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles and accompanied by interviews. Watching the first two episodes reminded me of how much Bad Religion coined my … Read more

Nopes

Djörk
Magnetic Eye Records (2021)

Nopes play that brand of melodic noise rock that pummels its listener in the face. It’s aggressive and abrasive, with big riffs, lots of feedback and barked vocals. The aggression sets the tone, but the nuance underneath the noise is what sets it apart from influences like The Jesus Lizard or Am Rep, with a base of Hot Snakes.While noise … Read more

Various Artists

Raging Nathans/Reaganomics - Midwest Duress
Rad Girlfriend/Red Scare Industries (2020)

2020 was a rough year -- so rough that I somehow stumbled across two different EPs from last year that end with songs about removing people’s faces. With that noted, I’m certainly curious what abstract and gory trends 2021 will bring…Anyway, Midwest Duress features Raging Nathans (Ohio) and Reaganomics (Illinois). Raging Nathans play modern pop-punk with a strong ‘90s influence. … Read more

Mars Addict

Lamecoaster
Electric Funeral Records (2020)

Mars Addict from São Paulo, Brazil released their debut album Lamecoaster last summer. Summer seems the right time for a record like this. I listened to it a lot on my morning walks the past week. For the first time in months we’ve had sun here. It really feels like spring all of a sudden. And Lamecoaster just added to … Read more

Max Brzezinski

Vinyl Age: A Guide to Record Collecting Now
Hachette Publishing (2020)

Carolina Soul Records should ring a bell with anyone seriously into collecting vinyl as it is one the largest record sellers both in the third dimension as well as online along with having cultivated its own radio show and a far reaching social media presence.Vinyl Age sheds light on how the record collecting game has changed since the advent of … Read more

Mikey Erg

Mikey Erg
Rad Girlfriend Records (2021)

Mikey Erg deserves an honorary degree from somebody. The projects he fronts all have a healing, therapeutic quality, which is something we all need as the calendar flips.Billed as a “return to punk” after doing solo singer-with-a-guitar thing, the self-titled record is a statement that begins with its Clash nod cover. It’s loud and direct. It’s personal in that unique … Read more

The Lurkers

The Boys In The Corner-7”
Damaged Goods (2021)

Formed in 1976 in West London, The Lurkers have been projecting, pontificating, poignant punk rock and catchy chorused songs for 40-plus years. Currently comprised of three original members being Pete Stride, Nigel Moore and Esso. This is the second single to come off the 2020 album Sex Crazy with an unreleased track. Record Collector nerd alert the 7” is also … Read more

City of Industry

False Flowers
Amerikan Aesthetics (2020)

City of Industry is a hardcore band with their toes in a lot of corners of the scene. False Flowers is the third full-length from the Seattle band and the press sheet says it’s for fans of artists as diverse as “Ceremony, Dystopia, His Hero Is Gone, Converge, [and] Pixies.” That seems about right. This is heavy, but with mixed … Read more

James Kennedy

Noise Damage: My Life as a Rock'n'Roll Underdog
Eye Books (2020)

Noise Damage is the personal account of James Kennedy on his trials and tribulations navigating his evolution and experiences with the music industry, which saw him rise, become revered and headhunted before the phonographic industry ultimately crashed and imploded.Familiarity with James Kennedy, his oeuvre or his band Kyshera is not a pre-requisite for being instantaneously drawn into the maelstrom that … Read more

Stiff Richards

State Of Mind
Drunken Sailor (2021)

I’m doing my damnedest not to judge this book by its cover, because Stiff Richards is far and away the worst band name I’ve heard in some time.With that out of the way, they say punk is an angry genre. Sometimes that’s in the lyrics, sometimes the shouting, sometimes the overall sonic impression. This is the latter. It’s short and … Read more

Good Friend

The Erin Rose EP
Red Scare Industries (2020)

And the prize for hardest to search for online bandname goes to Good Friend from Belfast. Nah, just kidding, I can think of harder to find bands. No comes to mind or On. As if they don’t want you to know they exist at all. We are not discussing other bands though, we are gathered here today to discuss the … Read more

Alex Ross

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
Harper Collins (2020)

Richard Wagner and his oeuvre cast a big shadow in every sense of the word.In a time and age where the ostracism of cancel culture and systematic boycotts is prevalent, the question is if artists like Wagner, whose success was in large amounts due to the political relevance from 1933-45 and his anti-Semitism, are more than merely a guilty pleasure? … Read more

Reviews by score
Browse our album reviews according to score: Highest (9.5/10 or more) or Lowest (2/10 or less)