ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Mam w sobie diabła”, “Zombie”, “Listopadowa noc”, “Porque te vas” Fancy some Polish psychobilly punk? Well, you’re in luck. This is for anyone who takes their classic rock ’n’ roll swing with a heavy dose of horror and dark Western twang, blending rockabilly elements with Slavic folk and chaotic yet mysterious post punk -– all as the clock hits midnight. Throw a female frontwoman duo and a melodic double bass to the mix and you’ve got Horrendum –- marking album number two from the Warsaw five-piece, joint-released through Trash Wax and White Riot Records. It’s a lightning-fast vampire Spaghetti Western –- with most track titles following that same undead, after-dark theme. We begin with “Wskażę Ci droge”, a psychobilly “Ace of Spades” from the first beat that leads into playful snarls and half shrieks to emphasise line endings (twin vocals courtesy of Mona Pepper and Sugar Gabi). It's old-school '50s twang is elevated by a searing solo with plenty of bite -– weaving and winding its way around the rock-steady rhythm. Onto “Mam w sobie diabła” (I Have a Devil Inside Me) -– an album highpoint –- starting off with another pounding riff and soon countered by … Read more
The chemicals are rushing right out of the gate on this one. You start with a cigarette and dive straight … Read more
I grew up listening to the acoustic side of onelinedrawing. Those stripped-down Jonah Matranga songs had a way of making … Read more
ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Brand New World”, “12 Strings and Tambourines”, “Adams Street”, “Temple of Madness” It’s rare to find these … Read more
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The issue that I had with Furnace, the 2011 debut album from Brooklyn's doom metal band Batillus was that it kept losing my interest after the first two songs. Don't get me wrong, I love those first couple tracks and the overall chilling atmosphere of that album, but I just found myself getting sidetracked every time I tried to listen to the entire record. Going into their new album Concrete Sustain. I was hopeful that they would create a full product that would hold my attention from start to finish. Turns out they did.Concrete Sustain begins with a killer opening track, "Concrete." A song that reminds me of early Swans. Especially in the song's use of an odd percussion sample that sounds like a steel trashcan or a broken cymbal. … Read more
On the tail end of Autogramm’s 2018 tour of Mexico (what little I remember of that week now is a lot of pulque and not a lot of sleep) I visited the one punk record store in CDMX that I found via googling where to buy bootleg punk t-shirts. I’d already visited Venas Rotas Discos earlier on the trip and … Read more
Six songs. That's all Karen Dió needs on this EP. Considering the title translates roughly to fleeting, brief, or transient in Portuguese, maybe that's exactly the point. Dió's second EP doesn't hang around long enough to overstay its welcome. It arrives, makes a hell of a lot of noise, throws some gigantic hooks at you, and disappears. But there's considerably … Read more
I feel like this may be the first 12", 10-song release in my collection from Real Numbers, a dreampop meets jangle-indie rock band from Minneapolis. I'm not going to fact check my statement, because I mean it as a metaphor. Real Numbers play exactly what you'd expect based on my short description so far, but there's always something just a … Read more
The one-man band of Alien Nosejob continues to crank out short, angry hardcore in quick bursts. I've lost count of how many records Jake Robertson has now released under the name. I'll just say that while the first couple took some direction changes, the project seems to have found its footing in 1980s-influenced hardcore. With 17 songs in 24 minutes, … Read more
ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Bright Eyes of Gold”, “Give Me Dirt”, “Long Tooth”, “Fools Like You” Almost exactly two years ago, on 8th August 2024, Cancer Bats played Conne Island in Leipzig – a choice they would live to regret. Unbeknownst to them at the time, the centre had slowly become renowned for its radical politics and, more recently, the ban … Read more
When I saw The Dead Milkmen at Toronto’s Diamond Club back in the late 1980s, the floor was a volatile, beautiful mess of colliding subcultures. It was like different species of house flies bumping into one another, wondering what the hell you were doing in the mason jar. You had suburban high school pocket-pen-protector pencil-neck nubile nerds, college radio snobs … Read more
ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Come Over, Do Me Wrong”, “The Sweet Goodbye”, “I Have to Shine My Sunday Shoes”, “Crucify!” Opus Kink sound like nobody else. To call them “jazz punk” is to massively oversimplify it. In fact, there’s not much traditionally “punk” about them. If anything, it’s “noise rock”, but with traces of almost every other genre you could name. … Read more
I never got very into Screeching Weasel and the extended family tree. Ignoring the politics of the matter, the music never really hit that sweet spot for me either. But Sludgeworth were an exception. The band released just one album, that I discovered at least 10years after its release, but seemingly disappeared -- only to resurface after a 2022 reissue … Read more
Rating: 🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🍸🚬 / 10 (8 Tipped Martini Glasses and a Cigarette) Remember that movie Fantastic Voyage, where a miniaturized submarine gets inserted into a person's bloodstream on a mission to clear a blood clot in the brain? Well, consider yourself in luck: I’m infiltrating your brain with my own fantastic journey with Social Distortion, which goes all the way back … Read more
There are plenty of supergroups that exist largely because of the names on the marquee. Big Circle feels different. While Glenn Mercer (The Feelies), Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE), Dave Weckerman (The Feelies), and Dan Francia (Speed the Plough) all bring decades of musical history to the table, this debut EP isn't interested in nostalgia or individual spotlights. Instead, it succeeds … Read more
I’ve been reading Cory Doctorow’s latest book “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI” a scathing review of the current state of artificial intelligence wherein he seeks to pop the AI bubble. In the book’s central metaphor Doctorow identifies the centaur as someone whose work is improved upon by technology vs the reverse centaurs who are competing with and/or … Read more
There’s a form of folk punk that treats every song like a drunken campfire confession with all its ragged shouting and romanticized self-destruction. Then there’s the version that feels mature and more reflective. It’s less interested in glorifying collapse and more concerned with figuring out what comes after it. Kyle Burnett’s Glory Days firmly belongs to the latter category. Best … Read more
“Rufio?! Like from back in the day Rufio?” Those were the words out of my mouth while claiming my next review. I wore out Perhaps, I Suppose as a teenager and my curiosity piqued. It has been 25 years since that album was released and 16 years since we have heard from Rufio at all. Regardless of these facts, we … Read more
The self-titled album from Oddfellows was a long time coming. As in, the band formed in 1994. Now in 2026, they return with founding members Chris Pulliam, Mark Ryan, and Mike Throneberry, plus new addition Peter Salisbury to release their debut album just 32 years later. This lineup means you're going to get a Marked Men reference right away, but … Read more
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