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Maruja

Pain to Power
Music For Nations (2025)

ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Look Down on Us”, “Born to Die”, “Break the Tension”, “Trenches” Ahead of their 100 Club appearance this September, Maruja’s latest release, 2025’s debut album Pain to Power – following a slew of six EPs, reveals awe-inspiring experimental rock clashed with muddy yet always melodious free jazz. Eclectic would be putting it mildly. In amongst all that, … Read more

Onelinedrawing

RAINBOWMACHINE
Iodine (2026)

I grew up listening to the acoustic side of onelinedrawing. Those stripped-down Jonah Matranga songs had a way of making everything else disappear, often needing little more than a guitar, a voice, and an honest melody to completely pull you in. That's still the version of onelinedrawing that immediately comes to mind for me, so with Matranga having been relatively … Read more

Professor and the Madman

Dreamworld
FullerTone Records (2026)

ALBUM HIGHLIGHTS – “Brand New World”, “12 Strings and Tambourines”, “Adams Street”, “Temple of Madness” It’s rare to find these days. A band (or maybe supergroup, in this case) that defies all genre boundaries and just…creates. Alfie Agnew (Adolescents, D.I.) and Sean Elliott (D.I., Mind Over Four) are familiar names from Orange County’s early 80s hardcore and psych-punk scenes, but … Read more

Chat Pile

Who Loves The Sun
Flenser (2026)

If Chat Pile were a film, they would be a dark thriller. The kind that builds tension until the end and, once we reach the third act, still might not ever show the killer. It's plodding and intense and, while I just pulled out a genre reference, the best thing about the band is how much they defy conventional musical … Read more

Generacion Suicida

Hombre Nuevo
Vitriol (2026)

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

Karen Dió

Fugaz
Hopeless (2026)

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

Real Numbers

Was It Always This Way
Slumberland Records (2026)

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

200 Words Or Less

Alien Nosejob

How A Mosquito Operates
Anti Fade, Iron Lung (2026)

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

Cancer Bats

Give Me Dirt
Marshall Amplification PLC, New Damage records (2026)

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

Book Review

Tyler Sonnichsen

The Dead Milkmen
J-Card Press (2026)

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

Opus Kink

The Sweet Goodbye
So Recordings (2026)

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

Sludgeworth

Second Time Around
Red Scare Industries (2026)

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

Social Distortion

Born to Kill
Epitaph (2026)

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

Big Circle

Big Circle
Independent (2026)

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

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