Anomaly - demo

Scorched-earth queer feminist d-beat from Chicago. Channeling pain into sonic murder, twisting and turning on the tipping point when the aggregative weight of constant frustration and oppression snaps into violence. They are incredibly, monumentally tired of your bullshit, and sometimes that manifests as a pure rager, Chronicles of an Apologist or TLC No Scums, which run with the unstoppable abandon of violence long-suppressed, other times that turns into a dry dismissiveness, tossing the shitty, the unthinking, the self-righteous poser fuckheads carelessly aside, as on the untitled second track, sourly intoning "I know you are well read, I read your zine on inclusibity and how you don't eat honey but I'm still not impressed." over an ugly noise track, disgust as ambience, peeling feedback. No quarter given, brutal realities, jock arseholes, worlds of unacceptable shit, cathartically burnt in the lyrics, fantasies of violence enacted in the music, bats to knees, revenge kills, street justice, blood worn as triumph and trophy, all that dirt that you swallow daily vomited back up here in a hatesick purge, in stomping thick noise-punk crunches, in searing crashercrust flurries, in perfectly vicious shifts of tempo and kicks of squealing discord, muddyboot bass tones. PS I Love You is the one that pulls this violence into positive force, affirmation, and even then the music kicks itself apart and then gets dragged back out of the chaosmurk and disorder by the hardhearted drive of the drums. "You are real and you are not a burden/Your anger is valid/Her feelings of inmasculinity/His insecurities and our queer identities//Nobody knows your body more than you do/and nobody has the right to control you." Powerful shit in every way.
 

The Floor Above - Bishop

Murky messy shit that sears, 20 tracks of repulsive din to put you on edge with the nasty auralities ranging from the industrial accident garage punk jams on Broken Jaws from to hardcore rushes like Bullshit March, noise rock emergencies like Sunk, stumbling apocalyptic wanderings like Cave, PV-brief snatches of sharpsweet guitar stabs on Unconscious, hitting repetitive Overkill rhythms on Clone, it takes all darting shapes of guitar noise, from the furious and unbuckled thrash, to the skidding high whips of poppy punky scratch, and drags them all through this uncomfortable dingy shitscape, the torturous noise and ugliness acting as the agglutinative agents, merging, melding these diverse parts into one sore whole. Broken music that comes in fits and starts, that grinds and guts, snakes out of control, the sound of defective machine parts sparking with noise and hate, wired with shoddy methods (negative/negative connections), letting the bugs and jumps and misfires run riot, and the groans and grunts reaching through the cacophony, reaching, retching. Reaving. Scrape the metal bones of their rust and stretch a thin sheet of vulcanised rubber across them, let that golem live. Send it to play with martial feedback in toxic places unfit for life and hear it scream as the engine ghosts come out to watch. An unsettling dark slab of weirdo loner hardcore.

Thee Mighty Fevers - Fuck'In Great R'n'R

It may have come to your attention that Guitar Wolf are the greatest fucking band in the world? It may have also come to your attention that Teengenerate are, similarly, the greatest fucking band in the world. Thee Mighty Fevers are a band that sounds like these bands, and, due to Guitar Wolf and Teengenerate being, respectively, the greatest fucking band in the world and the greatest fucking band in the world, this is fucking great. Blasting rock and roll jacked-up and let out in deadly killingfloor boogies, shakin it way too fast, rolling on that garage punk theeeee, smashing through 13 done-in punk kicks of spit and thunder in 20 minutes of zombies and rockers and punk jackets, fury and riots and renegade brawls. The bass rumbling, the drums crashing and the guitars wheeling about in motorcycle burning, yelps and yaps above the din, 1-2-3-4s and cool oh-oh-ohs, lost in the manic collisions of rock and roll climbings, punknoise descents.

 

Rats Blood - Punks is Mutants

Frightening depressive rawpunk from Ireland. Following on from their eight track demo, which screamed "This country's died a thousand times/Look at the past/Look back and laugh" and proclaimed "Ireland is falling apart. Stick together. Up the Punks." This is another potent melding of bleak futures with punk strength, riding Totalitar coarseness and Bastard blare up to the edge of the abyss. Rats Blood's is a world of monsters, of sadists in power, of invisible prisons, forces so malignant as to read demonic, drugs and nuclear threat and corporate neglect and the legitimised savagery of police violence as cruel looming titans, consuming the world.




No Exit is pure pain, Socio-Apathy pure rage. Heroin is as frustrated with the lack of empathy and easy moralising as it is angry with the dulling scourge of opiates: "I have friends/Who've fought wars alone/Who the fuck/Are you to judge?" Therein lies the resistance, cos though these soul-eating evils are big bad motherfuckers, there's no reason to succumb to their logic, to treat them as a just leveler, like the guilty always get arrested and the innocent always go free, like the poor deserve to be poor. Rats Blood refuses to be caught in the sway of the late-capitalist sanctimony, it refuses to join the righteous who will pave the road to hell will good intentions and a daddy-knows-best stripping of agency. Because, as it may roar on No More Fukushima, we are caught in "Arrogant human ambition/Mindless march into hell" Rats Blood will survive, they will hold it down, because they're punks. And PUNKS IS MUTANTS. GISM as tetragrammaton, their deep violent weirdness as a staging post in an expedition in the futuredark. Rats Blood live in a hateful world and are forged in that hate, ready to breathe in the toxic air and let it feed a toxic heart. "We will survive in the blistering heat/We will survive in the snow/We will survive in the blistering heat/Because we're scum". Do not gleam but ooze, slither between cracks, lurk like sneakthieves, a scabrous underbelly built for disdain. Punks as pestilent avengers, transforming the interior chaos of No Exit into a scabby armour, the world drowning in filth and punks as sewer creatures, swimming free, ready for the wave to come. In each uncomfortable future or fantastic dystopia, from Futurama to Demolition Man to The Wind Singer, Metropolis, there are basement dwellers, who survive, who live down there in the gloom. That's Rats Blood place, from where they lay out six tracks of anguish and excoriation, six tracks of unflinching raw punk tearing at the shames of the world, laying them bare with apocalyptic clarity.

Pistol Joke - We Just Shit

Superspeed punk bouncing up and down with drunken momentum. Fuzz cut with squeaks and packed with rough idiot force while impressionistic manglings of language scream at you. "Fuss in Drunk!! Kick you!!". "Broken English. Sorry..." reads the liner notes, not apologising however for breaking eardrums, reveling in its chaos, its broken music, toddler tantrums and beery confidence swirled together in simplistic noise and pogo-punk squalls. An abrasive idiocy constructed on a runaway train. "Non stop drunk punk!! Non stop chaos punk!!"