Fury, alienation and anxiety are key emotions in the punk and post-hardcore canon. For Tunic, those feelings are not just essential, they drive them. On Exhaling, they deliver a massive set of 23 songs injected with visceral themes. David Schellenberg roars and snarls lyrics of coping with stress and the vexed duality of oneself.
With the detached noise of Carnivorous Plants and the upcoming Health Plan (mems of USA Nails) albums leading 2021 for the label, Nim_Brut are ready to introduce themselves further via Deprived of Occupation and Pleasure We Feast, a compilation of the label’s artists featuring entirely unreleased material.
BIG|BRAVE didn’t set out to be one of the world’s most riveting experimental metal bands, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to them. Each release has absolutely radiated discomfort. Vital appears to push their approach to its limit, leaning into their well-oiled combination of sinewy vocals, slow rhythms, and twin-guitar sheets of sound.
Kibby are getting ready to release their second full length of the stay-at-home era. The band’s sophomore album, Blabracadabra, is due out May 14th via Forged Artifacts (Half Stack, Dweller, Alexei Shishkin), and aside from a great title, the album delivers a great deal of silky psych-pop, both cosmic and full of home-brewed soul.
Constellations is the sophomore album from Vermont quartet Clever Girls who combine dusty Americana influences with bursts of psychedelic noise mixed in. Their songs have a deep-rooted bounciness in them that combines with a spiky lyrical bent to produce ecstatic moments that have real emotional depth.
It’s not often a band gets harder and lower-fi with time--not without sounding contrived, anyway--but on their new LP II, Japanese post-punk band M.A.Z.E. tap into their hardcore influence with unqualified success. II is faster, furiouser, and more fun, filling in singer Eriko’s vocals with fuzz and throwing some real punch behind guitarist Tatsuya’s oscillating riffs and scorching chord swipes.
Mesh are an awesome new post-punk band from Philadelphia. Having released a three song demo back in 2019, the band’s official self-titled debut EP is due out May 21st via Born Yesterday Records. The record is tightly wound, with hard and jittery rhythmic coils and guitars that peel away at the foundation.
At the end of this month Austin, Texas’ Space Tan are set to release their sophomore album, Inti Raymi, via ATH Records. The band, comprised of Gianni Sarmiento, Savanah Shanks, Ray Garza, Ray Flynt, and Wesley Maffly-Kipp, make music that’s fuzzy, at times psychedelic, and definitely steeped in home spun power-pop.
Through its twelve tracks and 39 minutes, ULTRAPOP offers nothing more than the absolute best. It’s a fantastic, futuristic, and forward-thinking emulsion of “what we know pop to be” and “what pop can be” from the heavy side of the aisle. It’s simultaneously grandiose, gruesome and glamorous while never evoking notions of elitism.
Carnage is contemplative. Lyrically it is the reflections of a prominent artist reacting to our suddenly changed lives. It soundtracks our failing world. Thoughts come and go and recurring themes build and connect from song to song. It would feel like a stream of consciousness record if it weren’t so refined.
Chicago’s experimental pop polymaths Nature’s Neighbor are set to return with another full length, the eclectic and worldly, O t h e r s i d e. Due out May 14th, the album truly has no boundaries, rippling from synthetic laptop-pop to progressive folk and warped R&B with everything else in between touched upon for good measure.
Hanson sets his sights towards a sound inspired by locales both arid and vast. Songs move at a patient pace, often glacial and restrained, though always with the feeling that there’s always something up his sleeve. These are songs that evoke desolate environs; high deserts, each song a rest-stop at the edge of civilization.
