This is not an album of hope because these are rarely hopeful times, rather Buice’s aim seems to be catharsis by way of some of the most inventive noise rock this year. Their sound is a hurricane of angular guitars, crushing bass, and rapid-fire drums, with bass player/lead singer Hayden Locke's voice echoing out across the storm.
Toronto punk outfit Life In Vacuum have a full dance card for 2024 so far. Later this month, the Canada-by-Ukraine trio set out for a great big North American tour; a multi-coast trek you don’t see too often nowadays. Before they hit the road, the band has shared their latest ripper “Soul Crusher” via the always reliable Born Losers Records.
Mary Jane Dunphe’s debut has been a long time coming, the musician and poet has been making waves within the underground for the better part of a decade. Dunphe’s voice has appeared across a swathe of cult acts, always sounding as impressive as it is unique. Yet on her debut, Dunphe sounds her most fully formed and brilliant yet.
Aunt Katrina’s Hot, out via Pittsburgh label Crafted Sounds, feels like letting loose after hours, blasting music over the office intercom and sneaking your friends in to dance. It’s all the marshmallows in the bowl of Lucky Charms that stick in your teeth, with its Y2K computer game nostalgia and sweaty danciness.
With their self-titled album out in just a few weeks, it would seem that Austin’s Porcelain aren’t holding any punches. The band’s first full length, due February 16th via Portrayal of Guilt Records is jagged and rampant, an album that seems to burst at the seams, a missive of explosive peaks and dynamic arrangements.
Hailing from Champaign, IL, Hum always provided more substance to their recordings than any hit single might suggest. For this reason, the re-release of their catalog on vinyl – Electra 2000, You’d Prefer an Astronaut, Downward is Heavenward, and Inlet – is deserved and will hopefully give them renewed attention.
Historically, Vastum’s signature flavor of lyrical blasphemy centered around sins of the flesh taken to disgustingly perverse extremes and communicated via gratuitous and cavernous death metal. Inward to Gethsemane shifts the focus of its subject matter from the visceral profanity of sex to the suffocating, metaphysical anguish of religion.
It's Sorted is the fourth full length from LA’s Cheekface, another building block of their unique approach to sing-speak vocals and melodies that refuse to leave your head. Greg Katz and Amanda Tannen have mastered writing ear-worms, continuing to charm and surprise audiences with songs that poke and prod at the world around them.
“Will Get Fooled Again” is the latest single off SAVAK’s upcoming album, Flavors of Paradise, releasing on March 1st. The track courses with a surf rock groove, upon their trademark post-punk, and is laced with minor key guitar lines. “Will Get Fooled Again” provides an ebb of respite from the band members’ backgrounds.
There have been more than enough high highs and low lows to go around since Rick Rude’s last album, and yet, Laverne feels like a celebration. It’s a record that revels in the glow of family and friends, remembering the best of times, the moments of pure joy, but it’s also mindful that we all need support to maintain stable footing.
Warm Dust, the sophomore album of Silt, takes place in the liminal season where blossoms have yet to defrost, the earliest day of spring. Ben Currotto’s initial vision of stripped, acoustic focus – metaphorically, the aftermath of the 2018 album Cold Clod Breaks Up, was transformed into a dynamic gathering of this new five-piece band.
On new single “Hope For Rain,” the band channels the kinetic force that defined their earlier records into a more harmony-saturated, fuzz-laden sound. In the same vein as previously released tracks “Mother Mary” and “Self Control,” their latest single blends melancholic melodies and pedal steel into the group’s usual mix of heavy guitar.
