by Dan Goldin
with excerpts from Charlie Bailey, Kris Handel, and Niccolo Porcello
It’s everyone’s favorite time of the year… the middle! Maybe? Maybe not? Who cares, the reason we’re here is because there’s been a lot of music released so far this year and someone on the internet might as well make a list out of it. There’s a lot to listen to, and many of music’s “most esteemed critics” would lead you to believe there’s a general consensus of approved albums that comprise “the best,” but let me tell you otherwise. Everyone has different taste. We all like different things for different reasons and that’s sort of the beauty of music. There’s something for everyone out there, from the mundane and indistinguishable to the experimental and inaccessible (and everything that falls in between)… it’s out there somewhere.
This particular list is a selection of what has been floating my boat, so to speak, presented in alphabetical order. Fifty albums and EPs as well as one incredible split seven inch. It should be stated that this list isn’t necessarily representative of Post-Trash at-large’s opinions, but the ramblings of one round headed music enthusiast. I hope you find something new to you. I hope you find something you love. I hope you find this list “interesting” in any way. I hope you support music and musicians by buying records, going to shows, picking up merch, etc. The “content” era can be exhausting but at least we can dig through the proverbial crates together. - DG
Young
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple
If you only have the capacity for one young art rock band from London that seemingly came out of nowhere to instant (but not overwhelming) buzz per year, let it be 1000 Rabbits. The quintet’s debut, Are We Friends Yet? is the product of two years of experimentation, the songs gestating as the band developed their own direction, a mix of piercing minimalism, heavy rhythmic pulses, itchy strings, and off-kilter structures. Woven together, it’s a stunning introduction to the band, intricate but sparse, raw yet composed, a set of songs that prove 1000 Rabbits know when to lean into a hook and when best to come unhinged. With shades of The New Eves and Black Country, New Road (or maybe even Crumb and Lucrecia Dalt) in their DNA, the band are able to contort textured pop, prog, jazzy rhythms, folk warmth, radiant synths, and a hint of avant-garde expression to create something that’s as engaged as it is accessible. At the heart of their mutant art pop is River Fernandez’s commanding and dynamic vocals, genuinely nimble at times (“Spring Cleaning”) and explosive at others (“White Horse”). Where the band’s evolution will take them is anyone’s guess, but Are We Friends Yet? is a pretty immaculate starting point. - DG
Baklava Industries
Spotify | Apple
As the story goes, “you have now entered Planet Frog,” a new landmark in Action Bronson’s fifteen year rap career (Dr Lecter forever though). While he began paving his own increasingly strange avant-boom-bap lane around the turn of the decade, everything seems to connect this time around, as live instrumentals collide with Bronson’s stream-of-consciousness bars in a way that feels free but focused. Bronson’s best material can often be brash and at times perplexing, but there’s a freedom inherent in that, a swagger that knows no bounds, and in turn sparks an air of extravagance in his rhymes and structures. There’s a genuine musicality to Planet Frog that dips between jazzy loops and psychedelic plumes of smoke, the resulting atmosphere landing like a surrealistic amphibian lounge act courtesy of his live band, Human Growth Hormone. It’s a habitat that feels comfortable for the one and only Dr. Baklava, an alien world where art and hip-hop collide in absurdist fashion. Whether rapping about eating mushrooms at the Knicks game or celebrating with cakes made of dates and almonds, this is pure Action Bronson, unapologetic and unfiltered. - DG
Blushing Grinning Records
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A lot of people will probably treat this album as more of a curiosity between listens of Artificial Go, but Age of Peace’s tranquil and sparse psychedelic folk feels like a balm in stressful times. When mental breakdown feels imminent, Ode To Life arrives with a gentle embrace. The duo of Angie Willcutt and Micah Wu (who both play in the fantastic Artificial Go) trade in the jangle pop and post-punk sound of their main band for something more meditative this go round, but the personality of the band still radiates with a warm glow. Minimalist and direct, Age of Peace make art folk with rolling melodies, lulling vocals, and lo-fi charm. Willcutt’s vocals do much of the heavy lifting, curling and elongating notes as she swoon’s in time with the tape warped melodies to create the most beautiful of acidic fever dreams. With a romantic sense of wonder and a soft elegance to it, Age of Peace pair kaleidoscopic visions with a tender heart. - DG
Train on the Island, the fifth album from New Zealand’s Aldous Harding, is undeniably brilliant and yet after two masterpiece level records (Warm Chris and Designer), it seems to carry with it a feeling of relative restraint. Many repeat listens would prove otherwise though, the magic rewarding patience. While the last two albums tended to jump from one delightfully odd character to the next with buoyant ease, Harding sounds content to occupy a more solid ground this time around. Make no mistake, the songs retain her captivating presence and unbridled charisma, but the overall construction feels at ease. What seems straight forward at first glace though tends to give way, Harding’s songs taking on their own subtle complexity, slinking and sliding into moments where she’s prone to glow. The deeper you dive, the stronger the connection becomes (listen to “Worms” every day for a month and then tell me its not a masterpiece). Of course there’s plenty of immediate charm as well, take for example early singles “Venus in the Zinnia” and espcially “Coats,” the album’s closing track bursting with her signature magnetism, a song that hinges on a deep groove, psychedelic art pop melodies, and poetic irreverence. Like the best of Harding’s songs, she’s shifting between one reality to the next, layering without overloading, inviting you to draw your own conclusions. - DG
Anti Fade / Iron Lung Records
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Two years between albums is a perfectly acceptable amount of time even for the most impatient of fans, but for some reason its felt like an eternity for Alien Nosejob, who has spoiled us with seven great albums over the past eight years. The wait is over though, as Jake Robertson returns with the brilliant How A Mosquito Operates, a record that finds him once again embracing his hardcore roots. The album is brash yet radiant, a set of urgent punk songs that retains a sense of humor even as it scrapes the paint from the walls. The ever shapeshifting Alien Nosejob needs no introduction at this point, and yet each record serves as a re-introduction. Such is the case with this album, another extension of the project’s sound, adopting a crusty d-beat sense of rhythm into the relentless tongue-in-cheek churn. Embodying both carnage and acid tongued fury, Robertson spits out a tornado of riffs and animated venom in rapid fire succession without a moment wasted. - DG
Substitute Scene Records
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The New York Knicks broke their 53 year drought the same year that Anna Altman released their first album in nine years. Coincidence? Who is to say. Annatomic, released back in March was worth the wait, a record that expands on the band’s brilliant 90’s inspired “college rock,” pushing and pulling in new directions while retaining the lived-in magic that rests at the core of their music. Lucia Arias (guitar/vocals) and Christian Billard (drums) have fine tuned their strengths - the warmth of their chord progressions, the shuffling of the drums, the splendor of their hooks, and the subtly knotted structures - building upon those blocks with lush strings, layered detail, and a textural sense for dynamics. Recorded together with Raphael Carleton (who has since joined the band, together with Nika De Carlo), Anna Altman has opted for a less hypnotic approach, instead digging deeper into resonant nuance both expansive and impactful. The pop is poppier, the detours are triumphant, and they’ve never sounded better. - DG
Father/Daughter Records
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There’s a timeless quality to Anna McClellan songs, her lyrics so often encapsulating the experience of being human. There’s unease, regret, empathy, love, a weary sense of realism, and a balance of fragility and strength that all comes together in a rush of grounded understanding. Nearly two years after the release of Electric Bouquet, McClellan reemerged with the surprise release of Space, you big cloud. Recorded over three days in Atlanta when the time presented itself on a cross country trip, McClellan presents another stunning batch of indie folk perfection. Spontaneous and full of heart, the record sees McClellan in a relative space of comfort, the playing giving way to warmth and emotional ease. The lyrics are truly immaculate - from the honky tonk reverence found in “Twirl” to the acceptance of dissolving relationships in “Hot Water” and the wandering nature of “Restless” - compositionally glowing over loose structures with a laid back grace. As McClellan sings on “Roses,” “there’s never been a wrong time to love me, there’s never been a wrong time to love anything”. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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After almost a decade performing as Goo, Beck Zegans decided it was time to move on, throwing caution to the wind in an attempt to evolve her songwriting. Engraving of Armor was recorded in that spirit, a chance to write and record without compromise, to develop ideas and devolve others. Recorded with Julian Fader (Ava Luna) and Alex MacKay (Nation of Language), the trio built from Zegans’ songs, reshaping them with the album in mind, working the pieces together in favor of the greater whole. The end results are stunning, a set of muscular psych folk songs that are as gorgeous as they are expansive. From sustained drifts to walls of immersive art pop, the record careens between turns, bouncing on a motorik pulse one moment and soaring into a dreamy hook the next. “Record Tamer,” one of many highlights, is built on warped synths, sparse melodies, and the type of enormous rhythm that would make Beak> proud. Spiraling around Zegans’ mesmerizing vocals, the song weaves through clouds of smoke with a noir glow. - DG
Momentum Entertainment
Spotify | Apple
Ransom and Boldy James are two of modern hip-hop’s finest lyricists, both painting sharp and vivid portraits of the streets and the hustle that has shaped their worlds, and yet there’s a discernible difference to their styles. Ransom deals with dirt in poetic cadences, reflecting but not necessarily glorifying the drug game while Boldy’s endless bars draw with attention to detail, an encyclopedia of hood tales and dangerous lifestyles. Salvation for the Wicked, produced in full by Nicholas Craven (who has collaborated extensively with both artists), really brings out the best in both Ransom and Boldy James, as the MCs seem to energize one another with conceptual lyrics and verse-trading interplay. While Craven has earned a reputation for “drumless” beats (outside of those embedded in his samples), this record absolutely knocks from the speakers with dusty boom-bap glory - hard beats for harder rhymes. (see also: Boldy James’ Manhunt together with Rome Streetz and Trapper’s Alley 3: Hell Or High Water because well, he can’t be stopped.) - DG
Iron Lung Records
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There’s a palpable sense of energy and grit that collides in each of Consensus Madness’ songs. You could feel it pulsating throughout their self-titled EP back in 2023, and it feels all the more caustic on the band’s first full length, Endeavors. The Chicago based quartet dart through serrated hooks and buzzsaw riffs, bulldozing past the bullshit with a raw enthusiasm. Blending together aspects of blistering hardcore, garage punk, and paint peeling post-punk, the band attack like a hurricane at close range, sweeping us over with dizzying dexterity. For all righteous indignation though, Consensus Madness still sound like a band having fun (gasp), channeling their fury and sociopolitical anxieties into charismatic punk that’s steeped in exuberant personality. While the band stampede and pummel their way forward, the undeniable spark of the vocals adds a new level of charm to the disdain. - DG
Self Released
Bandcamp
If you look at Bo Orr’s music projects on a spectrum that ranges between the cosmic post-punk visionaries Arbor Labor Union on one end and the grindcore legends Dead In The Dirt on the other, then his latest project, Cruciflys, would seem to reside somewhere in the middle. They Became What They Beheld is the debut album from the new Atlanta based trio - comprised of Blind Ouroboros (aka Orr) and the enigmatic rhythm section of Ocular Vitality and R.S (perhaps Arbor Labor Union’s Rob Sarabia), a certified ripper that dips into hardcore and anarcho-punk at times. Heavy and unpolished, there’s a sense of immediacy to every song, pouring with contempt that feels much like a cathartic exorcism from the crusty occult. Built on reckless riffs and a combustible sense of tongue-in-cheek aggression, Cruciflys’ find a way to balance skull crushing savagery and brainy art punk in perfect harmony. - DG
Me Saco Un Ojo Records
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They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but sometimes you can judge a album and its given songs by their titles. For example, “Drowning In Purulent Excrementia,” the lead single from the Bristol, UK based death metal band Cryptworm’s latest album Infectious Pathological Waste, is every bit as distasteful and disgusting as you’d hope it might be. With an incessant avalanche of drums and buzzsaw riffs that seem determined to tear the spine right out from your flesh, the band come oozing out at full speed with a filth and putridity that feels as though it’s been festering for millennia. This sense never lets up through the brutal album, the record swirling like a blood soaked tornado of chainsaws and severed limbs… but there’s also a deep groove to it all. Vomit-induced vocals gurgle and howl with demonic fury and a violent spray of skull crushing decimation on the drums keeps it rotten to their core, pure benevolent gore and filth. - DG
Wharf Cat Records
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For everyone that wishes punk music was a lot less tough and a whole lot freakier, CS Cleaners have delivered the album for you. Three years after their debut EP, the Brooklyn quartet return with their first full length What’s This?, a new gold-standard in no-wave tinged art punk. Without an ounce of posturing, CS Cleaners find themselves locked in to their own bent wavelength, blending together acidic and skronky boogie with the dust and dirt of noise rock, warping it all together into something that feels all too rare. The record is loud, heavy, and undeniably fun, capturing the sound of a band that’s leaning into it’s weirder impulses and let that freak flag fly high and proud. The songs however are never weird for the sake of being weird, there’s a real sense of structure throughout, their songwriting is well defined, and every deranged idea finds its own exuberant place. - DG
DFA Records
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Melbourne’s EXEK have always been a mesmerizing band, their music a deeply hypnotic balm even as they dig into paranoia, depression, and the deterioration of rational thought in the world. They have an innate ability to draw you in their swirling brand of psychedelic post-punk and keep you firmly in orbit, radiant with textures that “morph” more than they “spike”. If EXEK’s music is a surrealist flatline, they’ve perfected the ability to create nuance that’s intricate but never jagged. Prove The Mountains Move, the band’s seventh album, finds Albert Wolski and co. in fine form, mutating between fever dreams of avant-pop and kaleidoscopic disorientation. This far into their discography and EXEK are still getting better with each album. Take album highlight “Arrivederci Back Pain,” a mundane ode to the pitfalls of airports and traveling anywhere by flight, highlighted by lines like “passport holograms are best viewed bending over backwards” and a warning about long-term parking attendants fucking your car. With a deep in the pocket rhythmic groove and guitars that take no discernible shape, it’s quintessential EXEK, built on a hypnotic pull derived without gravity. - DG
Iron Lung Records
Bandcamp
When done right, grindcore as a genre, sounds rampantly deranged, the frantic flailing soundtrack to nightmares both surreal and impossibly terrifying. Portland’s Fake Dust do grindcore right. The band’s full length debut, Decrepitizing Din Of The Cerebral Psyopticon, is an oozing and spewing cavalcade of speed, filth, disgust, and dexterity. They emerge from a world void of subtlety and yet there’s plenty of nuance throughout the album. Bludgeoning riffs and stampeding drums claw and thrash from song to song with more grooves than anything this fast should be capable of. For all the carnage and destruction to be found in their minute long eruptions, Fake Dust are playing with skull cracking attention to detail. The entire record explodes on impact, dismantling our collective anxieties and last shreds of sanity with the force of an earthquake, but just as you settle into its burn and pillage assault, the band start pushing and pulling the tempos, not quite in a sense of respite, but it goes a long way in the structural integrity of their convulsions. Drummer Brennan Butler is operating at a level seemingly beyond human capability, impossibly fast but also dynamic and intricate. Fake Dust just might have made one of grindcore’s all-time classics. - DG
Sad Cactus Records
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The lower forty eight is the debut album from New York City’s Fif, an absolutely jaw dropping record that feels designed to floor the listener, continuously pouring fresh concrete over you as it steadily evolves. Written over the course of fourteen years by Fiona Gurney, the end result is an odyssey of minimalist post-hardcore, stampeding math rock, and gorgeous progressive textures that seem to contract and detonate in equal measure, often with little warning. Gurney’s songs feel as though they could be influenced by the likes of Don Caballero, Slint, Axes-era Electrelane, and King Crimson, and yet Fif’s music doesn’t really sound like any of those bands at heart. The core of the record revolves around a dueling sense of repetition and unpredictability, the song’s themselves luring you into a hypnotic state while fracturing in unexpected directions. This could be one of the year’s best kept secrets (but go ahead and yell about it to anyone who will listen). - DG
Pulverised Records
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After a decade of inactivity, Funebrarum, New Jersey’s most rotten death metal quintet, have returned. Rising from the crypt with their first full length in seventeen years, Beckoning The Void of Eternal Silence captures a new reign of destruction, a labyrinth of cavernous riffs and gut wrenching bellows. While comparisons to early Incantation and Autopsy can be made, the scope of Funebrarum’s latest feels colossal, quaking from rhythmic dirges and blistering guitar leads one moment while regurgitating from rancid momentum the next. Impeccably heavy and surprisingly dynamic, Beckoning the Void seamlessly moves between lurching cosmic doom and grinding skull-cracked intensity, disfiguring and dismembering tempos with a dense clarity. - DG
Substitute Scene Records
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gobbinjr’s songs feel lived in, from the inescapable grooves to the appropriately dazzling production, there’s a sense of comfort. Perhaps crystal rabbit moonshould feel lived in as an album eight years in the making, but if patience is the key, then patience truly is a virtue. With the highly anticipated album released in April, gobbinjr aka Emma Witmer, has refined her sound with a real textural elegance that thrives on minimal compositions. There’s an astounding clarity to it all, cinematic yet close, with a real sense of personal reflection in the songs. While the project has shed it’s once lo-fi roots, it’s done in favor to the songs themselves as gobbinjr slips between bedroom pop and dreamy psych with a perfect back lit glow. “Just A Dream” (one of the year’s best singles) feels like a welcome reintroduction, a reminder that gobbin’s music has a certain idiosyncratic magic. Opening with an ominous beat and eerie keys that wouldn’t sound out of place on a classic Mobb Deep record (as strange as that may seem on paper), the results are mesmerizing, the deep groove and languid pacing entwining itself into the emergence of a bright synth progression and beautifully floating vocals. - DG
Deathgod Corp
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Sort of like a garage punk version of Godzilla, John Dwyer cannot be stopped. The Osees mastermind spits out bands and collaborative projects as he pleases, crushing villages and smoldering cities in the process… or you know, banging heads and melting brains, however you want to look at it. Heathen Axe, his latest band, is everything the world needs right now, blown out, unfiltered, deep-friend psych punk with the volume knobs pushed beyond the red. Together with Tom Dolas (Osees, Mr Elevator) and John Hodge, the band play In the style of Comets on Fire or Ethan Miller’s equally rambunctious Feral Ohms, this is boogie down skull-full-of-acid psych, expansive but primal, caveman punk that bleeds with distortion and reckless grooves. It’s fun, it’s wild, and it’s likely to decimate eardrums live. - DG
Anti Fade Records
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While Institute’s self-titled EP clocks in at less than ten minutes in length, we’d make the argument that these three songs stand among the year’s most essential. The Austin based band are making economical anarcho-punk that favors melodic shifts over sheer bark. The bite is all the more menacing as a result. They’ve always dealt in sharp corners, their songs are intrinsically pointed and raw while brightly swarming around coiled hooks and gluey riffs. Released to coincide with their first ever Australian tour earlier this year, Institute captures the band at their very best, taking aim at aging politicians that seemingly refuse to die of old age, corrupt police forces, gun violence and the daily horrors of our current times. While pulled from a depressing reality, the songs never feels like a slog as Institute spiral into dizzying rhythms and crisp cutting guitars that sit snuggly with the rattled vocal. Over a decade in and Institute keep getting better. - DG
Blues Babe Records
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Jill Scott has returned and she’s never sounded more alive. Arriving eleven years after her last album, To Whom This May Concern feel like a celebration - a celebration of being black, a celebration of being free, and a celebration of making the music that’s in your heart. While best known as an icon of neo-soul and R&B, Jill Scott is also a talented rapper, and there’s hip-hop coursing throughout this album, her spirit taking off on an amorphous voyage of positivity (“Be Great”), the fight for love (“Beautiful People”), and supremely fun yet hard spit bars (“Norf Side”). With production that often recalls the cosmic hip-hop eclecticism of Organized Noize, Jill Scott is brushing it all off, talking her shit, and providing an education for the masses that touches upon economic struggles (“BPOTY”), self-acceptance (“Liftin’ Me Up”), and the way we turn a blind eye to much needed change (“The Math”). To Whom This May Concern is an important record and a dynamic reintroduction to Scott’s music. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Landowner’s monumental fifth LP Assumption finds Dan Shaw and his pugilistic band at their sharpest yet. Throughout Landowner’s discography the band pummel and wail alongside droll lyricism; on Assumption the tension is ratcheted even tighter and thus the band cohere into full sail. “Normal Returns to Normal” is the opus, where an unforgettably catchy progression works its way through the song expanding until it lives inside you as Shaw’s yelps get more and more insistent. Those exhortation’s on Assumption are the miracle of Landowner: on“Expensive Rent” the titular subject matter takes on a claustrophobia, all while Landowner’s unparalleled musical core (guitarists Jeff Gilmartin and Elliot Hughes, bassist Joshua Owsley, and drummer Josh Daniel) play freely, manhandling and manipulating. “Parapet Wall” lives on a knife’s edge, and album opener “Assumption” kicks things off with a right hook. There is not a single wasted moment on this album, among the rarest things you can find. Every track finds Landowner at the apotheosis of the form, before they manage to scale yet higher highs. Go enjoy the ride. - NP
Ipecac Recordings
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We’re still here, mclusky is still here, and that’s reason enough to be grateful. Following last year’s triumphant return to releasing records, the Bristol based trio ever so conveniently whipped up a new EP just in time for their US tour (which was exceptional). It’s a real belter of a release, a record that distills the many charms of mclusky into a quick 13+ minutes of charming art punk rippers. There’s plenty of charisma (“Spock Culture”), plenty of songs to ponder what exactly Andrew Falkous is skewering (“That Was My Brain On Elves”), and lots of deeply knotted rhythms to pleasantly thrash around your apartment to. The highlight comes in the form of “As A Dad,” a hilarious take on the second-banana nature of being a father. It might be extra funny for new fathers (like myself) but the song, with its woozy slide guitar and layers of demented melody finds mclusky at peak catchiness. i sure am getting sick of this bowling alley is anything but a toss away release, it’s mclusky in miniature, a potent punch of irreverence and bludgeoning hooks. - DG
Fire Records
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MEMORIALS always to rise to the occasion. Whenever presented with a challenge, much of which is self-imposed, the duo of Verity Susman (Electrelane) and Matthew Simms (Wire) soar beyond limitations. All Clouds Bring Not Rain, the band’s second studio album, finds the pair experimenting with the capabilities of what vintage recording equipment can offer when you’re restricted from the endless digital realm of constant manipulation. Their self-produced new album was recorded in large part in a barn in the remote woods of France, allowing Susman and Simms to explore the line between surging krautrock, lounge-tinged post-punk, kaleidoscopic folk, 60’s prog, and psych pop in a way that feels impossibly natural and inherently free. Songs like album highlight “Dropped Down The Well” are built on ripping rhythms with gorgeously insistent bass and spring-loaded drum beats, buzzing with propulsive energy and a wildly engaging sense of melody that has become synonymous with Susman’s songwriting. With the constant hum of synths and a scene stealing organ lead, the duo snake around that structure with a radiantly optimistic tonality (especially for a song about being at the bottom of the well). - DG
Headsplit Records
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Ascension, the debut album from Oslo’s Nedgravd, smolders out the speakers with the stench of pure evil. Demonic possession is not far behind. The Norwegian “occult” death metal band (whose members I believe are all still teenagers) have made a debut that sounds profoundly decayed and festering, the record’s savage nature, attention to detail, and lo-fi tape hiss production each a defining element. Brutally ugly and carnal, the quartet lurch and crawl from claustrophobic catacombs to cavernous depraviltiy, shifting structures with neck snapping dexterity and ruthless nuance. Every listen to Nedgravd’s debut offers something new to focus in on, from the anti-sheen of the production, to the terror inherent in their riffs, and the raw unpredictability of the drums. There’s something special about this one, a spew of ancient death metal brilliance that’s been dragged through the dirt. Evil awaits. - DG
Worry Bead Records
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While Boston’s Night Moth began life as the solo project of Squitch’s Emery Spooner, Squitch has since dissolved and Night Moth have triumphantly re-emerged as a quartet, bringing a new life to Spooner’s personal songs. With the release of their self-titled full length debut, the band sound fully formed on a record that has a lot of emotional depth and an unflinching intimacy without ever sounding too heavy handed. Spooner’s melodies rise and fall with a gentle ease, pulling us into somber reflections with a disconnected grace, nimble and free wheeling one moment and complex and tangled the next. Night Moth is wrapped in the profound struggle we’re all going through in our unsettling times, but the nuanced songwriting feels hopeful, or at least dynamic enough not to further any collective depression. With dissonant structures that pair together with sweet melodies and jagged riffs, Night Moth take an adventurous approach to texture even as their songs stay rooted in gentle folk and fuzzy DIY warmth. - DG
Hells Headbangers Records
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Vertebrae After Vertebrae, the third full length from Japan’s Pharmacist arrived without warning. a grindcore record that feels something like a homemade lobotomy. It’s gross, it’s ragged, and languishes in dissection without anesthetics. There’s a lot of textures oozing forward from the duo (who may or may not actually just be one person) and none of them could be considered “friendly”. While their first album was primal goregrind in every regard, their second record opted for a more technical and progressive approach to their splattered attack. WIth Vertebrae, Pharmacist peel back the layers to create their most “accessible” (this is relative) music yet. The album’s grinding tendencies are allowed to wander, bringing their archaic yet medically inclined brand of death metal into knuckle dragging territory (again, this is relative), grinding out buzzsaw riffs that separate the bile from the regurgitation. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it’s a lot more approachable than much of the band’s (gloriously) disgusting catalog, a false ease in decomposition. - DG
Many Hats Endeavors
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There was a time when Porches were one of the rowdier live DIY bands in NYC. Joyously unpredictable, there was a special energy to seeing them live in the early days, bringing ramshackle charm to Aaron Maine’s more dissociative songs. His latest, MASK, recorded to 4-track with warts and all, feels like a callback to those days, a raw look at Porches without the studio sheen, and they’ve rarely sounded better. Crispy and laconic, the record reminds us of the brilliance in Maine’s stripped back writing, a look behind the “mask,” a gritty dive into noisy rippers and perma-stoned lo-fi ballads. Pairing immediate highs with unabashed flubs, Porches present a look into the process, the human element that lives in the heart of their music. Stinging distortion, clipped ideas, bruising shoegaze riffs, candle lit melodies, and Maine’s fried croon all collide together to rub dirt into beauty, and the results are transfixing. From the sustained patience in the verses of “Everyone Goes To Heaven” (a modern Porches all-timer) to the skeletal punk of “Habit” and it’s gluey hook, MASK (a record that really deserves a Bandcamp release) is another fascinating chapter in the project’s ongoing story. - DG
Arcane Dynamics
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There are a lot of bands that take a dynamic approach to their music, but none with the exuberance of London’s Powerplant, a band that has truly never released the same album twice. It’s been nearly a decade since the world was introduced to Theo Zhykharyev’s ever shifting brand of synth punk madness and the project remains as unpredictable as ever. From “egg punk” to dungeon synths and warped and bubbling post-punk, Powerplant keep it interesting by keeping everyone guessing as to what comes next. Bridge of Sacrifice presents a wild ride even by Powerplant’s standards, blending crooning romanticism, caustic synth punk, crusty black metal, and cosmic garage psych to create something oozing and engaging, as strange as it is delightful. It shouldn’t really work and yet it works wonders. “Bridge of Sacrifice” is unapologetically over the top punk rock weirdness (with an overload of good ideas), and all the better for it. - DG
New West Records
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At times it would seem indeed that the music industry has been playing catch-up with Ratboys and their muscular brand of twangy country “college rock”. The Chicago quartet have been perfecting their craft over the last decade, which each successive album a stunning leap in terms of songwriting and Crazy Horse inspired sprawl. With Singing’ To An Empty Chair, they’ve come unglued, letting it rip in a way that pulls from both their country emo roots but also the full blown power of vintage Built To Spill. It’s a set of songs that are innately reflective and heartfelt, with a depth of character to be discovered in Julia Steiner’s lyrics, but most importantly the band have cranked the volume and they’ve come to shred. Their caterwauling twin guitar approach works wonders for the band’s already impeccable songwriting, bringing a live power to the recordings that’s sweet and gritty, gentle but also bursting with distorted joy. - DG
Black Water Records
Bandcamp
Portland’s finest hardcore maniacs return as venomous as ever on Eternal Reek, an EP soaked in filth and depravity. Blasting out six songs in just under ten minutes runtime, the band come straight for the throat, devouring good taste in the name of obliteration. Reek Minds have established themselves as one of the genre’s absolute best and most ruthless over the past six years and they haven’t smoothed any of the metallic edges on Eternal Reek, their music as serrated as ever. With buzzing guitar leads sharp enough to chop heads clean off, the band tear from one rage induced fury to the next, sliding and thrashing their way out of the gutter and into our subconscious. Let it rip and then let it rip again on repeat. This is the hardcore the world needs. - DG
Fire Talk
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The music of Burlington, VT natives Robber Robber packs a lot into condensed packages. The band’s densely layered noise rock is both relentlessly harsh and impossibly catchy, and on their second album Two Wheels Move the Soul they push the outer limits of density. The core songwriting duo of vocalist/guitarist Nina Cates and drummer Zack James, accompanied by guitarist Will Krulak and bassist Carney Hemler, broaden their horizons through a collection of tightly-wound, beautifully noisy gems of modern experimental rock that showcases their devotion to the craft of music-making. Throughout Two Wheels, the band operates in two different modes. The record’s front half is driven by frenetic breakbeats and syncopated funk patterns, like James Brown’s rhythm section was taken from the bandstand and dropped into a futuristic techno-metal setting. “Pieces” pits deep, furious basslines against fuzzy high-end guitar tones against each other in a way that recalls the heaviest selections from Red-era King Crimson. But on the back half, the record’s dark, jittery undercurrents give way to brighter, more melodic indie rock sensibilities without losing any of the energetic noisy experimentalism. At all times the quartet, whether leaning in a more straightforward direction or a more experimental one, remains entrenched in heavy groove. - Brett Williams
Pimpire Records
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Sometimes you just have to do it yourself. Roc Marciano, a true DIY hip-hop legend, understands that. 656, his latest album, is self-produced and self-released (through his own Pimpire Records), allowing Marci to serve as the sole architect of the exceptional and unflinching record. Following a pair of collaborative albums together with The Alchemist and DJ Premier, 656 is a reminder that the Hempstead based MC is every bit as gifted as a producer as he is a lyricist, crafting a landscape of haunting loops and dusty soul samples that fit his stream-of-conscious bars to perfection. Roc Marciano’s world is often split like an earthquake between the dirt of the streets and the eloquence of high fashion and luxurious excess, his words a kaleidoscopic mix of blunted menace and designer vision. Lyrically dense and characteristically vivid, songs like “Easy Bake Oven” and “Childish Things” prove Marci to be in a class all his own. With the only features coming courtesy of Errol Holden (whose Mulberry Silk Road was produced in full by Marciano), 656 presents an unfiltered view of Marci’s deviant grace. - DG
Unshackled Inc / Nicholas Craven Productions
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Everything about Play With Something Safe, Rosco P Coldchain’s collaborative album with producer Nicholas Craven (Boldy James, Ransom, Tha God Fahim) exceeds expectations. Following a long stint of hard time, Coldchain emerges from the system as eloquently lyrical as ever, his words as poetic as they are savage. The Philadelphia MC’s - who originally cut his teeth on Def Poetry Jam before linking up with Clipse and Star Trak - pen game has never felt sharper as he unravels tough realities, speaks hard fought destiny, and expounds on the dirt of guns, drugs, and the hustle with unshakable conviction on tracks like “Hold My Hand,” “The Future,” and “Boogie Nights”. Play With Something Safe finds Coldchain doing lyrical gymnastics over a dynamic set of Craven’s beats (primarily with a boom-bap inspiration), rampaging penitentiary bars like “proper preparation prevents poor performance” on “Die Slow” and “dreaming of demons and devils, pick axes, ditches and shovels, electric chairs with the warden” on “Magnesium Chloride”. This is raw grown up rap at its finest, pure uncut hard nosed poetry. - DG
Perennial / K Records
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Dale Cooper once said "every day, once a day, give yourself a present." Earlier this month that present was new music from Los Angeles’ Slippers. Anyone who has spent any time listening to So You Like Slippers? knows there is reason to celebrate as the Madeline BB led band shared their second album Slippers 08. With a deep understanding that pop nuggets are best delivered in nugget form, Slippers truly excel at miniature masterpieces, songs so catchy and fully realized they rarely need more than two minutes to create their jangly magic. Slippers 08 is overloaded with these kinds of moments, fuzzy bursts of blinding splendor that still feels entirely human. The songs are impossibly sunny but inherently raw and noisy, built around melodies that stay with you like eating a tube of super glue might. - DG
Greenway Records
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The past four years, starting with the release of Spacemoth’s debut album, No Past No Future, have been busy for Maryam Qudus. While the release introduced the project’s well-crafted cosmic art pop to the world, Qudus also established herself as one of the Bay Area’s most in-demand record producers and engineers. On top of all that, she found the time to join La Luz (whose News of the Universe album she produced) and the years continued in a non-stop run of recording sessions and live shows for both projects. On Inward Eye, Qudus returns her focus to Spacemoth, developing a psychedelic pop odyssey that’s captured in flickers of the extraterrestrial moments in our waking lives, so to speak. There’s a swirling energy at the record’s core that bubbles and bursts through vintage synths and mesmerizing loops. Built on magnetic grooves and warbling tape experimentation, Spacemoth glides and bops its way into the celestial realm. Dreamy, noisy, and motorik, Inward Eye finds project firmly locked in and ready for lift off. - DG
Anti Fade / Static Shock Records
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Everything about Station Model Violence’s debut album feels refreshing. With a line-up that includes members of Total Control, R.M.F.C., Diät, and Den among others, the Sydney based band arrived fully formed, the surefooted songwriting of their self-titled album immediately apparent as they careen between monumental post-punk and enormous psychedelic garage wizardry in a way that feels patient, building toward something special as the album unwinds. Pairing together mesmerizing motorik rhythms with a graceful melodic dissonance and a penchant for drop-out exploration, the record uses a slight of hand to make serrated edges feel smooth. Stand out tracks like “Heat” and “Leisure” highlight the band’s respective ability for both sprawling atmospheric cosmic krautrock and caustic rusted post-punk. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Optimizer is the third full length from Chicago noise makers Stuck. On this record we get an even more evolved version of their tense, motorik punk and explosive post-hardcore oeuvre. Greg Obis’ vocals have a bit of a softer, more melodious timbre to them at times while his spoken and barked vocals remain for the tenser and knotty moments Stuck excel at. Obis’ songwriting has grown as he acerbically tackles the current political and social wasteland as well as biting takes on various aspects of the music industry. Keyboards and synths play a stronger role on this record and they oftentimes add another layer of buzzing discordance to the mix, allowing the band to stretch their sound a little further into darker post-punk or nervier ends of early new wave. Stuck continue to build by adding new stylistic layers, showing an impressive amount of growth and power as the band continues to challenge themselves with each release. - Kris Handel
Some things take time. While many rappers drop their definitive masterpiece at the start of their careers, T.F has only been getting better with each successive release. Don’t Call Me Lucky, his tenth album, pairs the Los Angeles MC together with legendary producer DJ Muggs, and the vision feels both complete and amorphous. It’s a gangster rap record in every way, no question about that, but the varied beat selection gives T.F ample room to flex his street smart bars with a dynamic sensibility and a feeling of heart. Speaking like an OG who’s seen it all, T.F has lived to tell the tale, presented here in vivid detail. With an unflinching deviance that’s at home with both the Cuban connects and the stove top, T.F is celebrating, rising above the dirt and the penitentiary toward a brighter future. With laser focused guest verses from Ghostface Killah, Rome Streetz, Meyhem Lauren, Boldy James, and Roc Marciano among others, each element of this record feels carefully crafted, a cinematic west coast rap album that takes no prisoners. - DG
Window Sill Records
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After a very long nine years away, Tall Friend has returned. Now based in Boston, the trio have released their second full length, Fossil, an undeniably special album that bridges together the past and present for songwriter River Pfaff. While the recording sessions began shortly after the release of safely nobody’s, Tall Friend was put on hold while Pfaff underwent top surgery and medically transitioned. Instead of capturing the before or after of his vocals following hormone therapy, Fossil includes both, recorded prior to his transition and following the change in his voice, and the result is nothing short of spectacular. While you can hear two distinct voices singing together in stunning harmonies (there are some truly amazing moments throughout the record), both voices belong to Pfaff, a picture of renewal and a gift of self-understanding. - DG
Bayonet Records
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The coming of spring brings with it ideas of renewal and growth after the harsh clings of prolonged winter. Tasha’s new album, You Are Spring! is built around similar thoughts as they relate to her personal life, with change in the air and a new season dawning. Written during a time of transition as the songwriter moved from Chicago to New York City, there’s an astounding beauty to be found in Spring but also a real sense of adventure. Tasha’s song have expanded beyond gorgeous intimacy to capture an artier side of her gentle folk sound, blooming in new shapes and colors that accentuate and lift her words. The depth of nuance in the arrangements pulls the record in alternating directions, jazzy one moment and hypnotically locked in the next. Tasha’s lyrics navigate emotions felt past and present, the way memories can affect our daily lives, and the idea of resilience even when feeling lost in the world. For all her sweeping thoughts, the music responds in kind, and Tasha has transcended. - DG
Full Time Hobby
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Seeing London’s Ulrika Spacek live is something like being immersed in a tidal wave. Everything is carefully composed yet somewhat unglued, with sweeping dynamics that are both beautiful and crushing, amorphous yet deeply in the pocket. EXPO, the band’s fourth album, captures that energy and momentum with an experimental glow of electronic manipulation added for texture. It’s a record that locks into a hazy groove one moment only to find itself brilliantly tangled in cinematic layers the next. “Picto” for example, the last of the pre-release singles, is built on combustible energy, building on a jazzy drum pattern, a moving cloud of processed harmonies, and looped progressions with a wall of sound warmth. There’s so much nuance and depth in Ulrika Spacek’s patchwork art rock sound, and with songs like “Picto” they sound more alive than ever before. - DG
Extremely Rotten Productions
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In the lead up to the release of Corpus Offal and Undergang’s monumental tour split, Extremely Rotten Productions first described the bands as “chunk blowers” and “offal manglers” only later to describe them as “pus-gurglers” and “sewage curdlers,” and if that doesn’t give you a chuckle I don’t know what to tell ya. Two of modern death metal’s finest bands teamed up for a dense and disgorged split delivered straight from the putrescent bowels of all that’s unholy. Corpus Offal’s new single “Epitomic Disembowelment” is a lumbering and serpentine dose of perpetual disgust, a song that chews through flesh and bone with grinding dexterity and a mountainous sense of fluid momentum. The pounding rhythm and sinewy guitars slip and slide like a wave of entrails. It’s amazing, it’s gross, it’s side A of a soon-to-be iconic death metal split 7”. On the reverse side, Copenhagen’s Undergang up the levels of fetid decay as though it were a challenge, a slab of tempo-shifting bile and nuanced destruction. “Maddikehavets dans” is the band’s first single since 2023’s impeccably primal De Syv stadier af fordærv, and Undergang prove once again why they’ve risen to top of the festering heap. With the grossest gurgling introduction you’re likely to hear, the band’s onslaught comes stampeding with feral low end and an aural depravity that oozes forward amid tempo changes that feel disgustingly natural, an evolution of rot. - DG
Exploding In Sound Records
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Half of the art-punk duo Spllit, Urq spins his singularly sardonic world into the neat confines of a 4-track cassette Portastudio in his latest solo offering This Dismal Village. An intense mixture of contemporary and almost medieval aesthetics, This Dismal Village tracks a through line in time which largely confronts ever-present bleak truths. A fuzzy realization of lo-fi bedroom pop, frantic psychedelia, and grunge all hazed over by the warm patina of tape provides the backdrop to the deceptively simple but deeply intricate idiosyncratic project. This Dismal Village offers an intentional DIY sound directed by first-takes. Moving away from digital editing and meticulous crafting, humanity is ingrained in this record which embraces the blips and raw inconsistencies of analog. With every track except for the closer played in a custom tuning, Urq creates uniquely dissonant blends of synth and guitar with themes reappearing with an uncanny familiarity dug out from the far reaches of the mind. - Charlie Bailey
Joyful Noise Recordings
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On first glance (and all subsequent glances), Wendy Eisenberg’s new self-titled album is truly beautiful. For those so inclined, it works as a gorgeous folk record for passive listening while cooking, walking the dog, or having cocktails on the patio. For those more inclined to deep listening (the “real ones” as they say), Eisenberg’s latest is a gift that keeps on giving, an album that’s as intricately composed and structurally brilliant as anything in her catalog, but opts for soft synaptic wonder in place of anything jarring or jagged. For all the mind melting dexterity that has become a signature of Eisenberg’s diverse catalog, it’s safe to say that this record places the songwriting above all else and wouldn’t you know it, Eisenberg has never sounded better. Take album center piece “It’s Here” for example, a gentle song with skittering brushed drums that pops and spikes with nuance at each immaculately designed shift. It’s a folk song with a progressive heart, music that rewards endless curiosity. Eisenberg has gifted us one of the year’s best album, a record full of songs that live and breath with a sense of comfort and hard fought beauty. - DG
Captured Tracks
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Have you ever thought about the fact that some babies get someone like me (a regular joe shmo) singing them lullabies at night and others get Widowspeak’s Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas. That’s a lucky baby… but thankfully we all benefit because Widowspeak have released Roses, their first new album in four years. It’s a harsh life but we’re all trying to find the brightness that peaks through the shadows, and Widowspeak’s latest feels like the perfect reflection of that. The duo continue to make music as beautiful as it gets, winding together the spirit of the mystical west with the weariness of an ever shifting New York landscape and the wake it creates. With soft acoustics and slow burning electric guitars joining forces, the duo set a lush backdrop for Hamilton’s warm and hopeful vocals. Forever dreamy, Widowspeak continue to wrap in new textural grace to their sound, floating from arid expanse to twangy radiance as they explore the heights of true earnest love. - DG
Convulse Records
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Listening to Cleveland’s Yambag feels somewhat like sprinting head-down at full-speed into a brick wall. Sure you might break your neck in the process, but it’s the thrill of it all that you can’t escape (do not try this at home). Broken necks and fractured skulls be damned, Yambag hurtle like a tornado in a china shop on The Psycho, the band’s fourth record since the turn of the decade. Released just ahead of their tour with the equally unhinged Reek Minds, Yambag deliver us eight new savage tracks in eight savage minutes, blinding in their aggression but perhaps most importantly built on memorable riffs and hooks that stick as they stampede on by. From the frantic pummel of “Buried Alive” (a song far more catchy than anything at that velocity has any business being) to the pounding carnage of “Nerve Damage” and the genuinely dangerous avalanche of momentum that is “Community,” it’s pure decimation with gritty hardcore detail, punk to dislocate your jaw, leaving you toothless and smiling in the process. - DG
Sorry State / La Vida Es Un Mus
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Have you ever read one of those articles that place the Scandinavian and Nordic countries among the happiest in the world, and have you ever noticed how many great hardcore and death metal bands come from those same countries? Coincidence? Whose to say, but joy and really heavy music go hand in hand. Case in point, Helsinki’s Yleiset Syyt, an exceptionally furious hardcore band who balance aggression and big catchy riffs with a manic brilliance. Saitte Mitä Halusitte (translation: You Got What You Wanted) finds the band coming unhinged, erupting with a warning blast like an oncoming avalanche. The earthquaking velocity is matched with a sonic clarity that recalls late 70’s and early 80’s hardcore like The Germs and Minor Threat, but there’s something exceedingly reckless embedded in their DNA. Yleiset Syyt kick down the door with paint peeling guitars, frantic galloping rhythms, and primal hooks in a deranged blaze of glory. - DG
Hardly Art
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With the release of their third album, youbet have given themselves room to explore, an opportunity to take dynamic chances. The band’s self-titled album is explosive in all the best ways, transforming itself to meet Nick Llobet and Micah Prussack where they’re at, tranquil one moment and bursting the next. It’s crafted with subtle shifts (that leave large impacts) and intricate textures at every turn but most importantly, the album gives the songs a chance to breath. “Undefined,” the record’s third single is a perfect example, slinking in the pocket, a blissed out reflection of the band’s gracious art rock at its best. Llobet’s winding melodies are stunning, moving with a languid ease as the rhythms shuffle and the guitars melt. youbet are blurring lines in a way that feels natural, an extension of their ever progressing sound. It’s brilliant songwriting that pops like sunspots through a rainy window, caught in passing moments and blurred visions. - DG
Trance//Furnace
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Ever since we learned of Thirdface’s untimely demise, we’ve been waiting to hear what comes next. For Kathryn Edwards, the answer is Zero Sum, a new hardcore quartet that made their debut late last year. That very first show is captured in glorious detail on the band’s demo release Die Fast Live!, a ruthless surge of hardcore at its most brash and explosive. Offering fifteen minutes of undiluted intensity, Edwards and her bandmates arrive fully formed as they simply demolish their set with unglued momentum, blistering guitar leads, and the sledgehammer pummeling of Dave Varney’s (who happens to also be a great visual artist) drums. It all sounds as pissed off as can be and who can blame them, we’re living in frightening times and could all use the particular type of skull shattering catharsis that Zero Sum offer. Edwards’ vocals are raw and harsh, leading the way for the band’s maniacal dirge as they tear from one dismembered sensibility to the next. - DG
Extended Listening:
BOLDY JAMES & ROME STREETZ “Manhunt”
EDDY CURRENT SUPPRESSION RING “In Light Of Recent Events”
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FROZE TO DEATH “Earthquake Lights”
ERROL HOLDEN “Supreme Magnetic 2”
FAUCHEUSE “Comme un Poignard”
THE FRAGILES “Sing The Heat Of The Sun”
GEMMA “Be About It”
GUNNER “Reality Soldier”
HYPER GAL “Our Hyper”
ITCHY & THE NITS “Greetings From…”
JALEN NGONDA “Doctrine of Love”
LIQUID CROSS “Hateful EP”
LOVE CANAL “Warheads on Foreheads”
MAXSHH & CRIMSON BLUE “Neither-Handed”
NEUROSIS “An Undying Love For A Burning World”
PEARL & THE OYSTERS “Monkey Mind”
RITUAL CROSS “II”
SEASON 2 “Power of Now”
SPRITE “Spriite”
W-9 “W-9 (Demo)”
WALLPLANT “Something Is Here”
WEBB CHAPEL “Vernon Manner”
Abandon Everything Records
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Philadelphia’s Positronix pack so much punch on a song-to-song basis, their songwriting well coiled but brightly melodic. The more you listen, the better the music gets as they split the difference between riot grrrl infectiousness and classic dance-floor swarming post-punk. The quartet stand as one of underground punk scene’s best kept secrets, but to hear them is to become enamored in the energy and exuberance of their gnarled vibrance. Following their great Heart of Chrome LP in 2024 (a record that we all should have given far more flowers), the band returned this Spring with a new EP, Miss Universe, equal parts gluey earworms and harrowing punk immediacy. Radiant and ripping, song’s like “Ascension Day” open with a great bass lead before diving into an enormous groove and even bigger melodic bite (in which PYLON doesn’t feel far off as a comparison) with Amelia Pitcherella’s incredible vocals at the heart of it all. From out of the caustic basement walls, Positronix come out swinging with raw melodic fury that should appeal to fans of Sweeping Promises and Cold Meat. - DG