Swollen - "Call" + "Cool" | Post-Trash Premiere
Swollen, the project of Shady Bug’s Tom Krenning, is disarming and sinister, like a bad trip ringing inside your head in the quiet of the night. Their album, Smothered, due out June 25th via Super Wimpy Punch, is a captivating listen that encapsulates its own world, one where the aesthetic choice is disorienting and minimal.
Bandcamp Friday Forever: A Few Recommendations
Pending any further announcements, It’s the last Bandcamp Friday on the books. The site has gone out of its way to help artists and labels during these pandemic times and the appreciation has been met by audiences showing up and supporting the musicians and artists they care about. The intentions were good. The results were good. We’ve got one more!
McKinley Dixon - "For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her" | Album Review
Civic - "Future Forecast" | Album Review
Colonial Wound - "Degradation" | Album Review
Deadguy is still fertile ground to excavate for modern metalcore bands. Take one listen to Colonial Wound’s first release Untitled. The vocals are similar but are still modern, adding a much needed update to this style of the genre. Degradation only ups the ante, bringing in more of a noise rock influence, not too dissimilar to Exhalants or Unsane.
Kneeling In Piss - "Types of Cults" | Album Review
Pinpointing our modern hell in a few brief punk songs, Kneeling In Piss gives us more. Types of Cults is their fourth release and their third EP from a series of recordings made over the last year. Signature to the band’s sound is finding that right piece of music and playing it until it’s all used up, with a “concrete lack of skill.”
Maxshh - "Feedback & PB" | Album Review
Crafted intermittently over the course of five years, Feedback & PB is a dense and complex work, flowing dizzyingly from hook to hook, interspersed with noise, found-recording style interludes, and madcap arpeggiating synths. The hooks may be sweet or sour, but they change fast and are always complex and vivid.
Special Interest - "The Passion Of" | Album Review
New Orleans art punks Special Interest dropped their second album The Passion Of at a time when many needed a soundtrack to their suddenly very dystopian lives. In June 2020, there was civil unrest peaking around the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police -- in the midst of a pandemic.
Olivia's World - " Tuff 2B Tender" | Album Review
Fust - "Where The Good Ones Go" | Post-Trash Premiere
While the band claims to have always focused on the idea of “evil” and the perversity of playing hopeless songs as gently as possible, album title Evil Joy specifically refers to the pain and pleasure in a deteriorating relationship. Lead single “Where The Good Ones Go” fits right in with most of these ideas.
Tunic - "Exhaling" | Album Review
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.
Hubble - "No Cure For The Lonely" (Swan cover) | Post-Trash Premiere
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 - "Vital" | Album Review
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.
Armand Hammer & The Alchemist - "Haram" | Album Review
Kibby - "Sharing" | Post-Trash Premiere
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.
Special Friend - "Ennemi Commun" | Album Review
Fuzzy Meadows: The Week's Best New Music (April 19th - April 25th)
Gash - "Life of Dan" | Post-Trash Premiere
Clever Girls - "Constellations" | Album Review
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.