Pennsylvania’s Collapsed Skull is a new three-piece powerviolence band featuring members of Full of Hell. Their sound on the jaw-dropping debut EP Eternity Maze is a sort of genre-salad that mashes together powerviolence, hardcore, grindcore, death metal, and harsh noise all broken up by hip-hop, spoken word, and acoustic samples.
In August of 2021, Pile released an LP perfect for laying under the stars; Songs Known Together, Alone consisting of newly recorded tracks pulled from Pile's massive collection accompanied by a clever change in production. The tracks are all reimagined versions of Pile songs recorded solo by frontman Rick Maguire.
The record’s easygoing and nostalgic pop/R&B vibes call up the feeling of leaning back in an air-conditioned booth on a humid summer night. If you stop and listen, you can overhear Ty Sorrell at the next table over, reminiscing and exchanging secret handshakes with the other Richmonders who sit down to catch up.
Simply put, Salt Lick is a die-hard group of musicians within the Seattle DIY scene. Over the past half decade, the band has been sizzling and simmering a handful of slow-burn releases. Salt Lick never fails to impress live and have certainly elevated their songwriting and studio chops with their most recent release, The Gift of Missing.
All of Action Bronson’s best work treats music like Calvinball—meticulous and detailed worlds seemingly unspooling in a stream of consciousness. Cocodrillo Turbo is no different, as it loosely ties together a beasts-of-the-wilderness theme through nature show samples and a production palette of fuzzed-out, hungover psychedelia.
“Replicant Heart” is the second track on the EP, a beautifully dark and brooding song, eerie and contemplative at times, but also full of life. Pulse and Kinsella trade vocals, hers clear and prescient and his slightly fuzzed out and distant. The song has a narrative structure of its own, mirroring the five act dramatic structure of the rest of the EP.
Recorded at Electric Wall in Seattle and mastered by These Arms Are Snakes’ drummer Chris Common, The Worst Has Finally Happened is a tangible document to be added to the Three One G family of relevant punk. Haunted Horses have frequency shaking all around. The punches keep coming, but it is somehow soothing.
Anxiety was getting in the way of Maryam Qudus’ creative work as Spacemoth until she realized she could channel her concerns through her synthesizers. The end result is an impressive debut album for the sought-after analog producer – the 13-track record, No Past No Future, is some of the most potent retro-futurism out there.
In its own manner, compiling Pavement’s “tortured context” comprised of the self-released Slay Tracks 1933-1969, early singles, and flexi-disc cuts made Westing (by Musket and Sextant) a 7" gold mine of exciting dipshit noise whose collage cover and phrases and song titles alluded to its own canon subversion.
After the more experimental endeavors of recent years, A Foul Form both carves out new ground for Dwyer and company to dig into while also calling back to the raucousness and comparative simplicity of Coachwhips and the Thee Oh Sees era. A Foul Form is taut and crackling. It burns white hot; the path it blazes is direct.
Boon says “Candle” is about how hard we’re all working to toe the line between being functional and overwhelmed, a dizzying task that seems to produce more anxiety than it quells. It’s a whirlwind of a tune, bursting at the seams with manic energy. Brendan Principato’s lyrics evoke the stress that surrounds us like thick humidity.
Goon have the cure for what ails us. Sadly, it’s not systemic reform across both public healthcare and our two-party system. It’s their new album, Hour of Green Evening, an 11-track smorgasbord of earnest folk and lush psych rock that’ll have you feeling something beyond white-hot rage and/or emotional impotence.
For future fans of Kal Marks, My Name is Hell will likely serve as a starting point, as it displays the band at their most accessible yet. Since its inception, Kal Marks has gone through many changes. My Name Is Hell is their first official release since Let The Shit House Burn Down in 2019, and in that time, there have been a few changes in the band.
Fairy Rust is the second full length release from Kentucky based 'art-punk' trio Wombo, widening the scope of the band’s angular and twisted powers that have grown immensely in a relatively short amount of time. Wombo have always relied on inventive scrambling of song forms, but there is a bit more development and depth at play this time.
