Final offering from the Netherlands’ BACKFIRE!, who have been active on and off again since 1993. Fast metallic riffs, plodding breakdowns, and gruff vocals call to mind the usual suspects of this style like MADBALL and CRO-MAGS. I wasn’t particularly moved by any of these tracks, but I trust there’s a fanbase who will appreciate a swan song from this legacy act.
An overall fantastic album out of Stockholm, Sweden that anyone who digs Sarah, K, or Slumberland Records will surely be fond of immediately. The diversity of sounds may cause a kneejerk read of a lack of cohesion, but by the time the listener is deep into album centerpiece “Imposter,” that thought will have become a distant memory. BLEAK STREAK finds their highest highs when they let things get a little shambling and loose (“Peak Bleak,” “Loser Band Plays Rock n Roll”), and that includes their C86-ified take on SNAIL MAIL’s early single “Thinning,” which works so damn well. BEAT HAPPENING, LOS CAMPESINOS!, and HEAVENLY will all come to mind throughout these tracks, and it just makes for a wonderful listen. Not every track works, and they actually lose me a little when they ramp up the aggression (“I’m Not Jealous”) or the art (“Loser Band Plays På Tisdag På Torsdag”), but those are small prices to pay for such a great ride.
Serious MISFITS worship via Melbourne. There’s tons of fucking reverb, rudimentary power chord riffs, and horror movie inuendoes galore. “You are my silver bullet” is repeated like 50 times, and I want more! CLOVEN FANG gives you a hook and then murders you with it. The last track jumps off the MISFITS bandwagon, but it still rips and is full of ghoulish background vocals. This one’s a no-brainer.
Whizzes and pew-pews in “Intergalactic Ladies” kick off this LP, but DIRTY KNEES then immediately pull you back from the edge to the great expanse of going to a quarry for a swim and all the random shit that can happen on a day that’s supposed to be low-key fun with friends in the song “Summer Odyssey Fun.” These songs are weighted with lo-fi, catchy punk, with enough inside jokes and humor to pull you along for the whole ride. Laura, Maggie, and Elizabeth all take turns writing and singing, completing a well-blended and rad listen. Some of the lyrics about sitting around and the design of the songs somehow remind me of J CHURCH in their bleak honesty and contentment. The song “CDK” is a great tune that’s easy to remember and quote at parties, with the lyrics “If it has to be abbreviated / Must be evil.” Closing this record is one of the best songs that will definitely make it onto the next few mixtapes I make for folks. This DIRTY KNEES LP would be the perfect accompaniment to a 25-minute drive or ride to anywhere.
Hailing from the Bristol suburb Yate, FEAR OF DARKNESS was active through the mid and late ’80s. Phobia is a taste of the band’s second iteration with original vocalist Dave Mac replaced by Richard Hulands, and with the addition of Angela Huggins on backing vocals. With his deep, rich, and sometimes sullen vocal styling, Hulands ushered the band towards a darkwave/goth sound that was admittedly halfway started in The Virgin Land-era. SISTERS OF MERCY make for an easy comparison, maybe like the slightly poppier Floodland album. And in general, that’s what I hear here—fairly on-point second wave English post-punk that trades some of the more macabre feelings of the late ’70s first-wavers for something sweeter; chaotic anguish for tenderness.The arrangements definitely reach out and grab styles from straightforward pentatonic rock solos, to quasi-prog rock rhythms (“Friends Like You”), to new wave pop flashiness, to classic, downcost post-punk vocals and reverb-drenched guitar lines. I also think it’s worth noting Angela Huggins’s contribution to the record—her vocals add a lot of depth, and makes it stand out next to their male-only contemporaries. This album has all three tracks from their 1987 Lay Me Down single, and while the other songs were also recorded from ’86 to ’88 as the title suggests, it’s not clear to me if there was another release besides Bristol Archive’s 2008 digital release of Phobia. I inherently like this type of music, so when a group comes along from the archives that I haven’t heard, I get excited. But at what point does a band go from pioneers or standouts in their genre to repeating a formula? Does the big hair and moody band photo feel a little trite? It’s not my place to judge intention, so as far as I’m concerned, the music is good, albeit not boundary-pushing.
This band blends punk, sludge, mathcore, hardcore, and kind of everything in between. The concept sounds like it shouldn’t work, but holy shit, does it work. Annie, the bassist/singer, seamlessly moves her voice from screams to gentle doom vocals to punk yelling while anchoring the songs the way only a really good bass player can. She is outstanding. Drummer Sam is the source of most of the chaos, while guitarist Ben sounds like two or three players dragging the songs between all the genres they expertly mix. The energy here reminds me of bands like COMADRE—that heart-wrenching punk sincerity, but the sound is somewhere in 13/EYEHATEGOD foundations going to play with everyone from BOTCH to KING WOMAN. I fucking love when the punk scene produces something so clearly personal and original, I can’t recommend this enough.
No wave squall that punctures both eardrums and listener comfort as strongly as the good old bad days of ’70s New York avant garde. Pulsing bass, sheets of atonal guitar feedback, and GLENN BRANCA-esque, high-volume drone are grounded by the march of a dispassionate drum machine. The duo of Ty and Tayler call and respond in hollers and sarcastic sing-song chants that recall the best of TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS (the band has a friendly relationship with LYDIA LUNCH, which seems like a feat in itself) and MARS. If you like the “screwdriver jammed in the fretboard” sound of urban collapse, this is for you.
Whenever I have a DCxPC release come across my desk, I usually gush about the series for half the review before I jump into the meat of the album and talk about the bands. I’ll keep it brief and let you know that I believe these DCxPC live releases are one of the coolest and most important things happening in modern punk rock. If this is your first time hearing of the series, I recommend checking out the whole catalog. However, before you run off on that assignment, this split is a great place to start. HALF DIZZY kicks things off with their brand of high-octane melodic hardcore. This would have been right at home on Nitro Records in the late ’90s/early ’00s. Super tight, so much so that I sometimes forgot I was listening to a live album. CHUMHUFFER is equally well-refined, but plays a more crust/D-beat version of the classic hardcore sound. The vocalist immediately stands out with their impressive melodic range, sounding a bit like Glenn Danzig without the attitude problem. Lovely work here all around, and well worth several spins. I almost can’t believe they’re already on volume 45!
As a faithful, staunch premium consumer of gruff Eurocrust, friends often try to exfiltrate to my collection perfectly fine, generic, and uncomplicated crust records that they want to get rid of (which is indeed baffling, but no one is perfect I guess). I am easy to please like that. On paper, INFURIATE from Minneapolis has everything that I am looking for in crustcore: growling vocalists, filthy, bleak heaviness, Scandicore pace, cavemen metal breaks, and a cool name. However, and as much as I want to like this first album, it doesn’t click perfectly here. The production is lacking in energy, and the music doesn’t quite have that galloping vibe that works well with the genre, which is a shame because the songs have the required simplicity and directness you’d expect. I am not totally convinced by the very grindcore-inspired and sometimes monotonous vocals that are low in the mix, either. A punker production might have solved these issues, because in terms of songwriting, I am reminded of great bands like MAN THE CONVEYOR or late 3-WAY CUM. An alright record that could have sounded more impactful.
Stripped-down Bay Area hardcore. Oakland’s LOOK AWAY comes out swinging with five pissed-off tracks that get straight to the point. Groovy yet viciously fast when it’s called for, channeling the urgency of COKE BUST and CARRY ON with a killer nod to local punk legends GRIMPLE (last song is a cover of “Think”). DIY hardcore done right, with enough stomp to rearrange your teeth. Turn it up or get out of the way!
MANTAROCHEN is out of Leipzig, Germany, and they just released the Wellness Ward cassette, a jangling, five-song recording that explores various aspects of post-punk. A classic post-punk method blends with melancholic shoegazing to create a sound that is momentarily reminiscent of the REPLACEMENTS mixed with PAVEMENT. The opener “Hotel Hell” and the closer “Bored to Death” both bring a bit more swagger with the inclusion of some deathrock tones. In all, Wellness Ward is a gradual trip that feels like an earnest expression of emotions.
PROTEX came out of late ’70s Belfast on Good Vibrations, same as the UNDERTONES, riding a wave that was still fresh at the time, when bands like the RAMONES and the NERVES had shown that punk and power pop could live in the same song. Their 1978 single “Don’t Ring Me Up” is the one people remember, since the album they recorded for Polydor sat in a vault for 30 years. They reformed in 2010, and this is their third album of new material, with guitarist and vocalist Aidan Murtagh the only original member left. What you get here is eleven tracks (most running past the three-minute mark) of pop rock played by a group of guys who have been doing this for a long time. It’s laid-back and competently made, and there’s clearly an audience for it, just not one that needs things to always be harder, faster, louder. The high point for me is the closer, “Slug City,” the album’s most rocking track and maybe the one that sounds most like the kids that they used to be.
I was stoked when I saw a blurb that compared them to CHOPPER (the Connecticut band that had the Real Genius quote at the beginning of that one song on their 12”), but they meant the UK band CHOPPER, which is still good but different. And to be honest, I don’t really hear it. I would place them more toward SNUFF, but on the more raw and aggressive pop punk end and almost a bit pub punk. Great gang vocals and the perfect amount of slop that makes this a chaotic and dreamy release that is budding with the energy and whirlwind vibes of seasoned veterans of the genre.
An interesting tape that features two bands with distinct yet complimentary sounds. I was fully prepared to dislike this for a few reasons. First off, I find the artwork to be quite lacking. It’s boring and offers no indication of what the bands might be like stylistically. Strikes two and three are the respective band names. MYCELIUM CLOAK doesn’t really roll off the tongue, and RIGHTEOUS PROPAGANDA is about as generic as it gets. The music supersedes all of this, thankfully. MYCELIUM CLOAK dishes out some left-of-center hardcore that skillfully incorporates elements of powerviolence, post-rock, and metal. A bit of a slow burn, but the band is tight and the tunes are well-constructed. RIGHTEOUS PROPAGANDA offers a more direct take on powerviolence, with a plethora of blastbeats and a killer fuzz-forward tone. The unexpected inclusion of a cover of “Daddy Never Understood” by DELUXX FOLK IMPLOSION won me over.
Turning frustration, anger and social malaise into music has always been one of hardcore’s central purposes. S.O.H. and ABIZMO join forces to achieve this purpose in a very strong way. S.O.H. , from Los Angeles, bring their claustrophobic and super tight brand of hardcore to the table, taking some cues from Japanese hardcore like GAUZE, the STALIN, and the COMES and mixing it up with some UK82 “danceability” and groove. Their musicianship is incredible (members are also in the ranks of ARRÊT, ARTIFICIAL JOY, and REPEAT OFFENDER), and the inflections on the vocals make every moment count. ABIZMO, from Aichi with ex-members from SYSTEM FUCKER, responds with fast, intense DOOM-styled hardcore with vocals in Japanese, English, and Portuguese, aimed towards broken systems, fascist leaders, brainwashing, buried truths, and the rich getting richer while everyone else gets pushed towards the cliff. Two bands taking the classic hardcore vocabulary and putting it straight through the fucking wall.
Four-song debut cassette out of Vienna, Austria, which is also the first release on a brand new label, Aus der Kälte Records. No internet presence for the label and very minimal presence for the band, which is fitting considering the artwork for the tape, which features perhaps the most minimal artwork imaginable, a fully white J-card with only the band name in small lettering at the bottom right corner. Mid-tempo, chanty punk with reverbed-out, single-note surf guitar solos. Infectiously catchy. I was excited when I saw that there were four more songs on the B-side of the tape that were not to be found anywhere online. Flipping the tape while skimming the all-German tracklist on the inside of the J-card, I could tell something was amiss. I may not speak much German, but what language puts their capital letters at the end of words? Just before the first track started, it came to me. These were the same track names, but written entirely backwards. Sure enough, the B-side of the cassette is not four additional songs. It is the same songs as the A-side, played entirely in reverse. A funny concept, but the novelty wears thin incredibly fast. I got through a song-and-a-half , then I jumped up and stopped the tape before the repetitive backwards swish of the snare drum made me hate this recording. Played in the correct direction, SPION is incredibly catchy mid-tempo punk rock and I greatly dig it. If I woke up in that episode of Red Dwarf where everything is in reverse on planet htraE, I would not go see NOIPS play.
Upon seeing a brand new album from these New York punks, the old heart started beating faster, because not only did I thoroughly enjoy their first offering, but I also thought the band was no longer. They actually are, as Apocalypse Zone is a posthumous album, ensuring that even if you love these songs, you are guaranteed to never see them live. I loved the band’s spontaneous and rather fresh sound blending early SACRILEGE, ANNIHILATED, POTENTIAL THREAT, and pogo-compatible metallic, spiky punk like BLOOD SPIT NIGHTS with ace shouted female vocals, allowing the studded brigades to listen to the band and keep pretending to not really like metal. This album is built on the same foundations, but I would argue that the metal influence (precisely) sounds more prevalent, and above all, much cleaner. While the first album remained raw and had that dirty, thrashy organic punk feel, the sound here is not as distorted, and I personally miss their original aggression although I am sure that many would favor the latter over the former. Many punk bands seem to go for that specific brand of solo-inducing metallic punk these days, and I just think I am craving dirtier, heavier, more primitive sonorities. That said, SUBVERSIVE RITE’s farewell is indeed a good one, and if the band has gone to sleep, they nevertheless were in perfect control of what they wanted to achieve in terms of songwriting and sound. Still a strong album that made many happy in 2025, but I wasn’t totally convinced. What a party-pooper.
I knew exactly what this was going to sound like the moment I saw the album cover. The THINGZ play a BOBBY “BORIS” PICKETT version of surf punk, while THEE OUTLETS…well, they kind of play the exact same thing. The only difference is that THEE OUTLETS are a bit poppier and feature a dedicated organ throughout, while the THINGZ rely heavily on synth and sound a bit more retro. Otherwise, this is your standard Halloween punk affair. It’s an easy listen and actually quite fun. Perfect for the upcoming spooky season.
The album art had me thinking this was going to be some weird Italian metal album, but I was pleasantly surprised as it was not at all what l expected. This is Mexican Oi!, no bones about it. And while the first track didn’t initially do much for me, the chord change around 2:52 made me turn my head and commanded my attention. Over the course of the next seven tracks, they checked all the boxes from heavy street punk to a more danceable sound akin to modern bands like L.A.’s CRIMINAL. The heavier and faster tracks like “Para Que Es La Memoria?” showcase more of their punk and hardcore influences, but they always bring it back to a classic yet modern ’80s-inspired sound. I appreciate the vocalist keeping it nasty when the tempo kicks up a few notches, too. No complaints here.
Two sides of ugly European punk, no ceremony required. SHITCRITTER brings filthy Dutch crust with D-beat drive, political disgust, and riffs built to flatten a room. WURRM answers from Duisburg with nine nervous, sub-two-minute bursts: wiry, fast, loose in the right places. Different accents, same bad mood. Play loud, flip it, repeat.
Dos caras de punk europeo mugriento, sin ceremonia. SHITCRITTER trae crust holandés sucio, empuje D-beat, asco político y riffs hechos para aplastar un cuarto. WURRM responde desde Duisburg con nueve ráfagas nerviosas de menos de dos minutos: filosas, rápidas y sueltas donde corresponde. Distintos acentos, el mismo mal humor. Fuerte, dar vuelta, repetir.
Helsinki powerhouse YLEISET SYYT returns with nine tracks of hardcore of the highest order, which comes as no surprise considering the band features members of FORESEEN and KOHTI TUHOA. This isn’t a run-of-the-mill punk record, and while influences can be fairly easily cherry-picked, YLEISET SYYT plays with so much style and has enough catchy riffs to really carve out their own lane. Favorite moments include the chugging urgency of “Aavekaupunki,” the total swag of the intro to “Oikeutettu Tuho,” and “Ansioton Köyhä,” a track so catchy, it was bestowed with the rare honor of being played a second time immediately after the first. A delightfully unique and occasionally surprising record; for fans of LAMA, MINOR THREAT, and BOOTLICKER.
