Reviews

Ingobernable

Distancia Distancia cassette

Nine short, fast songs from this Spanish duo. Recorded with a warm, cavernous sound, the drums are front and center in the mix with pounding D-beats and rolls, while the guitar is curiously cleanly strummed most of the time. Consider it the least raw D-beat possible, with surprisingly melodic vocals that channel Pete Shelley more than Kawakami. I don’t have the lyrics, but the translated tape description mentions a mix of anti-consumerist, anti-prison, anarchist slogans. The melodies here are catchy enough for sing-along choruses (especially the track “Distancia”) and have just a touch of that Fat Records melodic hardcore sound while still retaining enough DIY grit to sound authentic and vital. Cool tape.

Hatã Demo 2021 cassette

HATÃ, “hard” in the Guarani language, is the name of this band formed in Barcelona in the middle of the pandemic by people from Paraguay, London, and Colombia. International solidarity manifests itself in beautiful ways when we see migrants from different countries come together to create noise that denounces global injustices and share the experiences of those who seek to destroy the borders that divide us so artificially. It reminds me of the sound of ’90s South American and Mexican hardcore: raw, brutal, with enough room to breathe and wait for the stampede of the next riff. Beautiful and intense. This is their first demo of four songs, and it comes with a fanzine if you want to get it on cassette.

Repulsion Switch Repulsion Switch cassette

Egg-punk fries on, are you sick of it yet? Me neither! Especially when done well, as it is with this project from Spanish musician Gabriel Dolce. The drums are preprogrammed and buried way the hell down in the mix, in fact everything here becomes a bit soupy, giving it a blurry, psychedelic glow. This doesn’t sound so much from the bedroom as from a dungeon. It’s a merciless take on some folks’ favorite mutant offshoot genre that doesn’t let up, with crunching digital snare rolls and fuzzed-out-everything replete with a snot-nosed attitude to fill in the necessary cracks. So dig in, punk!