Dead City
Out on Bail EP
(Self-issued)
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Punch up these dense bombardments. The sardonicism enjoyed from this ripsaw assault unit angrily accents harsh existence on the sidelines. Shoved away, they became a community. (Kind of a graffitied Australia.) Fuck everybody on the outside.
Recommended: "Out on Bail," "Cut Down to Size," "Skidrow Creep"
Video: "Out on Bail" (live at Riff Audio)
Split Dogs
Nice N' Rough
(Venn Records)
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Soph wax is crucial -- it reveals whether the combo under analysis can maintain whatever specialness their debut spotlighted. (Or, if their maiden endeavor exhibited weaknesses, LP #2 can assert seasoning.) Split Dogs -- Bristol's burly alacrity squad -- now builds upon an impressive incipient outing, surging with muscular directness that slaps with chutzpah. Flying colors violate night skies.
Recommended: "Be Somebody," "Born Too Loose," "Breaker," "Speed Demon," "Shake Sum Action," "Rock N Roll Business," "I Wanna," "Dirty Denim"
Videos: "Be Somebody" "Speed Demon" "Rock N Roll Business"
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Eastside Dogs / Bootboys
Effectively slams down the uni-dimensional spleneticism that once fueled "Punk-Bashing Boogie." To paraphrase Nick Tosches, nothing brings mates of diverse stripes together like placing a chord barrage betwixt them.
Video: "Punx and Skins Unity Worldwide"
Instagram (Eastside Dogs)
Facebook (Bootboys)
One Night Stand
Trash EP
(Inconsapevole Records)
To exit the club whisting these frantically tuneful missiles, you'd have to somehow jam amphetemines into your lips. And if some junk-works experimenter found a way to put this hardcore in a syringe, they'd richocet erratically for about two minutes, before littering the room with happy fleshly bits.
Recommended: "Wrinkled Eyes," "Fear of the Dark (shirt)," "Sweet Lies, Rotten Truth," "From Son to Father," "Again"
Videos: "Wrinkled Eyes" "From Son to Father"
Los Problemas
Oi!, Punk, Streetcore -- all roads lead to Rock'n'Roll. And it's in the neon night, when purpose, aimlessness, kicks, and ugly dangers thrive equally -- and bottles are uncapped -- that the echo of boots stomping on macadam smacks upside brick walls and slices carbonated ether.
Video: "Together Drinking on the Streets"
Last Wishes
Put a shoulder to the effort, and chuck a 40-ton semi off the skyskraper of your choosing; the concussive impact on the sidewalk far below will lend a notion as to the metallic splatter here in wax-groove bondage. Stay sick.
Videos: "The Only Answer" "Under the Hammer"
the Prowlers
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
(Mad Butcher)
Freshly repopulating bins is this Montreal-spawned Hardcore knuckle sandwich, initially issued in 2001. Boots stomping down the bricks. Oi! reads their banner, hefted above a swarming sea of fists. "We're sons and daughters of the working class." And our music has no brakes.
Recommended: "Tonight Tonight," "We Come Out First," "We Won't Back Down," "We're Taking Back the Pubs," "In Memory," "Smash Them Up," "Hard Times," "Drunken Skinhead"
Videos: "Tonight Tonight" "We Won't Back Down" "Smash Them Up" "Drunken Skinhead" (live)
Criptidos
CRipTIdoS
(Self-issued)
It's a lesson taught by the Ramones' Sire debut, as well as by vital vinyl pre- and post- their entrance into popular-culture chin-wagging: When judiciously leveraged, less is not just more but overwhelmingly and wallopingly so. Gloriously valid (and pretty damn devastating herein) is that Punk is a projectile requiring only rudimentary implements (and about a million grams of outsider attitude), its bombardments to inflict.
"This is our first album, we hope you like it, and if not -- go fuck yourself!"
Recommended: "Akoso Kallejero," "El Tren," "ImPUNKstores," "La Banda Del Karro Rojo," "S.E.P."
Videos: "ImPUNKstores" "La Banda Del Karro Rojo"
The Riptides
Who Goes There EP
(Pirates Press Records)
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This ain't no poofter Pop domestication of the Punk impulse four bowl-haircut ne'er-do-wells from Forest Hills once kindled. In a mere quartet of deafening, scant bursts, belligerently prideful maple-leaf bully-boys rampage over the hill and into the ferocity abyss.
Recommended: "Inadequate," "Dumb It Down," "Bad Decisions," "Proud to Be a Canadian"
Videos: "Inadequate" "Proud to Be a Canadian"
Blunt
Detonando Emociones! Three-track EP
(Del Suncho Records)
Just as I doubt anyone anticipated that Argentina would in 2026 produce speedy thunderations recalling the 1970s Heartbreakers (by which, I of course mean the cool ones), this most certainly will veer into collections amassed by Born to Losers.
Recommended: "Agosta," "Pierdo el rumbo," "Aún te extraño"
Video: "Agosta" "Pierdo el rumbo" "Aún te extraño"
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Sanngre
Thrash Core Punk Hard Brutality
(Guns of Brixton Records)
Force times velocity equals Sanngre.
Recommended: "Mata Idiotas," "Hil edo Hil," "El Inquisidor," "Rodarán Cabezas," "Tus Risas No Mandan," "Volverán a Saltar"
Videos: "Mata Idiotas" "Hil edo Hil" "Rodaran Cabezeas"
Chemical Valley Mutants
Struggle
(Self-issued)
Acerbic castigations of existent authority, coupled with jaw-jutted demands for liberty, are spat in scraped-concrete tones, and arrive within zoom-smash missiles. Praise I penned in review of the band's 2023 Poisoned ("Songs collected on their newest disc rage against worldly injustices via fierce assault on polite-society notions of musicality") hold no less true today. Led by filmmaker Jay Crimson, all involved seem intent on thunderous obliteration; damned if they don't prove equal to the ambition.
July 3 release is scheduled.
Recommended: "Struggle," "Pessimist," "No Supremacy," "Ignorant," "Slander," "When Her Eyes Roll Back"
No current Video available. This is a live performance of "Left Hand Path," from Poisoned.
Forsaken Profits
Road Rash
(Anything But Radio Records)
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Traffic poles look like a picket fence -- red/yellow/green being of no consequence -- as thrashing demons fly toward destinations unmolested. Some 14 years since they first materialized as a "drinking band with a Punk problem," and their collective fury remains as vigorous as when germination sprouted. This, then, is violent rapidity very much of our fraught moment.
Recommended: "DTE," "Chemical Burn," "Decayed," "Absolute Zero," "Avalanche"
Videos: "DTE" "Chemical Burn" (live at Skatetopia) "Decayed"
Gum Bleed
"Unstoppable" b/w "Until the Day I Die" digital album
(Ring of Fire Records)
What fresh hell is this? Hurtling thunder run, before which all fall into hectic, bodies slamming dimension. Friedrich miscalculated: From this bellicose order comes cool chaos.
Videos: "Unstoppable" "Until the Day I Die"
The Troubled
Fever Dream
(Self-issued)
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That we're even able to hear these PsychoPunk snarls proves "a guitar is more important than a machine gun," as Alex Harvey once insisted. For several years, this neck-vein-bulging Kyiv group's members intermittently paused recording the presented hyper-velocitous bursts, having found studio efforts stymied by warfare, blackouts, and personnel disruption. Fortunately, they told challenges to go fuck themselves. ("Nothing ever gonna bring us down!") And that's cause for helter-skelter jubilation. Because the product they ultimately wrought is furiousness in song forms, likely to leap up and axe-handle denne svitlo out of anyone who looks at it funny.
Recommended: "Stargazer," "Hated," "We Stand," "This Summer," "Я ropю," "Stilletos"
Video: "Hated" "This Summer" "Stilletos"
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Ploegendienst
"Asfalt" "Surinaamse Broodjes" singles
(Excelsior Recordings / Ploegendienst)
Blastforce singer Ray Fuego (SMIB) throws in with have-a-go heroes from Adolf Butler and Aux Raus to crank volume and lay waste to all creatures great and small. "Figuratively, it is a band that wants to destroy every venue in as short a time as possible," brags Excelsior, home base for these "anti-everything" flaying Dutchmen. Hurtling from grooves' hidey-holes is Oi! that greets with roundhouses and thrives on kindled chaos while decrying annoyances systemic and mundane. Crank volume and have an ambulance on speed dial.
Videos: "Asfalt" "Surinaamse Boodjes" live (PinkPop 34:36)
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Various
Compilado 25
(Punk Con Punk)
Anarchy en español. As is always so with voluminous band compilations, merit is inconstant. But the finest presented boast enough strength to flatten heads, and techniques honed but not la-di-da. Translators are not needed; demolition rocketeering is a universal language in our underground. Not only will Punk never strike its colors, so long as mifits with perpetual scowls and guitars in hands stalk sidewalks, but every geographic outpost has been molested by surly shouters. Which is pretty damn cool.
Recommended: "Esto Es Madrid" (The Rejects), "La Basura Que Somos" (Viejos Tiempos), "Tema De Adrián" (Fracasso Italiano), "PolicÃa Corrupto" (Los Puta), "Don't Try This At Home" (Whatever!)), "Bhopal" (Punkonia), "Perros Plaga" (Terranos BaldÃos), "Tranki" (Qué Dirán), "Alianza" (Alianza), "Alta Frecuencia Que Cura El Dolor" (Hernán Dolor)
Videos: "Esto es Madrid" "Whatever" "Tema De Adrián" "Perros Plaga"
Fear
The Last Time
(Atomic Age Industries / Fear Records)
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Don't be put off by masterly touches that gloss now and again. The brutally-swerving obstreperousness that made 1982's The Record so impactful tears up macadam all over the place. The actuarial table gets good and punched up. High-rank songcraft. Lee Ving.
Recommended: "Here We Go Again," "Fuel-Injected Papa," "What Are Friends For?," "Three Blind Mice," "The Last Time," "What Happens," "Pain in the Neck," "A Million Bucks"
Videos: "Here We Go Again" "Fuel-Injected Papa" "Three Blind Mice" "The Last Time"
Bad Sam
"Popcorn & Blood" digital single
(Property of the Lost)
Chinese Hoodie
Quick Pop Fanclub
(Self-issued)
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