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Ex Everything

Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart

Neurot Recordings

Our world has been gradually falling apart. This may seem like a bleak point of view, but the collapse being witnessed inspired post-mathcore outfit Ex Everything as they created their eruptive debut Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart. “Everything around us–politically, socially, environmentally—seems to be stretching and breaking,” says guitarist Jon Howell. “Our record sits in that terrifying place where you’ve been watching it happen.” The Bay Area quartet boasts current and former members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves, Mercy Ties, Blowupnihilist, Less Art and others, but listeners shouldn’t mistake this for a short-term project or side band. This is a priority, every member focused and committed, and it only takes a few minutes with the album to understand how serious they are. “This band is completely its own thing,” says Howell. “It addresses the part of us that wants to write fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music.” Started initially in 2018 between Howell and bassist Ben Thorne, drummer Dan Sneddon joined in 2019, solidifying the core of the band. After going through the usual growing pains, spiked with a global pandemic, they recruited vocalist Andre Sanabria who understood what the band needed and delivered it with a fierce dedication. Cut to the band heading into Sharkbite Studios with Scott Evans—whose engineering credits include Yautja, Town Portal and Ghoul—and the band was finally able to hear what they’d accomplished. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is a near-perfect fusion of Dischord-influenced math rock and noisecore, a nuanced...

Limbo District

Rhythm Forward + 2

Chunklet

The B-52s, R.E.M., Pylon, Love Tractor... The roster of early Athens legends is quite distinguished, but one of their closest peers never so much as put a record out. That band is Limbo District. Active from April 1981 until their unceremonious disbanding in May 1983, there was a grand total of one movie made of them by Jim Herbert entitled "Carnival" while they existed. "They were the band's band," as Mark Cline from Love Tractor so eloquently put it on NPR. While the "Encased" track is on this, the band's first session in the summer/fall of 1981, two other tracks ("Knock Knock Lobo" and "Rhythm Forward") are included. The lyrics were written by vocalst Craig Woodall and songs were arranged and written by the band that included former Factory star Jerry Ayers (neé Jeremy Ayers, Silva Thin) on percussion, from northern France, Dominique Amet on Farfisa organ, Spaniard Margarita Bilbao on guitar and from Dublin, Georgia, Davey Stevenson on bass. This line up of the band existed no more than a few seasons and then went away to be reborn with Tim Lacy (later of Art in the Dark) and Kelly Crow both replacing Margarita on guitar in their own time. Behold the greatest ghost to ever haunt Athens, GA: Limbo District. Expect more. Much more. "Limbo District were an early 1980s Athens, Georgia band who never had any releases while they were around. Henry Owings has decided to rectify this situation. So here is their first release. Limbo...

Meshlir, Delia

Bring Back The Light

Ba Da Bing!

Delia Meshlir presents her new album, Bring Back The Light, which is her second release on Ba Da Bing Records. On the Swiss artist’s new record, Meshlir expands her sound to skillful new levels, with woodwinds and synthesizer adding to her guitar playing. It was recorded in Switzerland’s Alps, as well as at the illustrious Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, NY. Grief can open a window to the past. Nostalgia whelms, and childhood memories surface. While making Bring Back The Light, Meshlir struggled with the loss of her grandmother and the severed ties she felt with her family. The phrase “bring back the light” served as a mantra, manifesting with a return to authenticity and a celebration of healing. For Light, Meshlir reunited with the piano, an instrument she’s played since she was eight. She explains, “It was on the piano that I learned to compose and create worlds that transcribed my emotions. I felt the need to return to what I did as a child, alone in my room.” Dissolving judgment and embracing desires, Meshlir sparked a needed light within her to create the record. Basic tracks done, Meslir expanded instrumentation; the final masters exploring a range of sounds, from ’70s psychedelic rock to ’80s inspired tracks heavy with sax and synth. “I wanted different textures of the instruments and effects I used to immerse you into each and every song,” she says. “I love when music is already saying what the lyrics are going to tell, when...

Faith Healer

The Hand That Fits The Glove

Mint

Faith Healer quietly crystallizes on their new album The Hand That Fits The Glove, reshaping their already approachable pop sound into something even more immediate and invigorating. With their 2017 album Try ;-), the duo of Jessica Jalbert and producer/multi-instrumentalist Renny Wilson began stripping away some of the ‘60s chamber pop influences that had informed the earliest Faith Healer material, and these eight new songs continue expanding outward in new directions. It’s a multicolored assortment of richly detailed songwriting that feels surprisingly straightforward, knowingly concealing its complexities always just beneath a sheen of composed cool. The evolution that brought Faith Healer to this point has been ongoing since the project’s earliest days. Jalbert and Wilson had been working together since the time when Jalbert was still performing under her own name in the early 2010’s, transitioning to the Faith Healer moniker on 2015 album Cosmic Troubles and their creative partnership truly solidifying with Try ;-). Those albums were built from the ground up with an insular design, with sole contributors Jalbert and Wilson adding overdubs and sculpting the sound. The core Faith Healer duo expands their membership for the first time on The Hand That Fits The Glove, inviting additional musicians into the picture and filling out the sound with a live band feel. Players from various intersections of Canada’s indie circles played on the album, including contributions from longtime Faith Healer collaborators like Jenni Roberts (who’s also done some time as a touring musician on runs with TOPS...

False Maria

s/t

Helen Scarsdale Agency

If the white male hegemonic forces truly want to find a threat in queer, non-gender conforming art and music, that threat is manifest in False Maria. Heresies, transgressions, psychic self-immolation, and sexual deviance run amok with the litany of confessionals told by this unlikely proposition. According to False Maria, "this is the sound of addictions battled, abuse endured and lovers lost." Two entities exist with False Maria: the Los Angeles creature of the night Jhane P (she/her) and the mercurial Tomasz C (they/them) from the UK. For the past several years, their transcontinental conjurings have resulted in a steady stream of splits and self-released short-runs, all on cassette. Compositionally, False Maria leans into seasick tape loops and samples that ooze out of the more monstrous forms of Premature Ejaculation or even the Los Angeles Free Music Society (i.e. Solid Eye, Le Forte Four) with Jhane's vocal recitations of sex crimes and trauma leading the dance. With their eponymous debut for the Helen Scarsdale Agency, False Maria presents an opus of untidy, post-industrial malaise across this sprawling double cassette album. In comparison to their first fruits, this body of work shows a tremendous leap in production value with adventurous drum and synth programming that seeks to pull blood from the air with a sonic alchemy adjacent to Coil. The pulsing slink from "NHI : No Humans Involved" finds Jhane's vocals entwined with those of Himukalt's Ester Kärkkäinen, the Vegas death-industrialist cast from an equally tragic history of sexual anguish. By...

Left Cross

Upon Desecrated Altars

Profound Lore

Emerging in 2015 with a uniquely hostile brand of war charged death metal, Virginia’s Left Cross quickly established themselves as a merciless live act seemingly incapable of restraint. Forging and refining their sound over several releases, the band continued their relentless assault while losing none of their murderous intent. Now veterans of countless campaigns, they return to unleash their sophomore effort, Upon Desecrated Altars, under the banner of Profound Lore Records. A cacophonous offering, Upon Desecrated Altars joins grotesque melodies with an inhuman vehemence that forgoes any ambiguity. Little to no respite can be found as each track builds upon the devastation of the last, ultimately rising to a crescendo of conquest. With a salvo of blistering solos, thunderous percussion and infernal commands, Left Cross declares victory and marches onward.

King Louie Bankston

Harahan Fats

Goner

Goner Records is honored to release Harahan Fats, an extraordinary posthumous album by King Louie Bankston (December 18, 1972 - February 12, 2022). The collection showcases an American artist at the pinnacle of his musical and personal identity. An aural roadmap to South Louisiana that’s imbued with personal mythologies and blurry, beer-soaked and drug-skewed memories, Harahan Fats was recorded over a four-year period that culminated in mid-October 2021. As co-founder and drummer of the Royal Pendletons, Bankston recorded with power-pop legend Alex Chilton. He picked up a Gibson Flying V for his work in Bad Times, a garage rock supergroup that Bankston helmed alongside Eric Oblivian and Jay Reatard. In the 1990s, Bankston channeled his energy into bands like the Persuaders, Intelligenitals, the Clickems, Harahan Crack Combo, and Gerry And The Bastard Makers. At the dawn of the new century, he founded the legendary King Louie One Man Band. In 2000, Louie pulled up stakes in New Orleans and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he joined the power-pop punk band The Exploding Hearts. Bankston wrote many of the songs and played keyboards on their only album, the highly acclaimed Guitar Romantic, released mere weeks before three members of the band were killed in a van wreck, and recently reissued by Third Man Records. Bankston then landed in Memphis, where he formed the Loose Diamonds, a ramshackle bar band, with Jack Oblivian, Harlan T. Bobo, and Gary Wrong. With guitarist Julian Fried, he formed Missing Monuments and Black Rose Band,...

Citric Dummies

Zen And The Arcade Of Beating Your Ass

Feel It

***"Bursting out of a burning trash heap like some mutated, blitzed skeleton in a leatherjacket, Citric Dummies thrash their listeners with a heavy dose of pulverizing punk madness on their latest LP Zen and The Arcade of Beating Your Ass. The Minneapolis based trio have previously released a handful of endlessly infectious records on US and Euro labels like Erste Theke Tonträger, Fashionable Idiots, and Another Label- luring in unsuspecting punks with their aberrant, tuneful noise. Citric Dummies rip turbocharged, catchy songs riddled with big hooks that are inhaled like paint fumes by fans of niche KBD gems and classics like The Ramones and The Misfits. The band has signed with Feel It Records to release their most dialed and corrosive record to date- a pièce de résistance for LSD enthusiasts and jabronis alike. Produced by Erik Nervous (known for his own project as well as production work with The Spits and Liquids), Zen and The Arcade of Beating Your Ass Is a masterclass in unpretentious and unrelenting party punk. The cover is a clever mockery of Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade waving a friendly middle-finger paying homage to the punk heroes of yore. Citric Dummies power through 14 songs in 23 minutes in a psychotic frenzy. The songs conjure chaotic and hilarious glimpses into the everyday life of a hesher self-deprecating, taking copious amounts of illicit substances, and kicking the teeth out of the phonies that step in their way. Sonically, Citric Dummies have honed their knuckle-dragging craft, and sound...

Erik Nervous

Immaturity

Feel It

Erik Nervous (aka Erik Hart to his folks) has produced at least an E.P. a year since 2015, releasing his music on a long list of American indies, such as Warm Ratio, Total Punk, Neck Chop, Lumpy, and Digital Regress. There was a short break for the COVID-19 pandemic, but even then, Erik hooked up with two friends, as the Beta Blockers. Erik also happens to be one of the top punk recording engineers in the Midwest and has been playing synth in the Spits since 2021. Immaturity marks the return of Erik Nervous as a solo artist. The thirty-nine minute long playing rock album will be co-released by FatCat (UK) and Feel It (US) on November 3, 2023. As a kid, at the turn of the millennium, Erik was immersed in 1970s and `80s pop culture - sugary cartoon fair, from Scooby-Do to Yogi Bear, musically from Prince to Olivia Newton John and John Travolta’s turn in Grease. It was actually an obsession with the Harmonix Guitar Hero II video game that got Erik into making his own music. He learnt how to play drums via their subsequent Rock Band series. After buying a cheap acoustic guitar from Target, while in 5th or 6th grade, he received an electric one for Christmas a few years later. He insists that he still uses this instrument for 90% of his recording. Starting out teaching himself how to multi-track, etc. with an iPad and Garageband, Erik then went retro and bought a...

Secret Pyramid

A Vanishing Touch

Ba Da Bing!

While possibly not the first ambient record to be inspired by J Dilla’s Donuts, Secret Pyramid’s A Vanishing Touch is in rarified company. The two seem antithetical—with Donuts a now classic collection of short beats compiled together and A Vanishing Touch being a forty-minute suite consisting of fourteen pieces. However, like any genre, ambient music has a lot more going on beneath the surface than might be initially gleaned. From the start, Amir Abbey dropped his usual songwriting process of long contemplation and careful sculpting. “I let the pieces live and breathe, and I spent a lot less time tweaking and editing. Doing this brought an energy and mystery to the music that was missing from what I’ve made in the past.” This allowed the record to come together quickly”, with Abbey working on it nightly after his work day had ended. “Each album is a snapshot of where I am at that point in time. With this album, I have been thinking about shifting memory, how a moment in time does not need to be thought of as endless, but rather part of a cycle. Every beginning is as important and salient as the ending that follows.” Working at home, as he always has, Abbey embeds synths, tape loops and processing, horns, ondes martenot, guitar, bass, and organ within the multi-tiered composition of A Vanishing Touch. Sounds morph, bleed, fade, and permeate with moments where a listener is able to make out what is being played at that moment....

Circus Devils

Squeeze The Needle

GBV Inc

Formed in 2001, the psychedelic rock trio Circus Devils features vocalist Robert Pollard, backed by brothers Todd Tobias and Tim Tobias. In their first album in six years, and their fifteenth overall, Circus Devils is back with Squeeze The Needle, a funhouse romp full of rock and roll swagger and childlike glee. The pounding psychedelia of the single “The Owl Presents…” harkens back to The Doors. Mixed into the twenty-track song collage are heavy rock thumpers (“Street Toughs,” “Mama’s Got A Brand New Snake”), cryptic interludes (“Age Of Transfusion”), and pretty acoustic pieces (“Difficult Dreamer,” “The Joke is Over”).

Divine Horsemen

Bitter End Of A Sweet Night

In The Red

The renaissance of Divine Horsemen—which began in 2021 with In The Red’s release of Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix, the legendary Los Angeles punk band’s first release in 33 years—continues with a thrilling and unexpected new album, Bitter End Of A Sweet Night. The new sixteen-track collection again features the band’s co-founding members, singers-songwriters Chris Desjardins (better known as Chris D.) and Julie Christensen, and the core members of the ferocious Hot Rise band—guitarist / co-writer Peter Andrus (a member of the group’s late ’80s lineup), bassist Bobby Permanent and X’s nonpareil drummer DJ Bonebrake. The sound is filled out by Green On Red and Dream Syndicate keyboardist Chris Cacavas (who appeared on the 1984 Chris D. / Divine Horsemen album Time Stands Still) and classically trained violinist Elizabeth Wilson. Desjardins produced the album. Divine Horsemen’s dramatic In The Red bow and a 2020 archival set of club performances from 1985 and 1987, issued by Feeding Tube Records, reacquainted listeners with their stormy power and eclectic roots-punk musicianship, which diversified the searing approach taken by Desjardins’ previous band, foundational L.A. punk unit the Flesh Eaters. (Christiansen had previously regrouped with her former husband and musical partner Desjardins on I Used to Be Pretty, the 2018 album that reunited the 1980 “all-star” Flesh Eaters lineup.) Reaction to the group’s rebirth was rapturous. Jaime Pina of Punk Globe called Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix “brilliant,” adding, “The music is lush with both acoustic and electric guitars and the...

Why Bother?

Calling All Goons

Feel It

Would it be October without a new WHY BOTHER? album? We first heard from the Iowa group with 2021's "A Year of Mutations" and they have not looked in the rear view mirror since. "Calling All Goons" is WB?'s fourth album in three years - a lexicon for the freaks, a beacon of hope amidst the digital deluge, or just a true artist's piece depending on how you see it. And that's the beauty of WHY BOTHER? They are the enigma. A band that extends from the roots of Midwestern punk while adding something new to the conversation. This is the kind of rare phenomenon that is outwardly difficult to describe...so step inside the world of WHY BOTHER? for the 13 songs spread across "Calling All Goons".

Wayfarer

American Gothic

Profound Lore

Wayfarer is the pre-eminent Western American metal band. Comprised of four black clad players from Denver, Colorado, the band’s sound draws from the deep wells of black metal, gothic country, and Americana, creating a thunderous and uniquely American genre of metal all to their own. After ten years of existence, the band presents American Gothic —a defining statement of Western heavy music that explores the dark soul of the nation itself. This time working alongside accomplished producer Arthur Rizk (Kreator, Soulfy) the band brings an aggressive and expansive vision to life in a new full length album. Led by powerful riffing, bleak melodic sensibilities, and pointed songwriting, this record serves as a funeral for the American dream. Caked in dust, and buried deep in blood and gunpowder, it paints a brutal and beautiful portrait, and sees Wayfarer elevate their unique and genuine brand of metal to new heights.

Ragana

Desolation's Flower

Flenser

Ragana is a duo whose members alternate duties on drums, guitar, and vocals to produce some of the most unique and affecting dark music in metal today. The two-piece came together in 2011 in the DIY punk scene of Olympia, WA and are now based in Olympia and Oakland, CA. In their time together so far, Ragana have self-released five albums and teamed up with genre-favourite Thou for a split release in 2018. The following year, Ragana released their heralded We Know That The Heavens Are Empty EP and have quietly been working on new music ever since. The band signed with The Flenser in late 2022 and now present their forthcoming debut album for the label, Desolation’s Flower. On Desolation’s Flower, Ragana draws upon a number of influences from the flora and fauna of their Pacific Northwest origins to the darkly nostalgic folk of Mt. Eerie and, yes, their Olympian forebears Wolves In The Throne Room, synthesising them into an experimental, highly idiosyncratic take on black metal. Held together by an intense focus on raw emotion and haunting atmospherics, Ragana shifts seamlessly from tender, mesmerising vocal harmonies to piercing, heart-ripping screams and back again, yielding music that is heavy, beautiful and punishing all at once. Written over the past few tumultuous years, Desolation’s Flower is the band’s most devastating effort to date, containing seven incantations of loss, rage, pain and hope. Expertly engineered by the masterful Nicholas Wilbur at the Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington (Planning For Burial, drowse,...

Spllit

Infinite Hatch

Feel It

Cut from a magnetic, jagged edge of the Louisiana underground, Spllit open up an entirely new can of worms on 'Infinite Hatch'. A dozen new originals, mined from the minds of Marance and Urq, prove to be quite the follow-up to their introductory 2021 effort, 'Spllit Sides'. Transitioning from home recording project to roadworthy live unit - anchored by Raegan Labat (bass) and Ryan Welsh (drums) has worked wonders for Spllit's style. Their approach to composition remains wonderfully fried - a galaxy of textured sonic synapses, totally wired and deeply imaginative. Yet, in the midst of this collision of sounds, there's beauty. Anxieties transcend into swirling dual-vocal pop art experimentalia, while guitar work taps into something Magical. Spllit's old friend MIDI again contributes to the smokestack of layered tracks, though somehow - IT ALL MAKES SENSE. Crystalline soundscapes from humid human minds. 'Infinite Hatch' is a rare flavor, strikingly different based on how you approach it, yet cohesive. Spllit are triumphant sonic chemists, cooking in the avant-lab that's way, way out there.

Gravesend

Gowanus Death Stomp

20 Buck Spin

The dark, seedy underworld of New York City once again emerges as the cityscape is tainted by sewage, crack smoke and the trade of flesh. The streets, once bustling with life, permeate with the grotesque and filth-ridden chaos of yesteryear. Among these harsh realities, within the walls of the dimly lit alley ways, a stench reeks of bodily fluids and rat feces. On the subway platforms, desperate souls engage in random acts of violence on one another over a few measly bucks. The East River runs a sickly green and the city’s hue mirrors the shadows cast by these illicit endeavors. Amid this unsettling somber reality a soundscape to capture the horror is now realized in the form of Gravesend’s second album. The new album Gowanus Death Stomp compounds the cruelty displayed on 2021 debut Methods Of Human Disposal into an ever more gritty and primal barrage of violence. At the crossroads of criminal depravity and urban malaise, Gravesend utilize many tools of the trade. Black / death / grind / war metal all meld seamlessly into a tar pit of scathing back-alley sadism and acid-tongued vocals. Like a newly found corpse down by the docks, the smell of decomposition is wafting out of every track on Gowanus Death Stomp. And as with NYC’s underground legends from Cro-Mags to Swans to Type O Negative, Gravesend embodies the pulse of the city, even as that pulse bleeds out on the concrete.

Alien Nosejob

The Derivative Sounds Of

Goner

Less than twelve months on from the triumphant rock ’n’ roll record that was Stained Glass, Australia’s most tasteful sonic culinary artiste Jake Robertson serves up The Derivative Sounds Of, another platter in his never-ending, ever-extending Alien Nosejob banquet. Since initially firing out similar flavors on his first offering, Alien Nosejob has conquered the challenges of disco, hardcore, new wave, rock and roll (all drowned in his characteristically sweet sense of humor) before finally returning back to his musical roots: the jangly, adolescent feel of 1960s garage. After one of Robertson’s first bands, The Frowning Clouds, reunited for a few shows in September 2022, he found himself digging up old songs and riffs from the period, some spanning back to as early as 2006 and up until around 2012. This record features many of those song ideas—some reworked, some rewritten, some exactly the same. All together now as one hot package. Leaning into his musical tastes from the Clouds’ period of existence, Robertson digs up inspiration in some teenage staples: The Troggs, Mike Furber, the under-appreciated bands that make up the Shutdown ’66 / Back From The Grave compilations, without overdoing the sugar, salt, MSG, whatever one wants to call it. This record was recorded by Robertson all by his lonesome over a weekend in his garage. There’s no paisley shirts, no skinny-ties, no winkle-pickers, no slim-fit suits and no haircuts—just Robertson and his 1964 MacBook Pro. Garage rock revival is a sound that’s often overdone,...

Hard Copy

12 Shots Of Nature

Feel It

***"Groundbreaking bands typically don't function as stars hanging in the night sky for all to gaze upon. Rare talent functions more accurately like tectonic plates, mutating their surroundings deep underground by bulldozing the pre existing turf. These kinds of musicians who regenerate and evolve our world by forging new creative languages that future artists will liberally borrow from and build upon. Richmond, Virginia may seem like a surprising location for seismic catalysts, but Hard Copy now joins an elite list of RVA bands moving sound in unexpected and earth shaking directions. Destruction! Invention! Rebirth! Once upon a time there was Honor Role who deconstructed midwest hardcore and carved out a path for what eventually would become mathrock. Combining empathy wrapped in anger, a following generation would use this template to birth post-hardcore and a 2nd wave emotional music. A bit later came Labradford who were atmospheric scientists creating pulsating soundscapes bathed in drone. Their music was so devastatingly unique that Kranky willed themselves into existence to release their debut for which this historic label was built upon and continues to lead the way in experimental music. I can't help but to include Hard Copy among this kind of revelatory innovation. They are subtle shapeshifters of synth driven post-punk. At their core, we find unorthodox art rock for which Talking Heads and Pere Ubu belong, but it is stretched taut like taffy into trance-inducing, long form motorik musings. Singular vocals act as a secondary percussion. Bass lines double as a metronome...

Kid Congo Powers

Sings The Subsonics

In The Red

Kid Congo Powers has seen fit to cover two songs by Atlanta garage rock legends the Subsonics and release them on seven inch vinyl—the way God intended rock 'n' roll to be heard. Kid’s scuzzy, noisy renditions do the originals proud and are guaranteed to make one want to get up, dance and behave badly. Housed in a gaudy full color sleeve and pressed on kaleidoscopic tricolor vinyl.

Man Or Astroman

Peel Session 1993

Chunklet

Chunklet Industries is proud to announce a breakthrough in broadcasting technology. For the first time, the BBC working hand-in-hand with intergalactic audio pioneers Man…or Astro-Man? present to you seven volumes of their famed U.K. radio sessions. The band’s debut session in Maida Vale 3 was also the first time they stepped foot on English soil. It all started with Birdstuff sending a postcard to John Peel insisting that he not play the band's music and it led to December 1993, at the special request of the legendary, who became one the earliest, most visible and most vocal supporters of the band on English soil, five songs were recorded and three tracks are being released on this initial single.

Man Or Astroman

Radio Scotland 1994

Chunklet

Chunklet Industries is proud to announce a breakthrough in broadcasting technology. For the first time, the BBC working hand-in-hand with intergalactic audio pioneers Man…or Astro-Man? present to you seven volumes of their famed U.K. radio sessions. The band’s session for the Beat Patrol wasn't even noted within the BBC's vast archives, but trusted Astro-pal The Boo-Yaa Boy (aka Henry @ Chunklet) uncovered this session with the generous help of Paul Carlin up at Radio Scotland. A total of seven songs were recorded, six were usable, and four are being released on this single, the second of seven.

Sugar Tradition

More Sugar

Feel It

Oh boy, now we're cooking. Now we're in the court of Sugar Tradition. Only a city like their hometown of Detroit could foster such a refined appreciation of rock'n'roll, r&b, and garage punk - and Sugar Tradition clearly have IT. The trio, consisting of Antonio Keka (guitar/vocals), Kevin Irwin (drums), and Arlo Betley (bass) are a complete force of nature live - contemporaries of the Stools, Toeheads, and 208. They're also fresh off a tour supporting none other than the Detroit Cobras. Sugar Tradition have managed to capture that raw, driving Motor City sound in damn near perfect form on 'More Sugar', their vinyl debut on Feel It Records. "Rockin' Baby" kicks things into gear, anchored by a driving piano line that plays off a pounding rhythm section, allowing Keka's guitar and vocals to rule the high end of the mix. There's some tasteful harmonica and tambourine peppered throughout, but it's the raw, fuzzed-out sonics heard best on "Don't Leave Me" that may just steal the show. Oh yeah, did we mention the roaring rendition of Chuck Berry's "Come On"? It's all recorded live, too. A stupendous fourteen minutes at 45 RPM. Sugar Tradition are one of the brightest sets of young heads on the face of planet rock'n'roll right now, and 'More Sugar' proves that to a tee. (STREET DATE - 10/13/2023)

Fearing

Destroyer

Profound Lore

California post-punk outfit Fearing follow their 2020 debut album Shadow with Destroyer, which sees the core trio continuing to foster their sound by migrating towards sonic realms that capture the somber, the austere, the vigorous, and the vibrant. It is a striking singular vision of abyssal maritime desolation, expressed by carving sonic territory that seamlessly blends French coldwave, European post-punk, and first wave shoegaze. Ever since their debut EP A Life Of None (2017), followed by their widely celebrated Black Sand EP (2018), Fearing have been procuring a constant flow of commendable releases. Through vigorous touring and live endeavors that include the likes of Gatecreeper, She Wants Revenge, Soft Kill, 200 Stab Wounds, Choir Boy, Narrow Head, Death Bells, along with notable festivals as Substance, Home Sick, and Out From The Shadows, they have fastened themselves as one of the apex artists in today’s post-punk current.

Carlton Melton

Turn To Earth

Agitated

Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers—“psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, DDT), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in...

Todd, Pat & The Rankoutsiders

Sons Of The City Ditch

Dog Meat Records

A resurgent Dog Meat Records is thrilled and proud to release a new album by a resurgent rock'n'roller and an old friend, Pat Todd and his band Tje Rankoutsiders. The seventh album by LA's finest rock'n'roll band comes some 36 years after the label's first dalliances with Pat, back when he fronted the legendary Lazy Cowgirls. The new album shows that Pat has lost none of his spark, that his voice and songwriting have only gotten stronger, and that he's got another killer band behind him, one that mixes classic '70s punk rock roots with country, blues and rock'n'roll in a manner that sits somewhere between Exile on Main Street and LAMF. The new album is highlighted as usual by Pat Todd's fantastic songs. A prolific writer with an eye on life in the margins—whether they be in small towns or the big sprawling city he has called home for 40 years—Todd routinely hits the mark where youth and the advancement of age find common ground in alienation and wilfulness. Pat knows that rock’n’roll is not necessarily a young person's game, and nor is it a glamourous one; the name he gave this band accurately points to where he and they are coming from. New originals like 'All We Have To Show', the horn-riffing rocker 'Living In A World of Hurt' and the raucous country-folk punker 'Goodbye to the World' are up there with anything he has ever written, and the Rankoutsiders play them even better than ever. Indeed, a...

False Fed

Let Them Eat Fake

Neurot Recordings

From the dark roots of Amebix, Discharge and Nausea. A new twisted branch of thorns shoots from the alternate family tree. In 2019 BC (Before Covid) Discharge frontman Jeff Janiak reached out to longtime friend and musician JP Parsons to assist on a new project. The pair wrote and recorded various ideas before reaching out to Amebix guitarist Stig.C.Miller who joined them in the midst of the global pandemic. The trio utilized this new creative climate of physical restriction and went on to set the foundations for their first album, via file sharing home recordings, which would be arranged and produced by Stig. It was several months later when he would call upon Nausea, Ministry and former Amebix drummer Roy Mayorga to complete the line up. Roy went onto record drums, mix and produce the band's debut album 'LET THEM EAT FAKE'. In these unprecedented times of global restriction, fear and the everlasting lack of faith in the hierarchy 'False Fed' has cultivated a heavy sound that is drenched in melody, aggression and shrouded in darkness. It is not bound by genre, yet still offers subtle hints to the creators lineage.

Krieg

Ruiner

Profound Lore

Ruiner is the first full-length from the cult US black metal force Krieg since 2014’s Transient and is a despondent expression that captures the classic complexion that has solidified the band as a vanguard and pioneer of the genre. Even though Ruiner is the first Krieg full-length album in nine years, they have continued to remain active leading up to its long-awaited release through various splits, collaborations and EPs. Those have all culminated in this ultimate manifestion. Ruiner is unrepentant and remorseless black metal in the reflective manner Krieg mastermind N. Jameson has always been known for. It harnesses the notable savagery and unhinged aura present in their triarchy of classic works, Destruction Ritual (2001), The Black House (2004), and Blue Miasma (2006), while maintaining a harsh, sorrowful and cold-blooded melancholic aura.

Catatonic Suns

s/t

Agitated

Brand new album from young Allentown, PA three-piece Catatonic Suns. Their first for Agitated Records. Catatonic Suns comprises eight songs (seven originals, and an Original Sins cover) and has blown Agitated's collective minds. Their previous album was an incredible melding of big-sounding US/UK underground sounds, but this album has taken that fire further. The band have developed more of a hi-fidelity psychedelic rock with a shoegazery shimmer akin to the late '80s / early '90s Pacific Northwest sound in cahoots with the UK sound of early '90s Creation / 4AD. For fans of Screaming Trees, Nirvana, The Verve (early), Slowdive, Ride, Alice In Chains. Songs that soar, these new recordings verge on the epic.

Upchuck

Bite The Hand That Feeds

Famous Class

***Channeling the speed of youth and the heaviness of a fleshy, lived life in equal proportion, Upchuck’s second LP, Bite the Hand That Feeds, is a Trojan Horse par excellence, craftily smuggling in waves of sentimental emotion and clever pop songwriting under a veil of pulsing rhythms and scorching riffs. What binds Upchuck together is a purity of intention, an organic loyalty to a thick knot of uncalculated friendships, struggles, and desires. These are songs about the joy of continuing to live, songs that find each other in the rush of a crushing reality, propelling the listener onward towards a collective release, however brief it may last. Themes of surviving through the night, youth-blinded love, cheap champagne soaked back-alley parties, and chaotic street protests are subsumed under a single unifying thread: the needs we have for one another, our shared hunger for connection. In a world saturated with arbitrary rules and paper-thin moralism, Upchuck offer freedom through sensation, a type of unserious transcendence found through the swirl of bodies melting into one another in the passion of dance. With Bite the Hand That Feeds, Upchuck isn’t trying to tell anyone how to live. Rather, they are simply trying to find a way to make life more worth living for both themselves and their friends—if the music compels you to move, you might as well consider yourself their friend too. Shortly after the release of their debut album Sense Yourself, Upchuck absconded to Southern California to record Bite the Hand That...

Hillburg, Anna

Tired Girls

Speakeasy Studios SF

Tired Girls is the third full-length studio album by Bay Area singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Anna Hillburg. Co-produced and recorded with Jason Quever of the Papercuts, the pair created an album for lovers of finely crafted and supremely catchy chamber pop. As always, Hillburg’s voice takes center stage, but for Tired Girls she made a conscious choice to dig deeper into her trumpet skills and make more elaborate horn arrangements than her previous records. Lyrically, Hillburg dives into what it is to be a contemporary woman, and how one perseveres, finds inspiration, creates, loves, and lives. Recorded throughout 2022 at Quever’s studio, the two built dreamy soundscapes with long-time collaborators Logan Kroeber on drums (The Dodos), Josh Miller on bass (Chime School, Extra Classic), and Yea Ming Chen on keys. The entire record has a real “Ladies, trust your gut” feeling, unsurprisingly, as Hillburg says she tends to write songs about “the reality of womanhood and feminism but ya know, why not make that a little ‘dancey’?” As a collection, Tired Girls marks her arrival as an artist who has hit their stride. Each track shows her talent and progression as a songwriter and performer. As a multi-instrumentalist and classically trained trumpet player, Hillburg is a sought-after session and live musician in the vibrant Bay Area music scene, performing regularly with Shannon And The Clams, The Dodos, The Moore Brothers, The Once And Future Band, Will Sprott, Dream Date, Greg Ashley, Shannon Shaw and her All-Star Buddy Band, and...

Robb, Emily

If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection

Petty Bunco

The fantastic new album from tireless seeker Emily Robb. It’s a no-frills, high-minded celebration of guitar and sound and tone and string and amp and adventure committed to tape at Emily’s own Suddenly Studio in Philadelphia in fits and spurts stretching over 2022/23. These are economical tunes of utter trance and tightrope pulsations, with a fearless spirit and a devotion to energy and personality that digs into previously untapped mines. With zero fuss and pomp, If I Am Misery Then Give Me Affection builds a wholly new palette of expression, and Emily follows her Les Paul like it’s a divining rod. It’s anyone’s guess where it points next, but we’re all fortunate enough to be invited along for the ride.

Dwyer, John + Heather Lockie, Thomas Dolas, Kyp Malone, Andres Renteria, Brad Caulkins & Archie Carey

RITUAL / HABIT / CEREMONY

Castle Face

The band is John Dwyer (synths, vocals), Heather Lockie (viola), Thomas Dolas (synths), Andres Renteria (hand percussion), Brad Caulkins (tenor saxophone), Kyp Malone (synths) and Archie Carey (bassoon). The singers are YoshimiO (Boredoms, OOIOO), Albert Wolski (EXEK), Gracie Jackson (GracieHorse), Ciriza (Artist Extraordinaire), Kyp Malone (Bent Arcana, TV On The Radio, Rain Machine etc.), Brigid Dawson (Thee Oh Sees, The Mothers Network), AZITA (Scissor Girls, Bride of NONO, AZITA) For fans of Steve Roach, Eno, Syrinx, Howard Shore, Current 93, Terry Riley, Tangerine Dream and a proper sage scrub. “An experiment in symphonic improvisation paired with synthesizer-scapes. Strings, reeds, synths and hand percussion all blend sweetly into an odd landscape indeed. The final touch was to bring aboard some singers I have loved over the years. I’m so pleased they were all willing to participate and I’m very tickled by the plane we navigate. Once YoshimiO agreed to be on board I knew we were going to be OK. Recorded and mixed at my home studio (Stu-Stu-Studio in Los Angeles) and remotely, this one was a slow burn to see the light of day. And here it is in its final crystal form. Celebrating the spaces between ritual, habit and ceremony. And all the parallels between. The line is blurred. This is occult adjacent strain of sound. At home in daily ritual, contemplation and meditation.” —John Dwyer

Arkbro, Ellen

Sounds While Waiting

W.25TH

Sounds While Waiting documents the latest organ works by composer and musician Ellen Arkbro – following her phenomenal debut, 2017's For Organ And Brass, and the more recent CHORDS for organ. Recorded at a centuries-old church in Unnaryd, Sweden in June 2020, these pieces reveal the enchanting qualities of sustained harmonic sound, how patterns of listening dissolve and emerge as textured space. On opening track "Changes," long radiant tones ebb and flow like divine breaths, while "Leaving Dreaming" builds with dynamic tension to unlock a subtle, otherworldly ambience. As the composer states in the sleeve notes, "These recordings are traces of something I have come to love to do in large resonant spaces, which is to set up sustained chords on multiple organs and then move slowly through the sound. The instruments are usually far apart, which makes for the emergence of large fields of continuous change, spaces of harmonicity that can be passed through layer by layer and which contain within them points of both clarity and overwhelming complexity. The organ pipes are tuned and retuned, though sometimes I leave them just as they are. What I'm searching for is the moment when a particular kind of sounding texturality is revealed – it is rough, focused and yet strangely transparent." Arkbro composes for acoustic instruments, for synthetic sound and for combinations of both, including music for orchestra and smaller chamber ensembles and large scale installation works. She currently performs in Catherine Christer Hennix's Kamigaku ensemble and has previously...

Tomb Mold

The Enduring Spirit

20 Buck Spin

***NOW SHIPPING ON LIMITED DOUBLEMINT GREEN / AQUA BLUE GALAXY VINYL!!! Received Best New Music on Pitchfork and a 8.6 Rating! After releasing three albums in three years and then spending the next four in the wilderness, Tomb Mold has been reborn on fourth album The Enduring Spirit, a thoroughly unabashed step into vast new territories. Yet for all its frenetic daring and audacious exploration, it is never anything other than unmistakably Tomb Mold. While the expanding Tomb Mold architecture could be heard on last year’s self-released Aperture Of Body tape, it comes into clear focus throughout The Enduring Spirit. Certainly Derrick Vella’s time creating within and expanding the doom genre in Dream Unending has seeped into the flesh of Tomb Mold, not to mention Payson Power and Max Klebanoff’s explorations in their own Daydream Plus project. With album opener “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm of Aura)” the band’s angular dimension shifting riffing appears right out of the gate as the track travels through varying degrees of progressive death metal and some of the band’s most extreme material yet. “Will Of Whispers” enters with a jazz-like fantasy sequence before careening into a blinding white light barrage, tasteful guitar leads and back to a dreamy serpentine pattern, encompassing whole universes in its nearly seven minute run-time. The back half of the record continues the voyage into what’s possible with the outward expansion of death metal norms, reaching the zenith of eleven plus minute album closer “The Enduring Spirit Of Calamity,”...

Dark Dark Dark / Nona Marie Invie

Something Was There

Dark Dark Dark

Dark Dark Dark’s rich history is punctuated by house shows and train hopping, touring as support for The National in Portugal, playing both The National and TV On The Radio’s ATP Festivals, and years of indefatigable coast-to-coast U.S. touring. It’s a history rich with recordings, including a pair of celebrated full-lengths produced by Tom Herbers (Low, The Cactus Blossoms), three EPs, and a feature film score. Now, ten years later—surprise—a new 10-inch single. In 2013, when Dark Dark Dark released the What I Needed EP, anyone might have guessed it was a bridge between the previous year’s lauded album Who Needs Who and the next big venture. The band had closed out 2012 as part of Australia's touring Harvest Festival, during which they stepped up to fill an unexpectedly vacant slot much later in the day, enchanting thousands of unsuspecting festival-goers. Alas, after that, the band went silent. The release of these new songs is certainly delightful and perhaps startling, as is the promise of more solo work from singer Nona Marie Invie. On the gorgeous and stately “Didn’t I Try,” Invie’s voice is elegant as ever, couched in the familiar sounds of Marshall LaCount’s distorted banjo and Mark Trecka’s roiling drums. The loping and haunted “Something Was There” follows—a staple of Dark Dark Dark’s live sets in the last year of their touring. Fans of contemporaries Weyes Blood (of which DDD multi-instrumentalist Walt McClements is now a full-time member) and Angel Olsen (in whose live and studio band...

The Exbats

Song Machine

Goner

In a just world, Song Machine, the fifth full-length album from The Exbats, which arrives via Goner Records, would become one of the most-loved and most-listened to albums of the 2020s. With the thirteen-track album, the Bisbee, Arizona-based band further their analog back-to-the-future combination of the Shangri-Las and pre-Velvet Underground doo-wop wannabe Lou Reed, churning out catchy tunes laden with buoyant choruses that rank alongside the best A-sides recorded in the shadow of the Brill Building or with the Wrecking Crew in tow. The Exbats are effortless time travelers—this time, they’ve set the dial for the early 1970s, incorporating the sonic magic of The Partridge Family, Muswell Hillbillies-era Kinks, and Brian Wilson into the crux of their musical ethos, evident on tracks like the propulsive “Riding With Paul” and “The Happy Castaway,” which bookend the album. “What I remember about that era is going to record stores and seeing a wall of 45s that somebody was tasked with moving around [in concordance with] the Billboard charts,” says Kenny McLain, who, alongside daughter Inez, is the driving force behind The Exbats. “With our band we’re kinda moving things around on that towering wall of singles, as if it were from some sort of ancient tomb, and we’re trying to crack a code and make it to number one. So, I suppose, some magic door will open. And we’ll all be free? Or something like that.” Inez McLain, namesake of the Monkees’ wool-capped guitarist Mike Nesmith, has played drums and sung for...

Cuticles

Major Works

Siltbreeze

Oamaru, located about 80 miles north of Dunedin on New Zealand's south island, might seem like the last place you expect to find a prodigious racket like Cuticles, but ain't that a kick? You just never know. Formed around the nucleus of Austen McMillian, Matthew Plunkett (ex-Trendees) & Lisa Preston (Nux Vomica, The Portage) a couple years back, they've been stacking up the hits and on Major Works, it's time to cash in. There's 18 tracks here and Cuticles chew through 'em with abandon. Someone just yelled out from the attic next door, "Sounds like the Pastels, with guns!" One could make a case for the South Island Sound coursing through their veins (they do live there after all), but the sheer abandon-pop that gushes off the grooves, it's hard not to be reminded of those two, great, David Mitchell helmed Auckland outfits, The Exploding Budgies & Goblin Mix. They might all drink the same water, who knows? But it sure feels good to get brain-stung again by the salty rimes off the Otago Coast. Long may they howl.

Undergang

De Syv Stadier Af Ford​æ​rv

Dark Descent

Undergang’s signature mix of neanderthalic drumming and stringy, phlegm-like riffs is instantly recognizable to any death metal fan. Equally so is David Torturdød’s signature vomit-snarled vocals, all of which immediately will grip one with the fist of festering decay. Although primal and disgusting as ever, the band has always had a penchant for including gloomy moments betwixt their rot-churning disdain. De Syv Stadier Af Ford​æ​rv has plenty of those disgusting dynamics, which throw a superb stench into the air with remorseless instrumental fury and equally unsavory vocals, taking everything that made the death metal of old great and plunging it furiously into the carcass of today like a rusted knife designed to open seeping sores and spray pus forth upon all within the vicinity. The pulverizing putrescence does not relent… From the slowest drudges to the grinding fury and all sonic sadism in between, Undergang’s newest offering is a viciously unpleasant and a transfixing opus of odors most foul. Woefully brutal, most puny headbangers will simply die from the sheer weight of this thing if they try to lift it onto their turntable. Any remaining will be flattened by the brutal gut-opening notes and will be subjected to twenty minutes thereafter. Although all of the band’s albums contain nothing short of true magnificent monstrosities from start to end, the amount of diversity in this miniature tome of auditory violations is impeccable even by the band’s high standard. If one finds themselves presented with this cacophony of rot, then be sure...

Acid Twilight

Shadow Wrangler

Not Not Fun

Argentine modal master Acid Twilight’s third raga saga maps a dusty plain of tumbleweeds, circling vultures, and bleached bones, across which rides a nameless stranger: Shadow Wrangler. Inspired by visions of high noon dread and the textures of psychedelic twang, they turned westward, layering shakers, synths, spurs, and six-string navigations into 12 crooked canyon instrumentals. Shades of spaghetti western, Spacemen 3, and outlaw country whisper in the wind, but ultimately AT’s mode is more silhouette than song, at the axis of campfire jam and commune improv. Loping and loose, windswept and waterless, blowing over the sand of trails long since vanished. Another smoke signal rises in the distance; another scorpion sunset begins to dim. The Wrangler rides on.