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Christopher Alan Durham & The Peacetime Consumers

Kicks Or Macabre

Soft Abuse

“Hark! DIY sleaze-rock henchpersons, ascend from your cellars and rejoice...Midwestern anti-folk hero Christopher Alan Durham (The Bibs, All Gone Recs) arrives on high horse in full-length mode with a band of merry menaces in tow. Following a string of cassette and 7-inch releases for labels like Spacecase and Soft Abuse (whom are also responsible for the gift in hand), Kicks Or Macabre is CAD’s first LP outing under his own name, and we’re all the better for it. “Recorded in and around modern-day Detroit, the record certainly has that street-walking cheetah energy that one might expect from a protagonist presumably raised on the teet-to-mouth diet of Destroy All Monsters youtube vids, vending machine snacks, trucker speed ’n’ malt liquor laced with the ever present back-and-fore ground pollins of our patron Jim Shepards, Pussy Galores, Gibson Bros and countless other unscrewed basement saints who shook, rattled and rolled before us...but wait, there’s so much more. “Durham and his trusty Peacetime Consumers (ex-Quilt Boy /Roachclip cohorts) conjure up a thicker-than-usual, borderline soulful junk sick blooze that slinks and swaggers like a lean-drunk Flamin’ Groovies or Gulcher / Richie-era KV if you traded his happy-go-lucky, confidently carefree dopiness for the frantic urgency of a paranoid loner whose slumlord is putting the screws to him, and look... there ain’t enough grass left in that bag to even pack a bat... “But the band plays on, and if Durham’s long-running development as a mainstay in the American sub-underground proves to hit its...

Ageless Summoning

Corrupting The Entempled Plane

Dark Descent

“Ageless Summoning was inspired by the otherworldly death metal of Steve Tucker-era Morbid Angel and the discord of Immolation. We try to emulate the sludgy malevolence and desolate atmospheres of the likes of Gateways To Annihilation and Here In After,” declares vocalist Ali Lauder—a brief, but precise account of the hellscapes evoked by the U.K. band’s debut album Corrupting The Entempled Plane, out on Dark Descent Records. “We felt that the unique atmosphere and mythos conjured by that slower-paced, brutal, and hypnotic style were underappreciated and overlooked, and we didn’t know of many bands doing things in that vein, so we thought we’d try it ourselves.” Whilst admiration of the US American masters is unquestionable, Ageless Summoning display a jaw-dropping level of originality in their approach to the sub-genre. “Our goal has never been to just imitate what has come before, but we’re not trying to hide our influences either. We include plenty of deliberate references, but we’re also trying to develop our sound and continue the exploration of vast and desolate otherworlds.” Featuring members of such long-running U.K. acts as Of Spire & Throne, Haar, Úir, Scordatura, and Abyssal, the band has several combined decades of desecration under their belts. Wrapped in one of the most stunning and sinister Paolo Girardi artworks in recent memory, Corrupting The Entempled Plane is not to be missed.

Double, The

Relaxin' In The Jungle / Egyptian Double

In The Red

Brand new 7-inch from the incredible duo The Double. Their first release since their debut album Dawn Of The Double in 2016. The Double are Emmett Kelly and Jim White—two dudes with resumes so massive it's not even worth bothering to try and drop names. For the recording session that produced this single they brought in bassist Matt Lux. The music The Double make is rhythmic, hypnotic and percussive. Says The Double of this new single, “after the Dance Craze, we took off to go relax in the jungle with our buddy Matt Lux”. 400 copies made.

Beef

s/t

Feel It

***BEEF first began appearing in various basements and dives of Cincinnati on Labor Day, 2022. BEEF is the brainchild of drummer/lead vocalist Takoda Hortenberry, first joined by his wife Ally on keys/vox, and a cast of players in Richmond, Virginia. Following a slew of singles, an EP, and a relocation to BEEF's true home of Cincinnati, a new lineup featuring bassist John Hoffman (Vacation) and fellow Richmond expat/guitarist Sam Richardson was born. Influences include: punk, sex, violence, and red meat. BEEF recorded their entire eight song set on eight track tape just over the river at The Lodge in Dayton, KY in early 2023. Hoffman engineered and mixed the madness, Caufield Schnug (Sweeping Promises) mastered it, and Richardson's prolific Feel It imprint will be releasing BEEF's self-titled debut album on a 45 RPM 12" in an edition of 300 copies. (STREET DATE - 8/04/2023)

Victims, The

Girls Don't Go For Punks / Victim

In The Red

Legendary Australian punk band The Victims regrouped in 2019 to play a handful of gigs and re-record a few of their old tunes. Four of the tunes were released on the Horror Smash EP on In The Red in 2019. Now, in celebration of their farewell gig in June of 2023, we have released the remaining two songs from their final recording session. Clocking in at barely two minutes total, this single is a punk rock scorcher. Packaged in a hand-stamped sleeve in tribute to the band’s debut single released in 1978. Comes in neon green or orange vinyl. Limited edition.

Retirement

Buyer's Remorse

Iron Lung

***We physically took this recording around to various outdoor places where 'people' enjoy 'music' and played the album for them. Without prompting, here are some of the highlights that got spit back at us: “Aggro midtempo noise. I love it!”—guy wearing a Rudimentary Peni shirt “Unfriendly.”—mother of two “Misanthropic.”—foodeater “Sounds like these guys have hopeless lives.”—frisbee golfer “If the Dead are a friend’s couch and Metallica are a room at the Waldorf, then Retirement is a concrete mattress.”—professor of media studies “There is so much dirt in this city.”—anonymous portable bathroom chatter “Is ‘nihilism’ a music genre now?”—comedy show barker “Punk? No thanks.”—mother of three Includes a lyric insert. Recorded by Kevin Purcell. Mixed by Ron Lewis. Mastered by Will Killingsworth. Photography by Evan Soto and design by Shea Hardacre.

Andra Ljos

Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar

Not Not Fun

The fourth album by Vilnius-based composer Aleksandra Evseeva aka Andra Ljos is as runic and ritualistic as the Bronze Age monoliths for which it’s named: Megalithic Statues of Vishapakar. Found mainly in the Armenian Highlands, vishaps are cigar-shaped slabs of stone carved with fish heads or snakes, depicting a sacred serpent of Armenian folklore thought to protect sources of water from drought and ruin. The music evokes a similarly arcane and devotional air, between raga, séance, and 4th world hallucination. The track titles allude to significant vishap discovery sites, spanning lakes, bays, mountains, and temples. Wood block percussion wobbles beneath lattices of looped keys, golden organ, synthetic strings and flutes, distant birds, muffled voices, and the soft wash of restless waters. Evseeva’s muse may be mined from her Armenian heritage but the songs conjure a mood more elusive and expansive – pensive pastorals for a land of long shadows and ancient fears, strewn with cryptic relics swiftly dissipating into myth.

Drapizdat

Myth

Not Not Fun

Drapizdat is the umbrella banner for Russian producer Vladislav Godzevich’s rogue gallery of musical identities. Its name derives from a fusion of samizdat (illegally reproduced publications of censored materials within repressive regimes) and drap (slang for marijuana; an early beat music alias was Papa Drap), which aptly evokes his ethos of covert altered state transmissions. МИФ presents a constellation of tracks spanning five projects, four years, and 73-minutes; taken together it fully delivers on the hidden acronym of its title: M = music, И = elected, Ф = fragments [combined = ‘Myth’]. Each entity spelunks its own vibrant catacomb: Сам Себе Па (“tropical industrial 5th world dada”), Ито Кумаре (“metaphysical ambient music”), Jeans Escape (rhythmic liberations from reality), Reather Weport (“free form music of the spheres, vibrations beyond the universal caves”), Drapula (“black moon feasts on the blood of soul and funk”), Клаксон Гансон (“psychedelic ethno-mutant punk”). Godzevich describes his process as a metamorphosis, created at night, “with minimal light.” Percolating loops of percussion, texture, and melody, summoned into warped trances of alien grace. Elements align and obscure like celestial phenomena half-glimpsed, half-dreamed: “I plunge deeper and deeper to gather golden sand from the bottom of time and show it to the world, building islands in this dilapidated world.”

She Spread Sorrow

Orchid Seeds

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***She Spread Sorrow is the work of Italian industrialist Alice Kundalini. In her sparse and grimly atmospheric applications of noise, tone, and electronic sequencing, She Spread Sorrow expresses a volatile emotional core that speaks to abuse and repression with an unblinking candidness. Orchid Seeds was originally published as part of the instantly out of print On Corrosion—a 10 cassette anthology from 2019 that was housed in a handcrafted wooden box and featuring full albums from Kleistwahr, Neutral, Pinkcourtesyphone, Alice Kemp, She Spread Sorrow, G*Park, Relay For Death, Francisco Meirino, Fossil Aerosol Mining Project, and Himukalt. The collection also stood as the 50th release for The Helen Scarsdale Agency, an imprint founded in 2003 and dedicated to post-industrial research, recombinant noise, surrealist demolition, existential vacancy and then some. Kundalini’s signature whispered vocals once again beckons her audience closer on Orchid Seeds. Kundalini states that the album, “is about 5 different women of my family. Each track is about one of them with their difficult story and strengths. My family is totally destroyed now, no relation between anyone, but in the past there was a strong tradition of women with interesting personalities” This sibilant allegorical history comes into focus amidst a claustrophobic and cinematic pall of dark ambient blight and death industrial torpor. The LP edition was mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin.

Dippers

Clastic Rock

Goner

Whether it was fear of the trademark bogeyman emerging from small-hours infomercial hell or it was just time for a change, but the artist(s) formally known as Thigh Master is now Dippers. As they put singles and an album or two behind them, most guitar pop groups tend to shed any rough edges, exuberance, energy, propulsion and other associated special elements in the name of “maturity,” “increased focus on songwriting,” and other concerns that basically translate to a prolonged yawn. Thigh Master was always a strident, more rambunctious proposition, and this is carried over 150% to Dippers. For the first album under said moniker, (Thigh Master) founder and leader Matthew Ford (vocals, guitar, drums, bass, synth, percussion) is again joined by Innez Tulloch (vocals, guitar, keys, synth, bass, melodica), who is now Ford’s principle songwriting partner. Longtime Thigh Master collaborator Dusty Anastassiou (Dag, Permits) provides some guitar action on a handful of tracks. Dippers’ 2023 full-length, Clastic Rock for Goner Records, doubles down on Ford and crew’s supernatural skill at something possessed by only a tiny handful of very special entities that exist under the voluminous banner of indie-jangle / pop: immediacy. The album is filled with stop-start dynamics that work to create hooks within hooks (a trick at which this band excels). Like a lot of new favorite albums, this one was recorded and conceived of (at least partially so) during the pandemic lockdowns. Though, if one sifts through the Thigh Master discography, one might notice...

Silicone Prairie

Vol. II

Feel It

***Ever since releasing My Life on the Silicone Prairie Vol. I in 2021, Ian Teeple has been riding a creative high. Whether you've noticed his incredible visual art, witnessed the cathartic Silicone Prairie live band, or know Ian as the newest member of Snõõper—his driving, free-spirited energy abounds. Silicone Prairie have transcended landlocked guitar punk/jangle into new realms on Vol. II. The album manages to color outside the lines of genre, blurring worlds of sound together beautifully. Cloudy bedroom pop tangles with fields of flute, warbled tape editing, thick fuzzed guitars, and a sage sense of introversion. My Life on the Silicone Prairie Vol. II is a deeply personal, ethereal ride through the mind of Ian Teeple, joined by friends from Kansas City and abroad. "You can’t really listen to Silicone Prairie on record without noticing the laborious production and limber musicianship. Take for one, the way organized horns and muffled jungle beast roars harmoniously make themselves adjacent. Or the polarity of the bass and guitar, the grace of every instrument when it peeps. It has a raw edge though, the idiom and architecture does not impede the visceral, emotional content. It’s about form AND heart AND realness, the more rigorous AND open AND boiled down, the more wrenching. It communicates in introspections and outbursts. The vocal can lilt with melancholy only to turn with smug angst within a phrase. For all its forethought, the end result pends until the application of the last stroke. There is nuance and humanity...

Sidewalk

s/t

Jackpot

***Only whispered about by collectors, Sidewalk's sole LP from 1976 was privately issued in a 100 copy run that sellers currently ask towards $10,000 for. Working directly with members of the band, Jackpot Records has lovingly restored the original master tapes to bring this record to private press fans for the first time. Sidewalk's sound existed somewhere between Steely Dan's relentless jazz-prog shredding, the outdoor festival chug of Chicago and the technical prowess of YES if they backed up a lost 70’s AOR songwriter. At the height of FM Radio rock, Sidewalk combined high-level chops with innovative chord progressions and advanced studio production to create a serious contender in the Cal-Jam festival era. But they tragically disbanded after pressing up this sole LP as the only document of their existence. This LP is pressed on high-quality vinyl and includes original artwork with liner notes written by Doane Perry of Jethro Tull.

Steves, The

In A Room

Iron Lung

***When The Steves' two extremely limited (maybe 100-200 of each?) EPs were released back in 1980 and '81 respectively, the squares around Harvard's newsroom were aghast at the audacity of this group. Having the stones to release such crudely-rhythmic, near mechanical and downright terse tunes in the day's often long winded prog rockin' ballad heavy radio reality that were too robotic to be “punk” and too unruly to be anything but was, to say the least, a bold move. Sure to cause an uproar in the halls, protests in the classroom and uninvited dancing in the streets! In the annals of New England's rock journalism, there is not a mountain of coverage on The Steves, certainly not as much as the Alan Parsons Project or Aerosmith, but the fact remains that they were a fully charged powder keg of raw energy and new musical direction that seemed to elude most of the world back then. Not to say they didn't get any light shone on them, they did get a fair amount of airplay on the college stations around Boston and even appeared on the cover of Boston Rock magazine. It is Iron Lung Records' distinct pleasure to offer the modern world a new chance to discover the ever vital and effervescent music of The Steves' initial EPs along with a third EP of songs never released on vinyl until now that were recorded at the time or shortly after the initial sessions. A true synth-punk/KBD treasure. Obscurity is for...

Steves, The

Jerk!

Iron Lung

***When The Steves' two extremely limited (maybe 100-200 of each?) EPs were released back in 1980 and '81 respectively, the squares around Harvard's newsroom were aghast at the audacity of this group. Having the stones to release such crudely-rhythmic, near mechanical and downright terse tunes in the day's often long winded prog rockin' ballad heavy radio reality that were too robotic to be “punk” and too unruly to be anything but was, to say the least, a bold move. Sure to cause an uproar in the halls, protests in the classroom and uninvited dancing in the streets! In the annals of New England's rock journalism, there is not a mountain of coverage on The Steves, certainly not as much as the Alan Parsons Project or Aerosmith, but the fact remains that they were a fully charged powder keg of raw energy and new musical direction that seemed to elude most of the world back then. Not to say they didn't get any light shone on them, they did get a fair amount of airplay on the college stations around Boston and even appeared on the cover of Boston Rock magazine. It is Iron Lung Records' distinct pleasure to offer the modern world a new chance to discover the ever vital and effervescent music of The Steves' initial EPs along with a third EP of songs never released on vinyl until now that were recorded at the time or shortly after the initial sessions. A true synth-punk/KBD treasure. Obscurity is for...

Steves, The

Making Time

Iron Lung

***When The Steves' two extremely limited (maybe 100-200 of each?) EPs were released back in 1980 and '81 respectively, the squares around Harvard's newsroom were aghast at the audacity of this group. Having the stones to release such crudely-rhythmic, near mechanical and downright terse tunes in the day's often long winded prog rockin' ballad heavy radio reality that were too robotic to be “punk” and too unruly to be anything but was, to say the least, a bold move. Sure to cause an uproar in the halls, protests in the classroom and uninvited dancing in the streets! In the annals of New England's rock journalism, there is not a mountain of coverage on The Steves, certainly not as much as the Alan Parsons Project or Aerosmith, but the fact remains that they were a fully charged powder keg of raw energy and new musical direction that seemed to elude most of the world back then. Not to say they didn't get any light shone on them, they did get a fair amount of airplay on the college stations around Boston and even appeared on the cover of Boston Rock magazine. It is Iron Lung Records' distinct pleasure to offer the modern world a new chance to discover the ever vital and effervescent music of The Steves' initial EPs along with a third EP of songs never released on vinyl until now that were recorded at the time or shortly after the initial sessions. A true synth-punk/KBD treasure. Obscurity is for...

Mizmor

Prosaic

Profound Lore

Mizmor, is a one-man heavy music exploration that began in 2012 as a way of dealing with the mental and spiritual anguish mastermind A.L.N. feels as a person. More specifically, the content behind the project is that of the existential / primal and innate musings about cause, purpose, and self. It is the search for light and truth, or the fact that there is none. It comes from an embittered, burned, confused, and broken heart. It is the fight for survival when reason and foundation has turned to nothingness. It is the crashing down of towers of falsehood and the freedom that comes through a certain kind of grief. Ultimately, Mizmor is the manifestation of a long-felt depression which doesn’t have an end in sight. In A.L.N.’s own words behind the new Mizmor album Prosaic: “The idea behind Prosaic was to make an intentionally less conceptual, more slice-of-life record. I wanted to make an album that was less precious and obsessed-over, more honest and real; less grandiose and more human. I found it an interesting challenge to find the line between ‘you can do better’ and ‘you’re beating a dead horse.’ I tried to make my process more efficient and even fun at times. I simply wanted to share, but if that meant exacting all-out perfectionism, I wasn’t going to make a record. Right now I’m interested in making less self-indulgent music. The themes are the absurdity / futility / purpose / meaning of work, mindfulness / consciousness / living...

Guided By Voices

Welshpool Frillies

GBV Inc

Robert Pollard has a very strong work ethic. With most of their touring canceled due to the pandemic and then a fractured kneecap, Guided By Voices ran up an extremely prolific streak in the studio, recording and releasing eight albums in the past three years and garnering piles of rave four star and five star reviews in the process. In case one were snoozing, the last album, La La Land was Uncut magazine’s “Best Of The Month.” The pandemic records were particularly notable and unique that the band members recorded most of their instruments individually in separate cities. Welshpool Frillies finds the gang back together, in a Brooklyn basement with producer Travis Harrison. Much of it was recorded live to tape. The catchy ear worms in these new songs are undeniable, as the kinetic energy of the band is captured in its most raw and pure form. The album is brash, no-frills, and punky, inspired by the wiliness of 90s-era GBV, specifically the Scalping The Guru compilation that Pollard put together in 2022. 2023 marks the 40th anniversary of GBV’s start in Dayton, Ohio. Robert Pollard was an elementary school teacher with no formal music training, and his unlikely success has been an odds-defying adventure. It’s never too late to discover this vital rock band and join the GBV cult.

Nevāda Nevada

Past Life

Rocks In Your Head

New York City rock outfit Nevāda Nevada is excited to announce the July 14, 2023 release of their debut LP Past Life on Rocks In Your Head Records, available on vinyl and wherever digital music is streamed or sold. Nevāda Nevada songs are lush, loud, melodic piano-and-guitar landscapes nested within an awful lot of noise. Past Life is about time and activism, love and rage, and being stuck while still building something. Nevāda Nevada is: Kathryn Musilek (Burn Disco Burn, Deathships), Andrew Gerhan (Our Lady of the Highway, Adam Arcuragi, The Animals), David Olson (Poison Control Center, The Wheelers) and Alicia Berbenick. The signing to Rocks In Your Head is a natural fit; the label was founded by the prolific Sonny Smith of Sonny and the Sunsets, and NN band-member/producer Andrew Gerhan recorded and/or mixed a number of Sonny and the Sunsets’ classic albums including Tomorrow is Alright which was called perhaps "the most iconic SF album" by the SF Examiner, and contains the hit single Too Young to Burn. Press Quotes: "It’s anthemic; a call to arms. I feel the spirit of Whitman in the band’s performance.” - Never Records "Nevāda Nevada’s sound is a swirl of Americana noir and artful indie rock, indulging in the menace and whimsy that coexist in both and getting a boost from the powerful personality of singer Kathryn Musilek." - Indy Week "I'm not sure what I was expecting but it really hits hard! Right out the gate." - Dominic...

Avskum

En Annan Varld Ar Mojlig

Prank

***Sweden’s Legendary D-Beat Band AVSKUM return with their first new album since 2008, En Annan Värld Ar Möjlig (Another World Is Possible). Their fifth album has 17 new tracks of rage-filled D-beat hardcore supporting Indigenous rights, self-determination and attacking Fascism, Militarism, Misogyny and political corruption. Avskum’s sound has it’s roots in their 1982 origins at the earliest stages of Swedish hardcore punk, with harshly screamed vocals and quick blasting songs, underlined over the ensuing decades by a rock driven heaviness with searing guitar solos, thundering bass lines and rampaging drum attack. Recorded by KENKO at Communichaos Studios, the album features guest vocals from TOMPA from AT THE GATES & DISFEAR, TB from ASOCIAL & UNCURBED, and MATTIS from MAKABERT FYND. With two stunning cover illustrations by JORAN BARLOW to hammer home their vision of empowerment and resistance.. Avskum will tour the U.S. Midwest and the West Coast in September 2023 with Resistant Culture. No Export to Europe.

Agriculture

s/t

Flenser

For something to be “ecstatic,” the feelings and emotions it evokes must transcend what one tends to experience most regularly in their lives. Ecstatic joy isn’t just happiness; it’s a feeling of jubilation which impacts one emotionally and in a metaphysical, arguably spiritual sense too. Although it has long been associated with connotations of the dark and macabre, extreme music has the ability to be a powerful mode of expression for these feelings of absolute bliss, overwhelming love, and awe-inspiring sublimity. Extreme emotions no less and those which black metal quartet Agriculture evokes with its ecstatic subversion of the subgenre’s tropes. What was initially a meeting and subsequent series of jam sessions between Kern Haug and Daniel Meyer, two musicians in the Los Angeles underground noise scene, would eventually manifest as a shared vision to portray the sublimity of the human experience through the vehicle of heavy music. Following the additions of veteran guitarist Richard Chowenhill and bassist / vocalist Leah Levinson to the band’s lineup, this idea would crystalize into the “ecstatic black metal” backbone of Agriculture’s music, first heard on the band’s 2022 debut EP, The Circle Chant. With Agriculture’s self-titled record and first full-length LP, it’s abundantly clear that the band’s use of heavy music to showcase the most resplendent emotions and moments of the human experience has a far deeper meaning. Woven between the flurries of soaring tremolo picking, crescendoing guitar harmonies, celebratory screamed vocals, thoughtful improvisation, and meditative atmospheric passages is the record’s...

Famous Mammals

Instant Pop Expressionism Now!

Siltbreeze

If the names Amber Sermeno, Andy Jordan & Stanley Martinez sound familiar, it's because they're in practically every band that matters from the SF/Bay area, A short list reads; Non Plus Temps, Children Maybe Later, Naked Roommate & not the least of which is Famous Mammals. Following a self-released cassette, 'Instant Pop Expressionism Now!' is their 1st full length vinyl effort & man is it a doozy. On their debut tape the seeds were sown for what has blossomed on this LP as a fully pollinated orchard of hybridized post punk that seemingly harkens back to the halcyon days when Rough Trade called 202 Kensington Park Road home. "Instant Pop Expressionism Now!" is an ultramodern polyglot of smatterings that at once sound familiar, but you can't quite place it. Swell Maps? Happy Refugees? Monochrome Set? Maybe. Kinda. It's in the stitching, but the design & thrust is all Famous Mammals. And while we're not prone to hubris, we are confident that 'Instant Pop Expressionism Now!' will be the hit lp of the summer everywhere from Sooty's Disco Party to Gus' Hotdog Hootenanny. If you know, you know, It's not too late to hop on board. The more the merrier. RIYL releases on; Rather Records, Refill Records, Step-Forward Records, NB Records.

Burnt Envelope

I'm Immature: The Singles vol II

Hozac

***There really isn’t much you can do to prepare yourself for something as profound as Burnt Envelope. Punk this “pure” has to be fake these days, or does it? We stumbled upon this band (or is it high concept performance art?) the old fashioned way, on a podcast while being quarantined for a global pandemic, and its charm and impressively brazen lack of luster wiggled its way deep inside the Hozac brain trust, big time. Starring the eternally optimistic Anthony Pasquarosa (formerly of Weeping Bong Band, Frozen Corn, Gluebag, etc), the Burnt Envelope concept is very easy to swallow, and impossible not to immediately heave back up. If there was a “ballet” for sloptastic stoner-sweat exercise routines, this would be the Swan Lake. And Burnt Envelope would probably end up drowning in that lake, because you, my dear, are indeed “Stuck in this World.” If you’ve been curious about Ancestry.com and the like, “23 and Me” will be the song that gets you through the rest of 2023 with a spring in your step, a smile on your face, and a shot in your eye. “I’m A Chameleon Parts 1&2” are some of the most ambitious tracks ever released on this label, a seriously hypnotic soured mash of “Sister Ray” and Randy Savage/Mean Gene Okerlundisms that will cast a heavy spell, only to crack your wits out with a Maggots-esque “Nothing To Do” that will leave you dizzy and drooling. Set up as singles across the dehumanizing entire LP, every...

Private Lives

HIT RECORD

Feel It

***The debut album from Private Lives is a bold proclamation—HIT RECORD. From their humble beginnings as a quarantine bedroom project to the full-fledged rock'n'roll unit they've become, Private Lives set up ten tracks and strike 'em down in one smooth release. Part of the current wave of Montréal underground talent alongside Tha Retail Simps, Hélène Barbier, and Liquid Assets (to name a few)—Private Lives debuted in 2022 with their scorching self-titled EP on Feel It. Those five cuts are stitched into PL's vinyl debut, re-sequenced with new material that finds the four piece at the height of their collective powers. With Jackie Blenkarn's cool and confident vocals riding high in the mix, the group hammer out an impressive debut full length anchored by the strength of "Trust In Me," "Misfortune," and the title track, "Hit Record." There's not a moment of hesitation across these twenty-seven minutes. Whether it's the overarching simplicity of the r'n'r/garage-mined guitars, underlying pop charm, or deeper post-punk melodies—HIT RECORD—is both cathartic and familiar—a truly impressive combination of heart-meets-cool. As Private Lives wind the album away in the psychotic build of "Dark Spots," the Quebec quartet leave us with a captivating debut that begs to be spun again and again. (STREET DATE - 7/14/2023)

Predeceased

What Do You Do?

Eeasy Records

What Do You Do? The first album by new band Predeceased, new post hardcore with jammer parts. Also a bit kraut a bit PNW indie a bit '80s hardcore. It’s loud, different + has riffs. 'What Do You Do?' A Question that's as broad and confusing as it is simple and direct, a question used to find out if you're gonna have something to talk about, something in common, something attractive, something you're against, something you detest, something you don't give two shits about, something you also do... What Do You Do? is 30.23 minutes of big riffs, lighting fast drumming and slamming bass with yelled out but tuneful lyrics about doing this after your 30, learning the perks of meditation & counseling, MF Doom, self-care, social status and the pandemic amongst other things. In a couple ways there's a little leftover garage worship from Charlie's MVPs but overall this is a lean and mean post hardcore record cut from the band could be your life cloth. Think of bands like At The Drive In, Metz, USA Nails, Fugazi, and Cloud Nothings played by a power trio who like banging out fast and loud in a way that suits all crowds from heshers to moshers to skaters to haters to deadheads to rednecks.

Foans

Extended Classics

100% Silk

Essential expansion pack to the Selected Classics LP, Extended Classics delivers on its name, re-sequencing 19 more liquid minimalist gems from Andrew Dahabrah’s 345-minute 2018 FOANS odyssey, Classics. It’s a headspace both troubled and transportive, deftly mapped midnight systems of bass, haze, rhythm, and breath. Crafted in the wake of 2016’s Frontier, these tracks capture FOANS’ signature sound at its most streamlined, slinky, and smeared, dance transmissions for cold starlit nights, shaded in doubt and dreams.

Foans

Selected Classics

100% Silk

Selected Classics presents a crucially curated cross section of Colorado producer Andrew Dahabrah aka FOANS’ finest work, sourced from a nearly six-hour self-released vault of tracks posted to his Bandcamp in 2018. Simply called Classics, the sprawling 100-song digital collection was intended as the project’s final offering – a comprehensive culling of the hard drive, after which there’d be “no looking back.” Fortunately, minds have changed, and FOANS remains extant, but an air of finality and desperation still haunts these tracks, born of bruised emotions and the burnout of working seven days a week “in the middle of nowhere” as an electrician in isolated oil fields. It’s music of hidden hours and private survival, slipstreaming through sleek cybernetic house, gauzy matrix ambience, low-slung dusty jack, and woozy fractal techno. Placeless and weightless, heady and kinetic, Selected Classics distills Dahabrah’s sidewinding inner vision to its swooning fiber optic essence.

Pleasure Model

Multiplicative Gain

100% Silk

Bristol cyber-brutalist Pleasure Model presents their 4th SILK set of blueprints for business techno technocracy: Multiplicative Gain. Recorded in the wake of a recent relocation to the eastern seaboard, the album leans deeper into the project’s cracked corporate ethos of stock synths, mechanized rhythm, and boardroom acid, buying low and selling high. BPMs trace the pulse of the markets, named for generative AI slogans not yet unveiled. Driving, delirious, devoid, decadent – it’s music as offshore shell account, housing subtexts and sleights of hand just out of reach, like fluctuating futures scrolling across a skyscraper in a city of dreams.

Electric Eels

Spin Age Blasters

Scat

***ON LIMITED CLEAR WITH BLACK SWIRLS VINYL!!! The electric eels were the first punk band, full stop. They may not have “started” the genre, but they were the first to tick all the boxes. The eels rejected every 1970s rock convention—professionalism, virtuosity, subject matter, image. Dave E.’s caustic vocals, complete with an aggressive lisp and a head full of snot, would become de rigeur a few years after the group disbanded. Meanwhile, the songs’ focus on car crashes, suicide, neuroses, and generally hating people were as far out of the mainstream as possible. The two eels tracks that do approach the subject of romance couch it in terms of not really caring that much about it (“Jaguar Ride”) or placing it in the context of a grisly murder (“Silver Daggers”). Also consider John Morton’s signature guitar sound, a nails-on-chalkboard tone with brutally free soloing inspired more by Albert Ayler than the blues or aspirations to technical facility. Ditto Dave E.’s clarinet playing and affection for lawnmowers and vacuums during live performance. They were notoriously violent not only among themselves, but towards audiences, police, and anyone unfortunate enough to be around them when things went south. Then of course there are the leather jackets, the clothing festooned with rat traps or safety pins. And no bass player, why bother. There is simply no other “proto” band to have had all these pieces in place circa 1973-1975. Yet it is a mistake to consider the eels exclusively in such a context. Yes,...

Fashion Change

Smoking Kills

Iron Lung

***Smoking Saves, Smoking Kills. Or in other words, what kills you is the same thing that gets you through another day. This is the thesis of “Smoking Kills”, the newest flexi disc by Seattle’s Fashion Change. Beginning as the pandemic basement project of Ryan Mathews, Fashion Change is captured here in its most realized form yet, both in terms of added members and sonic expansion. While the troglodytic rhythms and chainsaw guitars of Kyushu punk (see Confuse, Gai) are undoubtedly present, the music and message also borrows from the lighthearted nihilism of UK DIY and brutal indignation of No Trend. In the end, we have 320 seconds of psychoactive hardcore that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is New Music for a New World that none of us asked to be in. 500 black, foil-stamped 7” flexis housed in a linen weave foldover jacket. All songs written, performed, recorded and mixed by Fashion Change. Mastered by Will Killingsworth. Art by Rael Callaci.

Ignorance

s/t

Iron Lung

***Holy shit!! Ignorance is a complete hardcore energy explosion influenced by bands like Confuse, Kriegshög, Lebenden Toten and Gauze. Like the aforementioned groups, they a heft and a complexity that urges you to stretch your modes beyond simple volume control. You must feel every twitch and contraction in your body while you envelop yourself in a sound that pushes the needle right into the red and plants it like a conqueror’s flag, claiming your zone as their own. You can rest easy, you live in Helsinki now and it’s beautiful.

Spirito Di Lupo

Vedo La Tua Faccia Nei Giorni Di Pioggia

Iron Lung

***Bursting through the door with a raw martial snap, SDL blast out snarling anarcho-hardcore anthems inspired by the raspy maniacal sounds of the 80’s Italian punk greats and the sloganeering/passionate-rant lyrical delivery style of the UK’s legendary anarcho punk scene. A riveting combination that doesn’t pull any punches and serves to highlight the beauty of the world rather than dwell in the brooding fodder that usually haunts those genres. Catchy, rudimentary and ecstatic music of the highest order.

Sweeping Promises

Good Living Is Coming For You

Feel It

***"For more than a half century, underground music revolutionaries have taken a whack at the mundane mainstream like a piñata. England punks spat 'NO FUTURE' at germ-free adolescents. Ohio new wavers devolutionized mankind with whips. Athens art school students chomped at hero worship. MetroCard-carrying riot grrrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. In 2020, Sweeping Promises read our pandemic minds with Hunger for a Way Out. In 2023, they return with a new message: Good Living Is Coming For You. At first glance, this nouveau wave slogan offers hope wrapped around relief. At first listen, we realize this may actually be a warning. Darker still, a threat. ***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.8 rating from Pitchfork. A band famous for their unfussy, monolithic anthems, Sweeping Promises elegantly ravage us again with another future classic. They return as a fist of velvet rose petals roaring inside a compact wrecking ball. Gone is the Boston brutalist ambience of their subterranean concrete laboratory and the revelatory single mic recording technique. In its place, a retired and resplendent nude painting studio in Lawrence, Kansas, bathed in light with high ceilings and hardwood floors. Guided once again by their surrounding architecture, a reverb-rich space remains the defining element at the heart of their highly stylized sound. A watery ghost from the golden age of art-punk now wields sharper knives and more microphones. If the mood of HFAWO was hungry, GLICFY is RAVENOUS. In 2023, appetite is addressed in new ways: Power struggles are aired in...

Gate

The Numbers

Birdman

In the 1980s, Michael Morley helped to push the jangly New Zealand music scene towards rougher, more exploratory realms, as a member of Wreck Small Speakers on Expensive Stereos, The Weeds, and the almighty Dead C. His gnarled, distorted guitar tone and aggressively moan-based vocal style are both as distinctive as they are secretly beautiful. Morley has released dozens of solo recordings—starting in the late 1980s as Gate, then more recently under his own name, and as the Righteous Yeah. He’s also unafraid to tackle entirely new genres and sounds, and to move into interactive installation-based music as well. Birdman is beyond excited to present the first vinyl release of this archival Gate release. “...I think it is classic Gate material. The idea of the palette is fascinating as I think I did approach it with a set of limited instrumentation and the desire to make something again that could sound like rock music. There is certainly a direct line from Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos, through the Dead C, and to Gate. I think I was also inspired by listening to [infamous and tragically short-lived early 1980s band] the Double Happys, and remembering their performances as a duo with the drum machine. There was such utter chaos and anarchy during their sets, with a desire to represent punk rock at its nascent truth, I wanted to see if it was possible to re- imagine that feeling. I was possibly also listening to the Stooges and MC5. —Michael Morley

Thantifaxath

Hive Mind Narcosis

Dark Descent

Thantifaxath’s second full-length Hive Mind Narcosis is not only a giant leap for the band but also for contemporary extreme metal as a whole. From its very first notes, there is a feeling of transcendence beyond genre,beyond its scene and peers. Previously dubbed avant-garde black metal, Thantifaxath surpasses such mundane press tags, instead conjuring forth an expansive, discordant, and mind-altering brew that’s never just black, thrash, death, or doom metal psychedelia. Recorded entirely in-house by the band, the band has tailored their sound to crushing perfection—a production so immense the listener daren’t move until the bitter end. Just like its music, Hive Mind Narcosis is a lyrical blend of two mutually conflicting ideals: “The album has two levels working in dichotomy with one another. On one level there is a strong resistance to something, and on the other, there is a total acceptance of that same thing. Beyond that, we leave it open to your interpretation.” In every truly pioneering band’s career, there is a moment when they set themselves apart from the pack and become an island. For Thantifaxath, Hive Mind Narcosis is that album—an unholy Canadian grail of contemporary black metal, due out via Dark Descent Records. The cover art for Hive Mind Necrosis features the Francisco Goya painting “Witches’ Flight” (1798) on license from Museo Nacional del Prado.

Side Eyes

What's Your Problem

In The Red

The Side Eyes are back with the follow up to their 2017 self-titled debut album and are asking the question What’s Your Problem? Anyone suspecting that the Southern California band may have mellowed out in the five years between albums will have those suspicions shattered within the first twenty seconds of the opening track “Get Me Out.” If anything, the band is now harder, faster and angrier than they were the first time around. Vocalist Astrid McDonald is in fiery fine form calling out everything from phonies to shit-talkers to people that simply aren’t nice. Brothers Kevin and Chris Devine on guitar and bass and drummer Sam Mankinen thunder through the twelve tracks here at a breakneck speed that is positively pummeling. While The Side Eyes sound like a throwback to early Southern California hardcore punk rock like Circle Jerks and the Adolescents, the band also sites more recent bands like Ceremony, Glue and Babes In Toyland as influences. Produced by Steve McDonald (Redd Kross / Melvins) and clocking in at under twenty minutes (while spinning at 45 RPM), What’s Your Problem is a modern punk rock gem that blows past the sonic barriers of their past inspirations. This is great stuff!

It Thing

Constant State / P.C.H.

Feel It

***Enigmatic four piece It Thing return with a new 7” single, their first release since 2021's ‘Syrup’ LP. Offering two tracks, "Constant State" and "P.C.H.", It Thing deliver on the visceral, raw energy that they left us wanting for. On this occasion, Marthouse Records (AU) team up with Feel It Records (US) for a broader release. Formed in Nipaluna/Hobart’s beloved Brisbane Hotel beer garden in early 2019 over a thirst for classic punk rock - and without much else to do, It Thing's ‘Syrup’ LP saw the then-Tasmanian band explode onto the worldwide underground like a shot in the dark. Emerging from small town obscurity, they delivered a record packed with power pop/proto-punk gold. Gimmie Zine put it best: “Bold, loud, with hook ramming into hook, It Thing deliver 9 tracks that zip by at the speed of light with an inspired cleverness and simplicity.” As It Thing hammer through their latest single, the endearing simplicity and rawness almost places the listener in the room with the band - or the basement, as it were. Recorded in the basement of the house the songs were written in, frontperson Charlotte Gigi calls it, "A last hurrah for the old It Thing headquarters before the defection." The band have since succumbed to the gravitational pull of Naarm/Melbourne to link up with label mates Dr. Sure’s Unusual Practice, Gut Health, Bench Press, et al. (STREET DATE - 6/23/2023)

Cyberplasm

First Emanation

Iron Lung

***Hard as nails crusty drum machine punk madness backed with ultra gritty electronics and an agg/rave beat you can truly get lost in. Transcendent gutter music of the highest order. Cerebral brutality. CYBERPLASM have truly hit their stride/vision with this release. Stunning. Do not miss them.

Hatred Surge

Demo 2004

Iron Lung

***Originally released in an edition of 5 or 6 copies on CD-R to give to friends, these 5 songs started a two decade reign of grinding powerviolence rule over Texas and the world at large that is in part responsible for the resurgence of the genre in the early 2000s. An important time for a lot of our generation. Iron Lung has a special affinity for Alex Hughes and this demo was the genesis. Genius level shit. Limited to 250 red shelled cassettes housed in a 3 panel J-card. Recorded and performed by Alex Hughes in an apartment in Denton TX in 2004.

Innumerable Forms

The Fall Down

Iron Lung

***The Fall Down is the most recent offering from the full fledged wrecking crew better known as Innumerable Forms and finds the band at its most miserable stage yet. On this EP they've distilled an already too grueling reality down to the most fundamental expressions of pain and struggle. The sound of life draining depression complimented with blast flurries of raging disgust - the two best stages of grief. Innumerable Forms is death doom at its finest.

Physique

Again

Iron Lung

***The long awaited return of contemporary D-Beat champions, PHYSIQUE with “Again” - their first release since 2019. PHYSIQUE offers 15 tracks of steamrolling, discharge-fueled, crasher crust, seamlessly overlapping the time honored and ever-present D-Beat themes of war and government oppression with their own take on the brutalizing and soul-crushing realities of everyday modern life. With lyrics like: “Free yourself / Hope is the enemy, the enemy of change / Take your hope, smash it to pieces”, the overwhelming sense of life’s inevitable collapse and the dissolution of all the things we hold dear hits at the very core of modern existence. As you slog through the rut, a little more hope is lost each day. Life is empty and without purpose. One can't help but ask - “Again?” But D-Beat is protest music at heart, and “Again”s desperation is complimented by a surging pulse of relentless energy that reminds us that as brutal as life may be, we can't resist the fury of noisy protest that brings us back - again - to scream and shout the "never agains" of our predecessors and ourselves alike.