ATOMSKI RAT

 

I avoid streaming music services for all of the obvious reasons, but I got free access to one of the recently and I've spent a bit of time diving into things I wouldn't otherwise spend time with (and also listening to a lot of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES). Wednesday I received an unsolicited notification that there was a new PET SHOP BOYS album about to be released and I remembered how much I liked that band so I started poking around....I had stopped paying close attention after Very was released in the early '90s, but these legends have been cranking out material consistently since then and I figured I should have a listen. I started with 2024's Nonetheless and I was floored...then I stared making my way backwards. The opener from 2020's Hotspot ("Will-O-The-Wisp") is a straight up classic, and Super from 2016 was worth three listens back to back (to back). Stunning how consistently great their output is almost 45 years after they started; evolving and meandering into different house/techno subgenres while always sounding exactly like synth pop royalty. It's been a great journey so far, and I plan to start tomorrow with 2013's Electric then keep making my way back to the '80s. 

NEKRO SAN
Anyway, here's a tape from a killer Serbian DBeat heavy hardcore band with eurocrust tendencies and a few ripping grind parts. Choice cut is the bleak midpaced closer "Senke," which makes you want to go back to the beginning and see what you may have missed. Total banger start to finish.  

PISUAR

 

I don't have words here, even though and especially because I'm hopelessly drawn to this shit. The first five minutes are a murky, squirmy stomp proto goth punk slog replicated in a sewer - and then the final  track (which really just the demo from 2024) comes and it's brighter and just....more (even though it's likely and/or primarily a replication issue). This is smart punk.....punk. 

YOUR LIFE COMPILATION

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NØ STAGES

 

This is the shit, y'all. This is the kind of punk that makes you wonder why you were listening for the the first time the first time you hear it. It's perfect - perfectly crafted, perfectly composed, perfectly records.....this is what you want (today). Think RED DONS and AIRFIX KITS and GENERACION SUICIDA making the same demo.....because it's that fukkkn good. The title track will change you.

MITOS

 

THE GROSS // THE END

 

Rewind two decades from yesterday's CRIME 84 post and you'll find turn of the century Indonesian street punks blazing their own trails. This was still the relatively early days for punk after dictatorship, and the scenes were all exploding - so much so that I don't think I will ever reach the bottom of the well as long as I keep searching. THE GROSS and THE END are both strongly influenced by early UK punk and Oi!, but you'll hear similarities to late '80s Eastern Bloc punk in tracks like "Nonton Bola" from THE END, THE GROSS lean more towards gruff melodic Oi! - every song is a hook and every hook is an earworm and in a different world a song like "Life Style Skinhead" would have made it on the Ringi-Ranga mix tape. 

DEDICATED

CRIME 84

 

Sharp and earnest UK82 influenced chaos punk from Indonesia - there's something about CRIME 84 that keeps grabbing me even though they check all of the boxes just a little too well if you know what I mean. "State Power" is the repeat jammer, but the whole demo is a keeper (and then some).

KIDNAPPED

BAD HIPPY

 

You ever listen to something and feel like it's probably best if you never meet the humans responsible for it? That's BAD HIPPY. Because in the trailer park you might have that one kid who fucks with HATEBREED and that other kid who drinks too much and wants to sound like EYEHATEGOD and those are the only people the dude with the DYSTOPIA back patch can find to make music...well there's the guy who just hangs out on his porch doing whippets all day - no one really knows what kind of music that dude listens to but he has a drum kit so fuck it. Combine that energy and you have....well, you certainly have something. This shit is terrifying, raw DIY punk with all kinds of outsider energy culminating with the exhausting 10+ minute "Die Dogfucker," a wholly unrealized epic that could have changed the world. If this were a different world. 

ENTHRONED

GRAVENITES / CIPOLLINA BAND

 

I picked this up on a whim because......well just look at the shit. You're curious, right? I made the right choice. Hard swinging Bay Area blues rock from ex-HOLDING COMPANY dudes and if you know where I'm coming from here then you're going to be well pleased. Recorded live in 1985, fifteen years after Janis Joplin died - fifteen years that seemed like a lifetime when I was less old. But damn, these dudes had played on legendary records that I read about in Rolling Stone and were already back to shredding the Chi Chi Club in SF in those fifteen years and it probably seemed like just a blip on their radar. The closer "Party" is the jam here, but every song is a literal party. For everyone? Nah. For me? Definitely. And that is the point. 

THUNDER & LIGHTNING