Mastering LIFELOCK/RAPPA “Split EP” on 4490 Records.
“A fine split between DIS-worship punks, LIFELOCK from Singapore and raw hardcore punkers, RAPPA from Morioka, Japan. No artwork, no bullshit. Just pure destruction.”
Mastering Paul Orwell “Fangz” on Heavy Soul Records.
“The epic last track from the “Blowing Your Mind Away” LP has been extended and unleashed in its near six minute entirety.
Feel that hammond fizz your eardrums as the guitar, vocals and effects take you to another freakbeat dimension where Jimmy Page, Graham Bond, Keith Moon and John Lennon are jamming and playing THIS!!!!…..
With the new track Hyp No Tize on the flip this is the third and last single from the album.”
Buy it here!
Mastering The Terminal Five “3×5” on Feel It Records
“Three fresh cuts of loud punk rock from Richmond’s best new export, THE TERMINAL FIVE. Four SLUGZ members kept together after the group disbanded, resulting in a new rock’n’roll unit designed to flat out destroy. On 3×5, THE TERMINAL FIVE zero in on a sound that draws from the best 70’s punk, applying a solid appreciation for the powerful songwriting and playing present on degenerate rock records like Killer and Raw Power. With the recent addition of Jarrett from SATAN’S SATYRS on guitar, THE TERMINAL FIVE are already hard at work on a proper album.”
Buy it here!
Mastering Nervous Twitch “Don’t Take My TV” on Odd Box Records.
Taken from Louder Than War:
“Odd Box Records give the second Nervous Twitch album the vinyl reissue treatment. Glenn Airey is first in the queue for Louder Than War.
Don’t Take My TV, the second long-player from fun-loving Leeds four-pieceNervous Twitch, was first released in cassette form back in February. Odd Box Records have now seen fit to grant this vital indie-pop document the status it undoubtedly deserves, and reissued it on instantly collectible clear vinyl. Twitch-watchers of any vintage are likely to agree that the album constitutes the finest collection of the band’s material to date, nicely summarising their ability to have fun with a range of cool-as-fuck influences like punk-pop, rockabilly, girl-groups and surf, while retaining a charm and consistently appealing bedrock sound that’s all their own.
From the stop-start sarkiness of So Rock’n’Roll to the climactic Cramps-meet-the-Dolls blowout of A Little Self Discipline, Don’t Take My TV includes eleven stormers clocking in at a petite twenty-six minutes with barely a dip in the smile count. Having said that, the subject matter isn’t all fun and froth. Emblematic frontwoman Erin, she of the technicolour wigs and mightily impressive lung capacity, slips in stories of sleazebag stereotypes, self-doubt and suicide amongst the punk pop rush and melodic melee.
Some genuinely nasty characters stalk these songs. Lurking In The City starts with a proper rock riff worthy of Motorhead, if ever played through Marshall stacks the size of tower blocks, then warns us to stay indoors and avoid the wrath of psychopathic David, all in all a fine addition to the killer-on-the-loose mini-genre. Meanwhile, John Power describes a go-getting, materialist trustafarian, presumably not the John Power out of Cast, although if you’ve ever heard that terrible Anfield Road record he made, you could forgive anybody for having a pop.
Guitarist Jay lays down a sound that’s just fuzzy enough (as punk-pop fans of course, we expect this as birthright) but that knows when to jangle and knows when to twang. Even Though I Have Regrets is a fine example of the former, its semi-acoustic loveliness providing an ideal backdrop to a classically-structured girl-group mini-drama. And the twang’s definitely the thang in East Coast Rumble which, as the title suggests, references the band’s longstanding love affair withLink Wray but also can’t help calling to mind the godlike Duane Eddy. As someone who lives in a house where Twenty Terrific Twangies rarely goes a week unplayed, I’m naturally a sucker for this stuff.
Erin’s keyboard skills also get a fair old workout on tracks like Something Wrong With Me, where she cleverly balances vocalising the dumpee-blues with some neat, Mysterians-style 60s organ showboating. Throw in the odd rockabilly scramble like Can’t Find The Words For How I Feel, and a great lost Ramones song title in I’m An Idiot Babe, and you have one of the great multi-faceted indiepop records of the last few years. One hopes they are now safely back in their garage with their bullshit detectors, working on the next one. Long live the Twitch.“
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Mastering Dysnea Boys “Forgot How to Read” on Take it Back Records.
“Lead singer Jason Honea from the San Francisco Bay Area was the former front man of California skate rock legends Social Unrest. His unique vocal style is instantly recognizable and makes the Dysnea Boys sound true to their musical roots. Bass player C.C. Voltage (formerly of the Spitfires/Black Halos/Loyalties) and Chris Frey (formerly of Radio Berlin/Book of Lists/Sludge) are both former Vancouverites who met in Berlin to collaborate on a new project with Honea.
The band plays classic 80s skate punk that will surely please fans of Social Unrest, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Agent Orange, and Adolescents.”
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Mastering Cretins “Meat” on Deranged Records.
“CRETINS rear their ugly heads yet again with six new cuts of destructive hardcore punk on “Meat”. This is a completely savage recording that harnesses the pure hatred of Poison Idea and depraved genius of Cleveland’s finest into one crushing EP. This is not the safe, easygoing, or experimental garbage that has crept into HC punk in recent years. CRETINS’ approach here is simple – hard hitting and forceful songwriting with lyrics that espouse a clear distaste for humanity. Executed much faster and tighter than previous material, if there’s one CRETINS release to end it all to, “Meat” surely wins out.”
Buy it here!
Mastering Gulag Beach “Favela Blues” on Maniac Attack / Left Hand Path / East Beat.
“Here comes the sound of rebellion presented by the Old school HC-Punx from Berlin, Germany. After their first record dealing with North Korea, this release continues fighting for liberty in a sarcastic and ironic manner: apart from Kim Jong-Un’s repressive system, current topics are the favelas in South America, the authoritarian regime in Russia, the torture cases of the C.I.A. and Pol Pots regime of terror in Cambodia. Six melodic songs are hit by a rough sound and were recorded in Berlin’s legendary K.V.U. studios. The record is restricted to 500 copies and comes with individually colored vinyl.”
Buy it here!
Mastering Analog Ruins “s/t”.
“ANALOG RUINS (Melodic Post-Punk from Bremen)
Analog Ruins have been rehearsing in their current formation since 2013 and have played a couple of shows w/ Big Eyes, Schwervon!, Rae Spoon, Naive, Static me, Caves, friend crush, Gwehrmutter*.
The band members know each other from different contexts in Bremen. Some of them have lived together, organised concerts as queer-feminist concert-group „betty beatz“, put up a queerfeminist festival called q*flash in 2012 and played together in all different kind of diy/rrriot/performance/punk/singer-songwriter projects resp. bands (a.o. Kobayashi, Awry Pattern, neongrey, largact.ill, Too rude to be cute, Toxic Titbits, Sissy Boyz, Ärzte ohne Ängste)”
Mastering Vertical Slump “Ruined Value E.P” on Icecapades Records.
“Vertical Slump are Simon Marsham (guitars, vocals), Andrew Milk (drums, vocals), Ed Shellard (bass,vocals) and Peter Simpson (synthesizers), a quartet of time-served hands at the DIY foundry who are/were also involved in (amongst others) the bands Shopping, Gloss Rejection, Omi Palone and Circuit Breaker.
This collection of songs was recorded in February of this year at Sound Savers studios with Mark Jasper, and follows on neatly from where a cassette E.P of early demos left us, released earlier in 2015 through Mïlk Records.
In collaboration with Mark, they have produced a fully formed and insistent record, oozing with confidence and vigour. It is four tracks of galloping, compelling post-punk wherein vocals are gulped with ardent intensity; guitars jag and agitate across the mix, veering from the sweetly melodious to the darkly dissonant, while basslines rumble and lope hand-in-glove with sparse and sympathetic percussion. Keys change, amps squawk, and tense locked-in cadences give way to silvery, sweet-spot choruses.
Mastered with an added slice of punk grit by the evergreen Daniel Husayn at North London Bomb Factory, these recordings can be seen as both a pulsating introduction to a band, and a persuading proposition of what’s to come in the future.”
Buy it here!
Mastering Warrior Tribes “Warrior Tribes EP” on Hex Enducer Tapes.
Recorded and mixed by David Wolf
“Debut vinyl from this Chicago band, and it’s a really cool little slice of hardcore. It strikes me as a very “Chicago” record in that Warrior Tribes seem simultaneously determined to push at the edges of the hardcore punk formula while still retaining the most important parts of the basic hardcore punk sound. In that respect it reminds me of a lot of different bands… most importantly Articles of Faith, but also other midwest bands like Mecht Mensch and (the Minnesota) Final Conflict. It’s almost like the record offers this little mini-narrative, starting off with some pretty straight up skinhead hardcore-style stuff on track one (with some impressive, Choke-esque vocals) and then gradually pushing at the edges of that sound, the guitars getting more and more creative and less tethered to the drum and bass as the record progresses. By the time you get to the last track, “Iron Fist,” the guitars are rarely playing power chords and the whole song gets built around these super catchy, high-on-the-neck guitar figures. Throw in some cool packaging featuring color vinyl, hand-stamped labels and what looks to be screen printed glue pocket jackets (or maybe it’s just a metallic silver regular print… it’s hard to tell) and you have the kind of record that people are almost destined to be calling “underrated” 10 years from now. – SorryStateRecords.com”