Category: punk rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Minneapolis’ Spit Takes Return with a Breakneck Ripper

Minneapolis-based punk outfit Spit Takes — Vanessa McKinney (vocals), Monet Wong (guitar), Angie Lynch (bass) and Charles Gehr (drums) — formed last year. Influenced by Amyl and the Sniffers, X-Ray Spex, Bikini Kill, and The Slits among a list of other acts, the Minneapolis-based punks pair crunchy guitar riffs with raw, unapologetic lyrics.

Earlier this year, I wrote about “God Bless (Holy Tits)!,” a pub rock-like take on punk rock that reminded me of Amyl and the Sniffers. So of course there are the prerequisite big riffs and thunderous drumming paired with most pit friendly hooks and choruses. But at its core, it’s a hilarious and defiantly crude, feminist anthem delivered with a zero fucks given aplomb.

The Minneapolis punk outfit returns with “Hogwash,” a crusty post-punk tinged, breakneck ripper punctuated with angular guitar bursts and McKinney’s punchy shouts. The song captures the band calling out the bullshit around them with an incensed fury. While continuing a run of catchy, mosh pit friendly rippers, “Hogwash,” as the band explains is “a rallying cry to tear through the veils of falsehood, seek out justice in the chaos, and clasp the raw, unembellished essence of existence.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Phoenix’s Louis on Tour Shares a Towering Ripper

Phoenix-based indie outfit Louis on Tour — currently founding members Nick Kahlor (guitar) and Jesse Martinez (guitar) with Sam Green (drums), Tyler Stumpy Beck (bass) and Shana Backman (vocals) — can trace their origins back to 2018: The band’s founding duo Kahlor and Martinez started Louis on Tour after their high school band split up. Through countless auditions and hard work, the duo found and recruited Green and Stumpy Beck. And some after a couple of years, Backman joined the band in 2021.

Their debut EP, last year’s It’s Pronounced /Lou•ee saw the Phoenix-based quintet quickly establishing a high-energy sound with dueling guitar, power house vocals and tight grooves. Since the release of their debut EP, the members of Louis on Tour have been busy writing and recording material for their full-length debut, Don’t Hit Kids.

But in the meantime . . . The Phoenix-based quintet’s latest single “Shaman Mama” is built with enormous grunge-inspired power chords and dexterous guitar work and thunderous drumming paired with Backman’s powerhouse Hayley Williams-like vocal, rousingly anthemic hooks — and fittingly a trippy, shamanic like bridge. Sonically, the song sees the band seamlessly meshing elements of metal, emo, punk and grunge in a way that feels familiar yet very new.

The band explains that the song was inspired by a story that a therapist told them about her work and one of her patients. The patient had gone through something terrible, and the therapist, claiming to be a shaman, offered the patient a journey into the spiritual realm, so that they could collect a missing piece of the patient. “The song is an interpretation of what we think that journey was like,” the band says.

“The most fun and challenging song for me to write was ‘Shaman Mama,’ just because we came up with the song name and the sound of the song before we came up with the concept,” the band’s Shana Backman adds. “When it made for an epic story about a shaman, I knew nothing about shamanism. So, I definitely spent a lot of time immersing myself and deep diving into that so that I served it some justice that kind of made for an epic journey.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Punt Shares a Fuzzy, Mosh Pit Friendly Anthem

New York-based duo Punt — Eli Frank (vocals, bass) and Bill Michel (drums) — can trace their origins back to the 2010s, when they were introduced by a mutual friend. And in a short time, the band burnt out: The pair set out to write and record their full-length debut, 2015’s Oil in a week. Soon after the album’s release, Frank and Michel went their separate ways.

During a sweltering New York Metropolitan Area summer back in 2015, the duo were drawn back together to write and record their long-awaited sophomore album, the aptly titled The Heat. Slated for a September 22, 2023 release through Trash Casual, the album reportedly drags listeners through New York’s grimy underbelly and explores the “random terrible thoughts” running through Frank’s brain. Sonically, the material sees the duo crafting a fuzzy and riff-driven salute to everything noir. (Or in my book — a decided hell-fucking-yes!)

The album’s latest single “I’m Bad” is swaggering, grungy and power chord-driven anthem built around fuzz distortion pedaled-bass, thunderous and propulsive drumming and a burst of 60s psych rock organ arpeggios paired with mosh pit friendly hooks and Frank’s howled delivery. But underneath the mosh pit friendly swagger, the song as Punk’s Eli Frank explains is “about not knowing how to get what you want, but you know you’re meant to be doing big shit. It probably won’t happen, but fuck it ‘cuz it’s all about the ride away. That ride into the pits of hell, baby.”

Directed by Chris Warner, the accompanying video for “I’m Bad” is shot in a noir-ish black and white, and follows the duo as they play the song in an abandoned, graffitied train track somewhere.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Oakland-based punk outfit Body Double — currently, founding member, multi-instrumentalist Candace Lazarou, Noah Adams (bass), Chase Kamp (drums), Aaron Diko (keys) and Joel Cusumano (guitar) — can trace its origins back to a period of intense grief and transition for its founder, Candace Lazarou: Her pervious band Mansion split up in an acrimonious fashion back in 2016, a few months before the tragic Ghost Ship warehouse fire. Simultaneously Lazarou began rethinking and then disentangling herself from longtime personal relationship and from drugs.

She withdrew into her bedroom and began creating material about intimacy and consent in the style of a drag mass attended by Brian Eno and Al Jourgensen. After being confined to vocal duties with Mansion, understandably, Lazarou desired and savored creative control, indulging in dramatic arrangements and hooks. She then found a collaborator in Noah Adams, who also cowrites material.

Around 2019, the band began playing live shows and has played as a quintet and as a quartet at various points. Their full-length debut, 2020’s Milk Fed can be traced back to sessions with co-producer Jason Kick at Tunnel Vision that initially started back in 2017: Lazarou played most of the instruments during those sessions with Kamp and Mansion’s Jeff Cook sharing drum duties.

For obvious reasons, the Oakland-based outfit wasn’t able to tour to support their full-length debut. Voice 2 Skull EP is the follow-up to 2020’s full-length debut and is slated for a July 21, 2023 release. “I just want to be in a band that sounds like Ministry doing Roxy Music covers, or vice versa. I think Voice 2 Skull gets me closer,” Body Double’s Candace Lazarou explains. “I wrote this EP knowing it would be Body Double’s last year as a big five-piece rock n’ roll blob (who can afford that in 2023?) so I tried to MAX OUT musically and emotionally. I’m singing about flames, parasites, long range energy weapons like V2K technology, and long range energy weapons like L-O-V-E.”

The EP’s first single “Carnation Island” is a woozy ripper built around buzzing power chords, industrial pummeling, glistening New Wave-like synths paired with Lazarou’s seemingly disaffected, robotic-like delivery. The result is a song that — to me — brings Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are DEVO-era and Freedom of Choice-era DEVO with hints of Ministry.

The Oakland-based outfit will be supporting the EP with a batch of tour dates. You can check the tour dates.

TOUR DATES

July 21 Thee Stork Club – Oakland, CA w/ Candy Whips, Chaki, DJ Albion Junkie

July 22 Que Sera – Long Beach, CA w/ Human Musik, Coleco Club

July 23 Taverna Costera – Las Vegas, NV w/ Spring Breeding

July 25 The Beast – Tempe, AZ w/ Final Gasp, The Sheaves, Jade Helm

July 26 Blondies – Tucson, AZ w/ Spank, Kulululu 

July 27 61st st. House – San Diego, CA 

July 28 Non Plus Ultra – Los Angeles, CA  w/ Prissy Whip, Ms. Lucid

July 30 The Golden Bear – Sacramento, CA w/ Steev & the Bitch Club, El Guapo

July 31 Duffy’s – Chico, CA

Aug 1 Mudville Stadium – Corvallis, OR w/ the Yuvees

Aug 2 Clock-Out Lounge – Seattle, WA w/ Wilting and Lane Lines

Aug 3 The Voyeur – Olympia, WA w/ Debt Rag

Aug 4 No Fun – Portland, OR w/ Mo Troper, The Unseen Ways

Aug 5 Richard’s Goat – Arcata, CA w/ Hudson Glover

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Dallas’ Drowning in Goldfish Share a Grunge-Like Ripper

Emerging Dallas-based grunge/punk outfit Drowning in Goldfish independently released their full-length debut, Gotta Blast last October. Released earlier this year, the follow-up to their full-length debut, “Velvet” is a Bush-meets-A Place to Bury Strangers-like ripper built an expansive song structure featuring around sludgy power chords, thunderous drumming and mosh pit friendly hooks and choruses.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: DVTR Shares a Furious and Incisive Ripper

Deriving their name as an acronym for the French phrase “D’où vient ton riz?” (Where does your rice come from?), Montréal-based duo DVTR is a new collaborative project featuring two of the city’s most highly acclaimed artists:

  • Laurence G-Do, the frontwoman of Le Couleur, an act that has toured internationally several times, and has opened for Giorgio Moroder, Polo & Pan and others, while amassing over 18 million streams across digital streaming platforms. 

  • JC Tellier, who has played with Gazoline, an act that has received multiple ADISQ and GAMIQ award nominations. Tellier has also played with Kandle, Xavier Caféine, Gab Bouchard and a lengthy list of others. 

Last week, I wrote about the duo’s debut single “DVTR,” a breakneck, blistering and incisive ripper built around scorching riffage, a relentless motorik-like groove, a shouted mantra-like chorus and mosh pit friendly hooks paired with G-Do’s feral shouts. The result is a song that kind of sounds like a wild yet seamless synthesis of Wild Planet-era The B-52s and La Femme’s “Foutre le bordel.“

The Canadian duo’s second and latest single “Vasectomia” is another breakneck ripper built around scorching guitar riffage, G-Do’s shouted vocals and a relentless groove paired with the duo’s penchant for wildly catchy hooks, anthemic choruses. But underneath the attention to slick craftsmanship, is furious and incisive criticism of the modern condition, delivered with zero fucks given. With the song, it feels as though G-Do would shout “fuck you!” to every man she passes by while suggesting that if men don’t want unwanted pregnancies or truly concerned about overpopulation that maybe they should get a vasectomy.

The accompanying video is set in a hospital room from hell and features the band’s G-Do in a medical gown and in stirrups, happily eating out of a carton of ice cream while her bandmate, playing the role of demented doctor works on her, occasionally taking breaks to sing his parts in the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sweeping Promises Shares Horror-Themed Visual for Brooding and Uneasy “Good Living Is Coming for You”

Sweeping Promises — Lira Mondal (vocals, bass, production) and Caufield Schnug (guitar, drums, production — can trace their origins to a chance meeting in Arkansas, which led to a decade of playing together in an eclectic assortment of projects. Their relentless practice has made perfect: Meticulously controlling every aspect of their craft, from the first note they write together, through production and engineering, using space as a key element of their sound, to the final mastering process, each song is an unspoiled fingerprint unique to their long-held dynamic chemistry. 

The duo’s full-length debut, 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out was released through Feel It Records. Written before the pandemic, the album’s material managed to pair the anxious urgency of a commanding live performance with a gauzy production, creating a distorted sense of time. That resonated with tons of folks during quarantine, who turned the album into a life-saving flotation device — and fittingly the album received rapturous praise from Stereogum, Pitchfork, and NPR. Around then, Feel It Records and Sub Pop agreed to join forces to distribute the duo’s work across North America and globally, starting with 2021’s “Pain Without a Touch.”

Slated for a Friday release through Feel It Records across North America and Sub Pop globally, the duo’s highly-anticipated sophomore album, Good Living Is Coming For You was recorded and produced by Mondal and Schung in their Lawrence, KS-based home studio. In some way, the album’s title and its material is informed by more than a half-century of underground music revolutionaries, who have taken whacks at the mundane mainstream. English 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 grrls rebirthed the bomp with a gasoline gut. The duo read pandemic minds with 2020’s Hunger for a Way Out. With their forthcoming sophomore album, the return with a new message that initially offers hope wrapped around relief. But maybe it’s warning. Or darker still, a threat. 

While the duo have amassed acclaim for unfussy, monolithic anthems, Good Living Is Coming For You is a decided change in sonic direction and approach: They’ve eschewed the brutalist ambience of their Boston subterranean, concrete laboratory and the single mic recording technique of its immediate predecessor. Recorded in a nude painting studio bathed in light with high-ceilings, their Lawrence-based studio is a reverb-rich space, that helps influence the album’s overall sound. Thematically, the album’s material touches upon power struggles, accepting aging, breaking restraints and more, delivered with a fervent urgency. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release I’ve managed to write about two of its singles:

  • Album opener “Eraser,” a gritty and furious ripper built around enormous shout-along worthy hooks and choruses, thunderous drumming, angular and propulsive bass lines, and distortion pedaled guitars paired with Mondal’s powerhouse delivery and copious amounts of reverb. While sonically recalling riot grrrl punk, complete with righteous and urgent fury, “Eraser,” as the duo explain is “a malevolent creep – an overly ambitious, shadowy force who bears an uncanny resemblance to you. She watches your every move, mirrors your motions, and ultimately uses your voice against you without you ever noticing what she’s done. She’s unchecked ambition, a paranoid girl Friday, an overriding impulse to reflect rather than project. She must be stopped at all costs.”

  • “You Shatter,” a synth punk ripper that sounds like a synthesis of Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Memphis synth punks Nots and the Go-Go’s. “‘You Shatter’ is our ode to being a hammer,” the duo say of the song. 

The soon-to-be released album’s third and latest single, album title track “Good Living Is Coming for You” is a brooding and uneasy track built around a metronomic-like groove, wiry guitar blasts paired with Mondal’s forceful croon. The result is a song that manages to sound a bit like Wire — but while evoking an encroaching sense of doom. The end is very much nigh, folks.

Directed by experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley, the accompanying video for “Good Living Is Coming for You” draws from 70s and 80s horror films. “For this video, we collaborated with one of our closest friends, experimental filmmaker Jessica Bardsley (Life Without Dreams, Goodbye Thelma),” the members of Sweeping Promises explain in press notes. Drawing from the glamorous and bloodthirsty aesthetic of ‘70s and ‘80s horror films (Daughters of Darkness, The Hunger, The Lair of the White Worm, Dream Demon), the visual companion to ‘Good Living Is Coming for You’ channels the song’s unshakable feeling of discontent and encroaching domestic doom through the confines of a DIY horror flick as seen by some nameless sleepless soul on late-night cable, the line between movie and infomercial blurred to infernal effect.”