Punk – Page 7 – 7th Level Music

Top 35 albums of 2020: #’s 5 – 1

Here we are. We’ve reached the cream of the cop.

#5: Yardsss – Cultus

This album is “only” three tracks, but one of them is over twenty-three minutes long. The other two are over seven minutes each. Even more impressive? This entire psychedelic / prog-rock album was improvised. Yardsss came in without a game plan and created a monster of a record that you can’t believe was done on the fly.

#4: Caroline Rose – Superstar

This is Caroline Rose’s best album to date. She tackles subjects like fame, flying your freak flag, sex, love, lust, and finding the self with power pop riffs, playful, lovely vocals, and some of her wittiest songwriting to date.

#3: Windhand – Levitation Sessions

I watched several livestream concerts this year, and all were good. This one by doom metal giants Windhand, however, literally gave me chills. That moment came during “Forest Clouds” when I could feel something happening. The hairs on my arms stood up and I couldn’t stop grinning. It was a powerful moment that I needed to remind me that live music will return. Nothing can stop it (or Windhand, it seems), and this entire live album was like being handed a battle axe as a hobgoblin army advances on the city.

#2: Automatic – Signal

I knew right away upon hearing Signal that (A) it was a post-punk gauntlet thrown down at other bands, (B) it was sexy as an underground 1960s dance club in Paris, and (C) it was going to be my favorite debut album of 2020. Everything on this album works at a high level. It makes you feel like a sexy bad ass, and all three ladies in Automatic are such. Tread lightly, however. They’re not screwing around and might whack you with a claw hammer if you cross the line.

#1: Flat Worms – Antarctica

This psych / garage / punk masterpiece by Flat Worms went into my #1 spot upon first hearing it in April 2020 and never moved. It is stunningly powerful and chock-full of killer lyrics about fighting against the rat race, internet addiction, the depersonalization of others, economic inequality, and toxic relationships. This is one of those albums that sounds new every time I hear it. It’s a shame they couldn’t tour to promote it, because this album could’ve and should’ve made them big-time draws.

I’m already hearing good stuff in 2021, so let’s stay healthy and get back to shows and festivals.

Keep your mind open.

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Top 35 albums of 2020: #’s 10 – 6

We’ve reached the top 10 (of nearly 80) albums I reviewed in 2020. Who made the cut? Read on…

#10: The Wants – Container

The only thing bad about this album is that The Wants didn’t get to extensively tour to promote it. Screw you, 2020. Container deserves to be heard by everyone, especially post-punk fans or anyone else who likes their rock with a slight goth edge. I was lucky enough to see them in February 2020 before the country and touring and venues shut down. I hope they’re able to get back to the road soon, because hearing this record live is even better.

#9: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Viscerals

This album is so heavy that it might break your turntable if you have it on vinyl. The Black Sabbath influences are evident, but Pigs X7 sound like they had fun while making an album to unleash their wrath upon Brexit, COVID-19, politicians across the pond, and jackasses in general.

#8: Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters…

I’d only heard a few tracks by Frankie and the Witch Fingers from earlier records before hearing their new album, Monsters Eating People Eating Monsters… Holy crap. This record floored me. It’s double-album-full of prime psychedelia, shoegaze, and garage rock jams. Let this album consume you.

#7: BRANDY – The Gift of Repetition

I don’t remember where I first heard BRANDY’s music, but I’m glad I did because this is the most fun punk record I heard all year. The repetition mentioned in the album’s title is used to great effect throughout the record with killer beats, riffs, and choruses.

#6: Hum – Inlet

The biggest surprise release of the year also turned out to be one of the best albums of the year. No one expected or even considered a new, full-length album by 1990s shoegaze legends Hum, but along came Inlet to knock off our socks and remind us that these guys can mop the floor with just about any other band out there.

Only five more to go! Who takes the title of best album of 2020? Come back tomorrow to find out.

Keep your mind open.

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Top 35 albums of 2020: #’s 30 – 26

Let’s get right to it. Shall we?

#30: The Death Wheelers – Divine Filth

It’s a soundtrack for a post-apocalyptic / zombie / biker film that doesn’t exist (but should) made by four dudes who can swing musical styles (metal, doom, surf, prog) on a dime and love B-movies. You can’t miss.

#29: Oh Sees – Levitation Sessions

The folks at the Reverb Appreciation Society came up with a great idea this year – live-streamed shows that would coincide with a release of the live show in various formats (digital, vinyl, cassette). This one from Osees / Oh Sees was the first one I watched this year, and it was a blast. My wife, cat, and I were dancing around our house to the wall of sound at one point.

#28: King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Chunky Shrapnel

Speaking of live music and prolific bands, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard released one of several live albums this year, and this one was the soundtrack to a concert film that saw a limited streaming release and will hopefully be in theaters at some point. Like any live KGATLW show, it shreds.

#27: Damaged Bug – Bug on Yonkers

John Dwyer, lead cat in Oh Sees, not only released several Oh Sees projects in 2020, he also released a new Damaged Bug record – this one a tribute to outsider musician Michael Yonkers. The whole record is full of Yonkers covers, and all of them are great and make you want to search out his other work.

#26: Teenager – Good Time

This is a fun post-punk record and one of the singles from it, “Romance for Rent,” is one of my favorite songs of 2020. The whole album gets in your head and you won’t want it to leave.

Come back tomorrow to see who’s in the top 25!

Keep your mind open.

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Top 15 singles of 2020 – #’s 15 – 11

Yes, the beginning of the year means the avalanche of “Best of…” lists from me. This year’s will include singles, albums, and albums of the last five years. Unfortunately, the only concert I got to this year was seeing BODEGA and The Wants in Chicago. It was a good gig, so at least the one show I attended was a blast (even though I might’ve caught a mild strain of COVID-19 there).

Let’s get on with the singles, shall we?

#15: October and the Eyes – “All My Love”

Good heavens, what a sexy track. This cut from October and the Eyes‘ excellent debut album, Dogs and Gods, instantly brought to mind Dum Dum Girls, Bauhaus, and Siouxsie and the Banshees – but somehow with more sweaty lovemaking.

#14: Khruangbin – “Time (You and I)”

This track off Mordechai is so funky you can hardly believe it. Listening to this while walking will instantly put a strut into your step.

#13: The Chats – “Pub Feed”

Coming from High Risk Behaviour, his is one of the most fun punk tracks I’ve heard all year. It’s brash, brazen, and a salute to eating and boozing in pubs. What’s not to like?

#12: Kelly Lee Owens – “Night”

This is one of two Kelly Lee Owens’ songs from Inner Song that made my top 15 singles of 2020. This one, like pretty much anything else she puts out there, almost makes me want to throw my digital turntables in the trash because, good grief, why should I even bother?

#11: Too Free – “No Fun”

This Washington D.C. band came out of nowhere for me and, like Ms. Owens, dropped two of my top 15 tracks of 2020. This one, despite its title, is a lot of fun.

Who makes the top 10? Come back tomorrow to find out.

Keep your mind open.

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Top 35 albums of 2020: #’s 35 – 31

Why thirty-five albums in this list? I reviewed almost eighty albums released last year (and many others released at least a year ago). I always recap the top half of the list, so thirty-five was about right. Everyone agrees that 2020 was a crappy year, but we had a lot of good music. A lot of bands and artists had nothing else to do but create amazing music to keep them and us sane.

#35: Rituals of Mine – Hype Nostalgia

This is a sharp album about being an outsider, love and lust, and knowing when to draw a line in the sand. It mixes electronica and synthwave well and constantly intrigues you.

#34: Sofia Kourtesis – Sarita Colonia

This EP is one of the best electro / dance records I heard all year. It wasn’t on my radar until I stumbled onto it via Bandcamp. It was a breath of fresh air as lovely as it sky on its cover this year.

#33: Melkbelly – PITH

These Chicago punks / post-punks / rockers / do they really need a label? came out swinging with their new album. It’s one of those records that make you think, “Damn, they’re not screwing around.”

#32: Oh Sees – Protean Threat

Am I the only one who thinks that if you cut up the album cover for Protean Threat into four squares and rearranged them in the right pattern that it would reveal a secret image? The album is one of many releases from Oh Sees / Osees this year, who might’ve been the most prolific band of 2020. It’s a wild, fun time, of course, full of blazing rockers and krautrock jams.

#31: New Bomb Turks – Nightmare Scenario (Diamond Edition)

This is easily my favorite re-release of the year. Ohio punk legends New Bomb Turks released a raw version of their classic mid-1990s album Nightmare Scenario for the album’s twenty-fifth anniversary. It shreds and was a much needed adrenaline boost in a year when we didn’t have much to be excited about in terms of entertainment and did have a lot of anger to expel.

Who cracks the top 30? Come back tomorrow to find out!

Keep your mind open.

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Wenches release “Bad Man” from upcoming album.

Bloomington, IN quartet Wenches (ex-members of Racebannon) share the first video single from their forthcoming debut album Effin’ Gnarly today via Metal Injection. Watch and share “Bad Man” video HERE. (Direct YouTube and stream the single via Bandcamp.)

Assembled from broken bits and leftover chunks of various known and unknown groups in the punk, metal and post-hardcore world, Wenches hail from Bloomington, Indiana in the heart of the Midwest. Described by No Echo as “raw, no bullshit…undiluted rock realness” and in the vein of proto-punk bands like MC5 and The Stooges, the debut album Effin’ Gnarly is slated for a February 2021 release.
Tracked at Russian Recording (Built to Spill, Tortoise, of Montreal) and mastered by James Plotkin(Sunn O))), Pelican, Earth, ISIS), the band portrays the album as “high-energy screaming hard rock played the only way long-haired punk metalheads know how. “After a rotating door of bassists and drummers, the band has finally landed on what hopes to be a lasting lineup. Effin’ Gnarly follows a previously sold out 3-song “demo” cassette and precedes the release of a limited edition 7″ single entitled State Fair Hair.

Effin’ Gnarly will be available on LP and download on February 26, 2021 via Master Kontrol Audio. Limited edition cassettes will be released by Small Hand Factory. Pre-orders are available HERE.

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Dave at US / THEM Group.]

Review: BRANDY – The Gift of Repetition

I love the cover of BRANDY‘s new LP, The Gift of Repetition. It’s a bunch of broken smartphones and ink blots that, if you look at them just right, spell out the record’s title. I can’t help but wonder if the pictured phones ended up in such a state from being dropped in mosh pits at BRANDY shows because the record is a fury of punk rock that is perfect for shaking you out of your smartphone-induced zombie state.

Opener “(Wish You Was) Madball Baby” has a great, yes, repetitive post-punk drum and bass beat while sings / yells about the desire that a lover would just go off the hinges now and then. The guitars on “Dangle” deftly move back and forth between roars and fuzzy fills.

“I’m Shipping Up to Boston” might have you stomping the gas pedal if you hear it while driving. It’s like fuel injection for your bloodstream that will have you turning into a bobblehead. The bass licks on “UFO’s 2 Heaven” are great, and the whole tune bumps with punk attitude and “We’ve got these chops and we’re going to flaunt them.” spirit.

“Christmas Colors” adds synths to the mix to make you turn and mess with your head and confound you with lyrics like “Wearing my red and greens, mistletoe magazines.” The jingle bells are also a nice touch. “Clown Pain” might be about kinky sex, as the band keeps yelling, “Thank you for my clown pain!” over fun and loud guitar chords before it devolves into trippy synth sludge. “Text Home” has the heaviest, fuzziest bass on the whole record – which I love. “Insane Screensaver” closes the album with New York Dolls-like swagger and kiss-off lyrics like, “Guess what? Your mommy don’t care!”

This is a fun punk rock record. We need more stuff like this right now, especially as winter bears down on us here in the U.S. We need to be slapped awake and encouraged to jump on our beds and dance around our places as we self-isolate, and this is a great record for that soundtrack.

Keep your mind open.

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Review: New Bomb Turks – Nightmare Scenario: Diamond Edition (2020 reissue)

As the story goes, Columbus, Ohio punk legends New Bomb Turks were musing over how to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their Nightmare Scenario album, and wondered if the album’s original engineer, Jim Diamond, still had the master tapes from the four-day recording session in Detroit. It turns out that he did, and NBT discovered they were as raw and rowdy as they’d hoped. The result is the “Diamond Edition” of the album, and it’s a welcome birthday gift for all of us.

Opener “Point A to Point Blank” grabs you by the collar and tosses you into the mosh pit with its furious drumming by Sam Brown and Jim Weber‘s guitar is the sound of a nitro-burning funny car launching off the line. “Automatic Teller” has Eric Davidson singing about his girl “always come runnin’ every payday” to turn him into an ATM while the rest of the band goes bonkers with tight punk riffs. Matt Reber‘s bass line on it is a thing of wonder.

“End of the Great Credibility Race” has, apart from a great title, slick back and forth vocals between Davidson and his bandmates in-between all the powerful riffs. Davidson encourages Brown to “go as fast as you fuckin’ wanna go” on “Too Much,” which packs more punk pedal-to-the-metal punch into a minute and three seconds than most songs three times that length.

“Killer’s Kiss” throws down a sweet groove and is a good display of NBT’s diversity. They can unleash blazing punk licks and garage rock grooves with equal talent. It’s one of their best traits. “Continental Cats” is another fine example of how NBT love to find and lock into a groove now and then, but without letting off the gas and fuzz pedals. “Spanish Fly by Night” displays another NBT talent – wordplay. They have some of the wittiest and sharpest lyrics of any punk rock band you’ll find.

“The Roof” is a solid song about being stuck in a dead end town and wishing for greener pastures elsewhere. The “rough mix” of “Your Beaten Heart” is a neat addition. It’s cool to hear the early, raw version of this. “Turning Tricks” has a wild, swaggering flair to it – as you’d want from a song with that title – and I love how Reber’s bass shoves its way to the front now and then on the track.

There’s no way NBT could’ve predicted in 2000 that “Wine & Depression” could be a theme song for 2020, but here we are and here it is in all its punch-drunk, bottle-smashing punk glory. “Quarter to Four” combines NBT’s punk chops with their groove power to create a solid closer that leaves you sweaty and nearly out of breath as they sing about existential dread: “Close my eyes, I don’t wanna see. Sun’s comin’ up on my history.” Good grief, that’s some gut punch stuff right there. The Diamond Edition ends with “Theme from Nightmare Scenario” – an instrumental garage rock track that would make The Stooges proud.

By the way, all proceeds from the sale of Nightmare Scenario: Diamond Edition go to the Black Queer and Intersectional Collective and Columbus Freedom Fund – two great causes – so it’s a win-win for you and them. Don’t hesitate to snag this.

Keep your mind open.

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Special Interest announce remix of “The Passion of…” album due next month.

Following the release of their album ‘The Passion Of…‘ earlier this year, New Orleans-based punk band Special Interest have announced a new 12″ release ‘Street Pulse Beat‘, which features remixes from Boy Harsher, Ruth Mascelli and DJ Haram. The record is set for release on Jan 8th via Nude Club Records and is available for pre-order and today the “Street Pulse Beat (Boy Harsher Remix)” is streaming online.

As well as the ‘Street Pulse Beat’ Maxi 12″, Special Interest will also digitally release ‘The Passion Of: Remixed‘ on Jan 8th, which is made up of 11 tracks, including the remixes on the 12″ & various other reworks by artists such as Hide & w00dy. People who purchase the Maxi 12” on Bandcamp, will receive a free download of ‘The Passion Of Remixed’ too.

All proceeds will go to House of Tulip (https://houseoftulip.org), which was co-founded and is currently co-led by 2 Black transgender women. House of Tulip provides trans and gender-nonconforming communities in New Orleans, Louisiana with economic stability and safety through zero barrier permanent housing and pathways to education, healthcare, employment, and homeownership.

“This remix of ‘Street Pulse Beat’ came from the depths of springtime lockdown. In a bleak and uncertain world, Special Interest was keeping our creative spirit alive. This remix was made entirely with the OB-6, SH-101, and the JV-1080. Trading in distorted guitars for plucky bent synths, Boy Harsher’s remix offers their signature melancholy sound. Ali Logout’ confidently controls the energy, reminding us that synthwave can still have a backbone and can hang with the punks.” – Boy Harsher

Adding to this, Special Interest vocalist Alli Logout said the track is “A ballad for lovers delusions of grandeur in the depth of the terror that is codependency.”

Listen to “Street Pulse Beat (Boy Harsher Remix)” here: https://youtu.be/WtwwtZHcxFw

Pre-order here: https://specialinterestno.bandcamp.com/album/the-passion-of-remixed

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Frankie at Stereo Sanctity.]

Wolfmanhattan Project declare it will be “Summer Forever.”

An anti-supergroup like no other! Wolfmanhattan Project, featuring Mick Collins (The Gories, The Dirtbombs), Kid Congo Powers (Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) and Bob Bert (Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Lydia Lunch) bring you a healthy dose of dark swampy voodoo with a uniqueness and immediacy that only a combination of this magnitude could deliver.

The new video for ‘Summer Forever’, taken from their forthcoming second album Summer Forever And Ever (coming in 2021) on In The Red Records was filmed in isolation and edited and directed by filmmaker Dylan Mars Greenberg, who, among her many films and music videos, won Best Animated Film at this year’s LA Punk Film Festival for the short film, ‘The Bathtub‘, (starring Bob Bert).

Keep your mind open.

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[Thanks to Jo Murray!]