[engl] Dublin's STRONG BOYS return with their first release in six years with the 'Homo' EP. With about as much subtlety as a pub fight spilling onto the street, these four tracks vent against the church, dated attitudes, predatory creeps with wandering hands and more. This is still defiantly gay hardcore with no meat on the bone for admirers of 86 Mentality and Negative Approach. The record comes housed in a fold out sleeve showcasing new artwork from legendary gay manga artist Gengoroh Tagame and lettering from Nicky Rat.

[engl] It's 2021 and Vancouver’s Bootlicker are back with their first full length. Experimenting with various lineups and sounds since 2017, these 14 original tracks flesh out their most realized expression. Following four EP’s and two demos, their self-titled debut stays true to the noise cultivated in the previous offerings. That raw, blown-out production countered with clean guitar sound and Internationally-informed take on a UK82 delivery remains. Everything that made the band what they were on their previous output is polished into a ball of fire that will not be contained. Their mid-tempo, menacing posture of tracks like "Herd The Sheep" and "State Of Fever" give way to the D-beat totality of "Master" or "Two Faced" proving there are still ideas in the tank. There won’t be much left but scorched earth by the time it comes to rest. FFO: Mau Maus, Discharge, SSD. Every copy of this LP comes with a 16 page zine-style lyric insert full of illustrations by band member and visual artist Athena.

[engl] Sarcasm's final offering is the much-needed shot in the arm you don’t even have to queue for. Sonically their six-track EP is a potent mix of the ignorant anarcho clatter and arch post(-graduate) punk you already love them for, but moreso. Picture UK DECAY squatting the Barbican. Still eschewing distortion for a truly inspired use of phase, the cavernous production (another Falco joint) will leave you staring at a city trader until he switches carriages. Whether it's echo-laden pronouncements on our worst instincts for techno addiction (‘Digital Colony’) or odes to modernist artists Paul Nash (‘Marsh Personage’) each track is as desperate as it is restrained by the same conditions. Heavily reminiscent of FALLOUT and the more cerebral end of UK82, mercilessly taut and lyrically about as obtuse as you’d hope from punk songs about rare varieties of lichen. Some guy once said something about the need for pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will in abject times, and this band amply proved the evergreen joy to be had in being a smart arse. Bury ‘Creeping Life’ under the rubble of the A3030 at Stonehenge when they start tunnelling, because this is one for the well-groomed future druids. Justified and ancient, ‘Creeping Life’ absolutely goes. (Bryony Beynon) 350 copies pressed on blue vinyl in a garish sleeve and with a fine looking insert.

[engl] When Sydney's Oily Boys dropped their long awaited debut LP on Cool Death over the summer we were caught unawares, and quickly fell in love with it. Static Shock is now very pleased to be releasing this across the pond for the uninitiated. Here's what the Cool Death originally said about this record, as we couldn't agree more: "Chthonic, catatonic, chronic... Cro Memory Grin is a masterpiece. Thirteen turbocharged tracks indebted to the pleasures and pitfalls of their lives in the modern city of Sydney and to the the first and second waves of international extreme music freaks and loonies: pure fucking aggression. The Oily Boys have graced us with a beast of an album that swells between direct, gripping, tangible hardcore punk and near nauseating psychedelia and throb which at moments feels like either ritual trance or a nervous breakdown. Cro Memory Grin contains near equal measures of tension and release; an exercise in high catharsis. It’s rare that a punk record can give the listener anywhere near the same intoxicating feel of an “everything louder than everything else” live show, but that’s what Oily Boys have done. That lightning in a bottle feeling of excitement, chaotic energy, delirium, presence in a moment and frenzied flight into a mind state both frightening and ecstatic. The stone has been carved, the fire has been lit, and this is it... Cro. Memory. Grin.

[engl] Pestilent Planet is the debut 7 track album from Berlin’s Clock of Time and it’s released a mere 8 months after they played their first gig. The band comes fully formed and up to speed but that is not surprising considering some of the members other projects such as Diat, Vexx and Useless Eaters. Pestilent Planet is a stunning statement of intent. The sound is a driving mix of post punk like Jeopardy era The Sound, and that classic 80’s death rock that Vex and Arch Criminals perfected. It’s instant and urgent especially tracks like 'Rotten Master' which has a fuller Joy Division esque vibe especially in the skeletal guitar hook. It will be love on first listen."

[engl] Now grown out of the bedroom and operating as a fully functional band, London via Ukraine's POWERPLANT follow up last year's 'People In The Sun' LP with this new 5 track banger. The Devo / Tubeway Army / Screamers / Lost Sounds comparisons are still there but also the weirder tracks are weirder, the faster tracks are faster and is Theo fucking crooning on the opener? One way to find out. To better days!

[engl] Sometimes a band just builds a kind of momentum where they just produce more and more rippers and Olympia's PHYSIQUE are clearly locked into a serious groove. 'THE RHYTHM OF BRUTALITY', their third 12" in a year and a half, and released in time for their upcoming rampage across Europe, is another uncompromising slice of crasher crust ugliness, guitars hissing and squealing in anguish, searing radiation-buzz noise crudely marshalled into seven nasty hardcore salvos, from the punchy d-beat of 'We Make Noise' to the punishing stomp of the title track and 'Miserable Existence', with its propulsive rolling punk beat half-drowned in feedback filth. PHYSIQUE slam together a knack for disgusting sonics with rock solid riffs for a rawpunk record in the vein of Disaster or Fader War that will scour the paint from your walls.

[engl] Static Shock is pleased to bring the fully formed debut 12" from Sydney's NEGATIVE GEARS to the world, following a domestic pressing by Disinfect Records (Low Life, Oily Boys). Seven tracks of tightly wound post punk from a group of individuals that give you the feeling that they're looking at the glass not so much half empty, but long since spilt and with no replacement on the horizon. The type of anguish that makes you either want to scratch your head at the state of the world, or take a full on somersault onto a razor blade, being held up by an anonymous hand from your home country, much like the mateyboy on the front cover. If you've had time for bands such as DIÄT, INSTITUTE and MARBLED EYE, you should be taking 16 minutes out of your life for NEGATIVE GEARS too.

[engl] The idiots are back with a follow up to last years powerhouse LP! Due to some wonderful visa issues the band are currently scattered around the world, but don't worry, the vibe of a midwest American hardcore band lost on the way to the infamous Virus squat in Milan (and we're talking pre-internet age of course, plus their A-Z isn't doing them many favours) is still strong. Four new tracks and a one time pressing.

[engl] You're being urgently, naughtily rushed up the tallest, steepest stairs you've ever climbed. Smile cautiously as the Uranium Club welcomes you into their stinky apartment. You've been here before, right? Oh, that must have been some one else. Do you have a brother or sister? One of the members mumbles some deceptively eloquent bullshit as he hands you a drink. His lips are dark red and chapped; he looks really bad. But the drink is wet, and those stairs had been tall. Sit down, lean back, sip it. There's salt in it, some pulp, some pebbles. It rolls around your tongue, hides between your teeth, a perfectly TV-worthy combination of pleasure and mischief. Swallow it. But spit it out... Spit it out now! It's supposed to go into your ears! How crazy is that? Such a sensation of taste, transmogrified for the realm of sound? Is it Sprite, or is it... music? Careful, engaging, and dare-I-say theatrical vocals over hyper bass-and-drums while other boingy-boingy instruments puke all over it, all over the whole show. That's called synesthesia. Gentle lectures, dangerous storytime, eerie fast-and-slow nightmare riffs, and a taut, bound-and-gagged rhythm section. Boingily-boingily, that's phantasmagoria. That's the Uranium Club's latest album, "The Cosmo Cleaners." So swish around some mouthwash and plug in your AirPods, kid, it's time to drop that needle!

[engl] Almost four years since the 'Signs Of The Future' 12", Dublin's DISGUISE return with 'Bas Fada'. Six more extremely violent and blown out tracks that sound like the best of Scandinavian and Japanese hardcore punk thrown into a concrete mixer. Ever wondered what was on the other side of that enormous slammed door? Here's your answer. Recorded by the band themselves at the Karate Klub, then mixed by Jonah Falco and mastered at Noise Room Tokyo. First press is on yellow vinyl.

[engl] The Brighton bag-head boys are back to finally follow up their 2016 demo ‘Tory Party Prison’. Not straying far from the NWOBHC blueprint of NY83 and classic UK Oi sounds, Built For Destruction is a brick through your living room window, and it’s screaming Britain’s fucking burning mate! Snotty southern vocals that bring to mind DEAD MANS SHADOW, scrapping with brash guitars and thumping beats that kick and punch like THE ABUSED, while keeping the raw intensity that THE INSANE captured so perfectly when the Tories were picking this country apart piece by piece the last time round. Housed in a sleeve depicting a harsh modern reality with an image that burns into your retina, stating exactly what STATE FUNERAL are shouting about - there’s still no future.

[engl] A nasty follow up EP to the Perfect Texture LP released earlier this year finds GELD in a more irascible and unhinged state. Soft Power expands on the band's vision of a freer form of D-Beat with noisier sounds, tighter dimensions, wilder visions and subtler experimentation with carefully placed nuances. Don't be tricked into thinking this is some sort of hippy dippy jamband bullshit though, every second of this is cruelly calculated and executed with the utmost care. Damn.

[engl] Cold Meat hail from Perth, Western Australia, but truly these are siren songs for every woman getting fucked over in every corner of this sorry planet, oozing total defiance and sneering, caustic rage across five certified slappers. They hex lazy pricks and bad bastards with a spell of spectacular jangeloid riffs and clattering anarcho toms, each track upping the stakes like a praying mantis - fuck, decapitate, eat corpse for nourishment. Vocalist Ashley's throaty, spit-splashed lyrics cover the full gamut from the care burden placed on mothers ('Maternity Stomp') to the psychic burden of hating men while craving dick ('Meat Joy'). This is incisive, tongue-in-arse-cheek, indefatigably Now punk. Cold Meat will have you fisting the air, but only if you lube up first.

[engl] With their debut LP, the cloak has been lifted. It is time to reclaim something that has been taken from us. Here the band rolls up their sleeves, takes to the streets, and demands recompense for a tradition of inequity that's poisoned our world. However, it is in our ability to love - our primal human right to give and receive love - that the damage of such toxicity is newly explored. Love is a choice we make. We ought not obscure, neglect, or deny that choice. Through the tumult and the pain, the camaraderie and the cause, the band continues to burn a path into that great beyond. But where are we headed? On NEED TO FEEL YOUR LOVE, they makes their first full-length declaration of light seen just beyond our darkness. Spoken plainly, without shame: It is love.

[engl] "Uranium Club return with a brand new single on Static Shock / Lumpy Records and a taster for their second album. Who Made the Man? is like a gang of aliens landing on planet earth, finding an extensive back catalogue of Wire and Devo and deciding they want to form a band. The track builds and builds with peaks, odd noises, different parts that come out of nowhere and an instant vocal. It's five minutes plus because there are so many ideas in one song. It comes in sleeves hand stamped and embossed. This 7" features an alternate take of Who Made the Man? and an exclusive b side Small Fry."

[engl] "All Of Them Naturals” is a fully realized, inclusive world of faux-corporation sponsored surrealist new wave punk music rife with satire and discordance. Robotically tight. Delightfully warped. Ideas as vast as Nebraska’s GMO cornfields and as lethal as the pesticides they spray on them. Did the Sunbelt Chemicals Corporation invent DDT? Maybe. Did they invent man? They think so. Did they invent the wheel? No, that was URANIUM CLUB. Truly, our generation’s DEVO. An important group.

[engl] Blazing Eye's most recent recording secures their place as one of Los Angeles's best hardcore-punk bands. Propagating punk as true and original as bands the likes of G.I.S.M. and Siege, Blazing Eye sets forth with their strongest release since their 2013 demo. It's a banger for sure and I'm happy that this record is finally a reality.

[engl] Originally released as a cassette, the debut from Minneapolis' Uranium Club is now widely available as an LP. Uranium Club play a kind of minimalist, agitated, catchy punk rock that reminds us of Wire before they released 'Pink Flag', but with an extra snotty attitude and bundles of energy. For a more recent comparison try early Total Control or the Shitty Limits. Each of the seven tracks on here explode from the vinyl, with each track more energetic than the one before, and they'll all be stuck in your head for weeks afterwards