10. Teen Mortgage – Devil Ultrasonic Dream
Undoubtedly one of the best garage punk bands around at the minute. Devil Ultrasonic Dream picks up where their previous album Life/Death left off, because why fix it if it’s not broken? More catchy, sing-along, rapid-fire choruses to windmill to, and snotty attitudes with enough oomph to give you just enough confidence to land that kickflip.
It’s not that deep. It doesn’t have to be. It’s just an awesome punk album.
9. Street Sects – Full Color Eclipse
A bit of a change in pace for this band, typically known for their heavy industrial punk, they’ve even switched up the name from Street Sects to Street Sex. Full Color Eclipse pioneers into pop territory, sounding a bit like ‘Crimes’ by early-noughties post-hardcore band Blood Brothers, if they’d hammed up their vocals even more and put aside all the screaming. Lyrically, it is very much of this essence, though. Whilst Blood Brothers set the stage for a sort of post-truth schizophrenia, Full Color Eclipse endeavours to journey into a dystopia that feeds its people on an unrelenting diet of bread and circuses, mirroring the death cult of the modern age.
Vocalist Leo Ashline repeatedly poses damning, cynical lyrics like: “Why would you have children when you can’t get through the day? I’m not planning to live much longer. I’m not coming of age.”
It feels like the musical equivalent of William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, landing squarely in the “Experience” camp, with a band like Erasure (who surely play some influence here) sitting at the opposite end as “Innocence”.
8. Sex Mex – Repackaged II
It’s egg punk all the way, baby. Fourteen songs totalling just under 25 minutes of pure silly, synth-punk joy. Addictive, bouncy, and fun. If you need something to get through another grey, dismal, cartel-ruled day in Britain, put this in your ears right now.
7. They Are Gutting a Body of Water – LOTTO
I’ve long been a fan of the former Philly-based band Blue Smiley, and it feels like TAGaBoW have picked up the baton since Brian Nowell’s tragic death due to an overdose. Indeed, the content of LOTTO continues some of the themes around addiction and personal struggle that doubtlessly echoed in Blue Smiley’s work.
Also based in Philadelphia, it’s hard not to wonder how far songwriter Douglas Dulgarian’s connection may have gone with the former band, whether he knew Nowell personally or attended any of their gigs before it was too late. LOTTO has been predominantly pegged as a shoegaze album, and you can certainly hear the MBV influence on tracks like ‘beside k‘, but ultimately it’s not really in the same vein as the shoegaze we’ve come to know and love in the UK.
Whilst there are many shoegaze elements, it comes closer in overall feel to Conor Oberst’s early post-hardcore, punk-emo outfit Desaparecidos and their album Read Music / Speak Spanish. It’s darker, but it carries the same mumbled introspective lyrics, carefree approach to genre mixing and sampling, and a generally lo-fi recording style that somehow finds the perfect balance between sounding DIY without being annoyingly scratchy.
6. Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – In the Earth Again
Seeing this combo for the first time, I was tempted to brush it off as novelty BS, refusing to listen to it until it kept insistently popping up in my daily recommended feeds. The album leans well into each artist’s slowcore and post-rock sensibilities. Chat Pile bring the warrior energy they’re known for, while Pedigo offers lunar-like, soothing acoustic interspersions that often act as a build-up before s**t gets heavy. Songs like ‘Radioactive Dreams‘ loom into Midwest emo territory and reduce the amount of background chug as the album’s end moves into a more reflective moment.
The general atmosphere conjures something altogether post-apocalyptic. There is a calm to this storm — you’re not quite in it, but you’re living through the consequences. Both artists deserve kudos for making a truly skilful quiet–loud album, combining two very different genres that certainly aren’t the easiest to mesh.
5. Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound
The first track on this record (‘My Garden’) opens full-blown Naked City–style, before deftly switching to gently chugging guitars, and then we’re back to more Zorn-inspired insanity with Dan Meyer’s vocals slowly seething into the foreground. It’s one heck of an opening track, and the rest of the album doesn’t let up.
For those unfamiliar with the band, they describe themselves as “ecstatic black metal”, and really, it’s an apt label. Having seen them at last year’s Supersonic Festival, I think I noted looks of orgasmic relief during their performance back then. So ‘The Spiritual Sound‘ is a well-suited title, for there is rapture in the sonic onslaught this album induces.
The band have brushed off stereotypical black-metal satanic associations, instead indicating that they are more present-focused. The peaks and lows, the epic tremolo picking, and solos that veer into absurdity make this a truly euphoric album — and one that also happens to be the most interesting thing to come out of the genre all year.
4. Crippling Alcoholism – Camgirl
Scheduled to play this year’s Damnation Festival, the band ended up pulling out due to financial miscalculations, which does cause one to wonder how much of the name is hyperbole. Still, they managed to get it together enough to release Camgirl, although not enough to give their song titles consistent capital letters.
The album is loosely based around the theme of sex work, more specifically, the control that fuels much of the lust industry. It is deliciously dark and manages to toe the line between goth, post-punk, and hardcore seemingly with ease. Whilst songs like ‘bedrot‘ veer into cheesy synth choral hooks, it’s swiftly followed by vocalist Tony Castrati’s self-deprecating spasms: “I fucking hate the way I look. Yeah, I look like a fat fucking scumbag.” As such, the album avoids descending into the realm of corny, outside of self-aware parody.
It is this sense of modern dark unease that permeates throughout the record. For instance, it feels like it would be at home on the soundtrack to a certain cancelled Adult Swim show I won’t name here, as it switches schizophrenically between playing nice with you and giving you the familiar, before presenting you with the horrific underbelly of your ignorant consumption.
3. Prostitute – Attempted Martyr
The fact of the matter is, I didn’t expect to hear a record like this. As slobbering and feverish as a rabid 21st-century media mogul on a three-day bender — that is the point. It is a concept album from the perspective of a religious zealot. Born out of Dearborn, Michigan, a town recognised for having the largest Muslim population in the US, the concept is based on frontman Moe’s experiences post-9/11.
“I had an identity crisis growing up. 9/11 started a lot of xenophobia and Arab hatred and all that kind of shit. I hated being Arabic. I hated Arabs in general, just because people were hating me. Through much of my 20s I felt like, ‘How about I be the character you want me to be?’”
And what a character this is. Desperation, violence, and madness have never sounded so uniquely modern on record before. It’s the kind of darkness summoned by Lovecraft or Poe in literature, but I don’t have a musical precedent to reference for this.
The symphonic chaos purveyed by the band, sounding so uncontrolled yet tight at the same time, perfectly replicates the insane but organised way of thinking that justifies any religious extremist’s behaviour. Attempted Martyr is a true feat of originality and a damn fine noise-rock record. To think that this is the band’s debut is very exciting.
2. Turnstile – Never Enough
Despite punk being my genre and being relatively tapped into the music scene, I must confess, it was only this year that Turnstile came onto my radar. I saw a video clip on Instagram of one of their live shows, and although the word “raw” is dreadfully overused for this genre, that was the energy that struck me and made me stop in my scrolling tracks. Wagering it must be some kind of archive footage from an old band I was surprised to find this was, in fact, present-day punk. Since then, I’ve committed to being somewhat of a superfan.
The band’s latest album Never Enough has been in heavy rotation for me this year. Its blend of soaring, melodic vocal hooks and punching hardcore breakdowns is frankly irresistible if not outright addictive. This record doesn’t shy away from shoegaze, ska, pop, ambient, and flutes, yet it never feels scattered. Each song flows with intent, giving it coherence and allowing the moods to shape-shift, ensuring that you stay within its musical orbit for the full duration without being kicked into the no man’s land of silent space. It’s not a demanding record; all it asks of you is to dream, headbang, sing along and occasionally punch the ground. Had it been made a decade or so earlier, it’s what Peter Gibbons from Office Space would have been listening to on his Walkman.
I’m sure there are some crusties out there who would not categorise this as a punk album: too produced, too many mixed genres, vocals too honeyed, but they’re wrong, this is ultimately a punk album and a really f**king good one.
1. Pile – Sunshine and Balance Beams
As is the case with almost every album release by Pile, I dismiss it, misunderstand it, and then come to love it. After hearing the strings on the single release ‘Born at Night‘ from this record, I wasn’t taken, assuming that over time they’d softened, matured into something more generically palatable. I am happy to say I was completely wrong.
This record is just as ferocious, just as introspective, just as climactic as every other precedent they’ve set for themselves. There is no one who holds their own emotions to account quite like vocalist Rick Maguire, because really, what is the point in even having a vocalist if the lyrics don’t actually mean anything? As is traditional with Pile, the lyrics on this record are personal, sometimes cryptic, but ultimately poetic. This, by the way, is how you get to be a band with actual passion: it helps if you mean what you say and you know what you mean.
Still, this is a complicated record, and the reason why it takes some time to come to love it is because quite often the range jumps in a way that would befit a math-rock band (albeit at a much slower pace), but it does go beyond simple quiet–loud dynamics. The melodies, riffs, and hooks only become familiar after you’ve given it more than a few listens and come to know when Maguire’s voice is going to lift, go loud, or go quiet.
Sunshine and Balance Beams builds on the band’s opus in the best possible way. It is clearly true to the core artistic vision of the band, but it offers something different. Yes, there are some strings now, on occasion, but with Maguire vehemently spitting out lyrics like, “If there’s no room for cowards now, then who the fuck are you?” I don’t think there’s any weakening here. If there was ever an album sent straight from the gut, this is it.
