Mega Round Up (Part 1)

We’ve been catching up (again) on some new tunes and, well frankly, there are just too many of the bloody things.

Here are a few of the loud / fast / brutal / noisy ones we’ve really liked from the last month or so, and there’ll be a few more (quieter ones) tomorrow.

So here we go…

The Hives are back with new single Good Samaritan. They’ve still got it.

Slaves new EP The Velvet Ditch features four songs that didn’t make the cut for most recent album Acts of Fear And Love. This is One More Day Won’t Hurt.

And Flake is a highlight from Fidlar’s latest long player Almost Free – a great video too.

Garage psych legends Oh Sees have shared the brilliant Poisoned Stones from upcoming album Face Stabber.

Out next month, Nottingham punk rock lifers Grey Hairs have announced their third album Health & Social Care – a scorching reflection on balancing your creative impulses against the commitments of impending middle age. This is the video for Tory Nurse.

Alien Thing’s sound is described as danceable late 90s punk, peppered in midwest depression. Some references are Shellac, Tom Waits, Fugazi, and Primus. This single, the excellently titled How to Build an Earthworm Farm, is loud and impassioned. Lyrically, it’s half psycho-narration and half diss-track aimed at the prison-industrial-complex…

Meanwhile Frauds are back with a brilliant new single full of jagged riffs – Putin’s Day Off is acerbic and savage. Never heard the phrase “critically acclaimed major label debut” spat quite so viciously…

Crushed Beaks‘ Sky Burial is driven by squalls of feedback wrestling with pop melodies turned inside out, pushing forward sheets of distortion and psyched out rushes of noise pop.

Brooklyn based band Pink Mexico’s track Dirty & Stupid, from the recently released album DUMP, is an anthem of torrid times, self-medication and self-sabotage.

The twisted music of Knife Wife gets a new outing on Family Party. The album is a medley of violent indifference, sorrow, general nastiness, bitter joy, and the symbolism of dogs. Check out The Dentist.

Black Mekon and his brother Black Mekon were named after the legendary Black Mekong, illegitimate children of prostitutes visited by missionary preachers, abandoned to fend for themselves on the banks of The Mekong River. Now joined by their cousin Black Mekon they deliver blistering in-the-red punk blues as a three piece. New single Immunity is 63 seconds of of jet-engine noise and pelvis-shattering drums. It comes from new album Destroy Nostalgia (out August 16).

London cosmic punk quartet WACO have returned with a new single, Levenshulme Lover, and have a new full length, Human Magic, set for release on November 1st.

Bay area jangle post punks Neutrals have shared the video for Hate the Summer of Love off their debut album Kebab Disco.

London-based punk outfit Real Authority have released a third track Depression Issues from their upcoming debut EP True Motion. Guitarist Johann Saul describes it thus, “This is probably the heaviest track in our set. You’ve got Slayer-esque cymbal grabs, twisted spoken word passages, creepy organ parts, down tuned bendy riffs, and a brutal half time breakdown. A real journey through the fiery riffs of hell!”

And finally, Discordant, claustrophobic and unforgiving, Icelandic psych-rock heavyweights Singapore Sling have been conjuring their own scuzzy nihilistic anthems for nearly two decades and are back with their tenth full-length, Killer Classics, that’s due for release August 15th on Fuzz Club. Here is the morbid, blown-out hip-shaker that is album-opener Suicide Twist – an unholy attack on the senses comprised of blistering guitar- noise, mechanical drum-machine and atonal, deadpan vocals.