Bleak crime novelist Jim Thompson is one of our favourite writers, and any band named after one of his stories needs to meet certain requirements. Dark, desperate, dangerous, threatening, unpleasant…you get the picture. Pop. 1280 thankfully manage to tick all these boxes and more and are generating quite a bloggers’ buzz with their raw, chaotic freak punk. Want a mosh-pit meltdown in your front room? … Continue reading Introducing…Pop. 1280
While we think that we’re not great lovers of covers here at MM, I’m beginning to suspect that this is actually a pretty long way from the reality of things. Especially, as just lately, there seems to have been a plethora of excellent cover versions hitting our iTunes playlists. So here are a few that we’ve picked up from over the net and fellow bloggers … Continue reading Cover Me…I’m Going In
The new Japandroids single is Heavenward Grand Prix and to MM’s ears may well be the best thing they’ve delivered for a good while. It is still loud, very loud. It is still aggressive, and the slightly feral vocals are a bit more to the fore, but by slowing things down a touch they’ve added a palpable air of menace, which sets the song apart … Continue reading New from Japandroids
Hold Your Horse Is are overdosing with energy if taster track You Show Up is anything to go by. It’s primal, aggressive and packed to the hilt with full on riffage. It is easy to see where their cited influences of Reuben and Million Dead come from. The song is the lead from new EP Rammin’ It Home out on Big Scary Monsters Records and … Continue reading Introducing…Hold Your Horse Is
After five years spent scuzzing up New York’s club circuit, the Rakehells have finally hit the recording studio. The result is a blistering 15-track album (out on September 21) that harnesses the band’s influences the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Ramones, the Stooges, et al, as well as more contemporary bands like Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. The album, Please Yourself; or, the Devil in the Flesh, certainly captures … Continue reading Mad Mackerel Recommends…The Rakehells
Here is our usual round-up of the best songs we’ve posted in August together with a couple of our favourite covers and three new songs to tempt you. Another perfect mix tape we think. Black Angels – Telephone mp3 Gentler psych-pop approach from new album calling to mind classic era Zombies Dreamend – Magnesium Light mp3 Superb psych-folk from the loosely joined and hellish story … Continue reading MM’s Best of the Month: August
Thee Sgt. Major III’s first full-length, The Idea Factory, contains the wit, optimism and feisty schoolboy angst that Kurt Bloch articulated in his songwriting for seminal punk band The Fastbacks and the sparky guitar chug that beloved The Fastbacks to so many. Expert musicianship and high-cool grace are tempered by scrappy garage punk leanings, jazz longings, and a winking kind of macabre, not at all serious, … Continue reading Introducing…Thee Sgt. Major III
Hot on the heels of the sleazy, grimy punk blues of the Jim Jones Revue which we posted a couple of days ago comes the er well, sleazy, grimy punk blues of The Ex-Girlfriends Club. Although these Portland, Oregon boys have a touch more glam rock about them than our UK version. We posted something from these guys last year which went down well on … Continue reading New single from Ex-Girlfriends Club
A while ago we posted a video from The Jim Jones Revue from their forthcoming album Burning Your House Down which is out on 6th September. Now we can give you Big Len, a frenzied slice of sleazy, tribal pyschobilly in the vein of the punk blues of legends The Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion – just faster, dirtier and sexier. There are a list of … Continue reading New from The Jim Jones Revue
We are a little embarrassed to say that we’ve sat on this for a little while and so it is a little later than we would have liked getting posted on MM. American Graveyard have been described as ‘debauched Americana’ and certainly they do sing songs about boozing, fighting, women and all other kinds of trouble. However, they do it with a skill and panache … Continue reading MM Recommends…American Graveyard
The Mad Mackerel 