[engl] Their third, and darkest record yet.

[engl] GAMES OF POWER lives inside a crystal clear recording by long time friend and Edmonton wizard Nik Kozub, bringing Home Front’s follow up to “Think of The Lie” to euphoric heights and gritty lows. Produced again by Jonah Falco remotely and between sub zero 10 kilometer runs in Edmonton in late February with co-production by Nik Kozub, Home Front have put their best mirror shined boot forward.” (Jonah Falco)

[engl] Created on the western edges of the infinite plains and prairies of coldest Canada, Edmonton, Alberta's HOME FRONT dance freely and madly along the edges of time and create their own moment amongst the revered and long frozen reserves of THE CURE, SUICIDE, ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN, "Second Empire Justice" era BLITZ, and NEW ORDER. A record bubbling over with analog synth, guitar loops, slammed 808 drums, and anthemic vocal pushes tugging at the great moment in-between the “death” of punk and the “birth” of new wave, pulling fresh sounds into their punk roots and shoving a studded leather jacket around a silk robe. Justice, violence, doubt and uncertainty a la Gary Numan narrating a Warren Miller Extreme Ski Special on the set of TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA: this is HOME FRONT.

[engl] New 7" of Honey for Petzi on Africantape. This is a limited edition (500 copies) including one of the best track of the band (Night Guru) and the track 'Power Loss' from their last album 'General Thoughts and Tastes'.

[engl] Emerging from the seemingly sleepy suburbs of Adelaide, Horror My Friend's approach to noisey, indie-rock is youthful and idiosyncratic. Tapping into the spirit of 90's college-rock and shoe-gaze the trio (Josh Battersby, Tom Gordon & Sam Kolesnik) break new ground with their raw yet melodic auteurist songwriting, bolstered by frenetic, energetic live performances.? Now these prime purveyors of noise, fuzz and ragged melody are back with album #2! Drawing inspiration from their hectic on-the-road-lives as touring musicians, the trio's second long player examines the push and pull of maintaining relationships, jobs and ultimately normality. "Home Life documents the emotions and feelings that often arose from the conflict of constantly being away from home, yet still trying to live a `normal' life. `Wedding' is a track that exemplifies this perfectly. It's soaked in fuzz, upbeat and noisy, but lyrically is an introspective rumination on the guilt of relationships being stretched to their limits when doing what you love, and when considering which sacrifice to make" explains drummer Sam Kolesnik.

[engl] Three years after their second album "Return Of The Empire", the italian Vampire punx combo returns with their new full length „New Wave of Fear’’. The tunes got darker and less punk than their previous releases but, all in all, the formula hasn't changed too much, and, hell yeah, this is a concept album about life and death. The A side has been named "This Side" and deals with things that belong to the world we're living (immigration, the rise of the extreme right wing parties, terror, life in general etc.). The B side has been named "Other Side" and it's all dedicated about death. It's a more intense record and definitely better than their old ones, and you can also hear the crusty roots of some of the members in their last song where Amebix and Fields Of The Nephilim meet in a no men's land to face the end of it all. Horror Vacui will tour in August/September along with their PDX dark merchant fellows Bellicose Minds.

[engl] Punk in the age of infinite duplication. Endless algorithms -- strands of digital DNA wrapping like loose cords around the arteries of daily life. We find ourselves mannequin-ed -- gazing longingly at the constant churn of street life; a simulacrum of stimulation. All the dense paranoias of the 20th century have shadow-walked their way right up to our 21st century doorstep and they are quietly picking the lock while we fritter away the hours in the room with the screens. What to do about this concealed drudgery? Where to turn in these bleak hours? How can we break the chains of routine, the labor of labour? Perhaps at this late date, it would be naive to state: “We can listen to Housewives.” What decade is this? How can music still inspire concentrated thought while satisfying its inherent physical demands? Rock music is intended to be functional. Postpunk music is music for doing. Housewives are a band that does; and the content is not mere window-dressing. Housewives are: Industrious music for industrious people. A few years ago, London, England’s Housewives, in the finest of postpunk traditions, began making an intensely focused racket. Their debut took the form of a five-song limited-edition cassette put out by Faux Discx. This self-titled EP had a startling power and hypnotic force that is all too rare in this era of practiced disaffection. Instead of pretending to be bored by this evershifting world, Housewives' approach revealed a microscopic attention to detail. Despite their using the traditional instruments of rock n’ roll, Housewives invert these powerful totems to their own ends. This is music that earns its praise from such high priests of refusal as Charles Hayward (This Heat, Camberwell Now). Like an Adam Curtis documentary, Housewives is music that takes on social constructs, looking for a way to disassemble these ridiculous structures. With it biting lyrics lampooning a lad who is “racist when it’s funny,” bracing opener “Poppy” seems to anticipate Brexit. As the bass throb surges through your system like a blood rush, perhaps you need to rethink your stance on what is and what is not important in the current supercut of media and politics. “In Camera” traffics in impossible clockwork rhythms -- they grind against each other, gathering momentum until the band sounds like an overworked machine on the verge of exploding. “Medicine Bottle” is the closest thing Housewives will serve you to a hit. The no wave guitar spasms -- like a coil snapped by sudden pressure -- collide with the rhythm section in the middle of a congested city. The claustrophobia summoned by the track is hardly offset by the snaking interjections of a saxophone. If anything, this presence of breath reinforces the sensation of necessary and cathartic exertion. Courtesy of New York City’s Ever/Never Records, the unjustly-ignored debut by one of the top operating postpunk bands worldwide, has found a home on wax. Finally, this previously extremely-limited cassette is given the format it deserves. Delivered at a volume-enhancing 45 rpms, Housewives’ 12” EP is a diamond-hard gem of postpunk. “Almost Anything” shows just how locked-in to factory mode this band can get. Few modern bands are playing with such sounds and intentions. “62426” is a series of mutating nodes -- like the communications in THX-1138 made manifest in song-form. At times, Housewives recall the best of the UK’s postpunk gloom n’ doom glory days. The rub is -- we are in the future that those bands warned us about. Housewives are the last band standing, forcing our eyes open and demanding that we address the monolithic edifice of modern life.

[engl] HUFFDUFF from Hamburg present with their new album “AI” a statistically evaluated concept album for humans as a target group! Six new songs and two reinterpretations of songs from the debut album “HF/DF”, eight stories about power, powerlessness, worried employees, price-conscious consumers, humans, machines, empowerment and relaxation techniques, each of them a blast! HUFFDUFF’s psychokinetic post-punk noise rock with the music-historically proven instruments guitar (Abacha Tunde Jr.), bass (V. Sputnikova), drums (Mr. Fust), larynx, tongue and vocal cords (Durian Gray) is already shredding through the ashes of tomorrow’s world!

[engl] The worst madness to be wise in a mad word’?chant?Hyperculte?in their second album?‘Massif Occidental’, true musical liberty cry, happy and wild . The duo, formed by the cream of?Genevan?experimental scene?(Simone Aubert?in drums, guitar and singing and?Vincent Bertholet?in double-bass and singing) follows its crazy procession in a chaotic word to carry us away in its disco, pop, kraut, punk AND?post rock trance. Sharped rhythmic, composition inventiveness, poetic and committed lyrics, the eight?songs of the album, written from musical improvisations, from pieces of literary texts and politic slogans, give evidence of the decided and sharped look of the two musicians about our time. The instruments and voices (a worked feminine singing and a masculine scansion more brutal and spoke) full of various effects and distortions, discuss, play and answer each other.? Recorded in?Hambourg, in?Felix Kubin’s, To Rococo Rot’s, Faust’s, etc studio which gives all the songs a sharped electro-pop touch, the album sounds like shot at glory, a poetic resistance appeal for an ‘army of dreamers‘. Between idealism and pessimism, joy and urgency,?Hyperculte?confirms their debuts and shows their own madness with a ‘Massif Occidental’ firmly invincible.

[engl] EDH and Hypo are two french musicians who have both prolific solo careers since the beginning of the 2000's. Hypo & EDH are also a band, a duo, more precisely a two-headed monster that steadily appears on stage as well as in the studio to produce a unique, challenging music, which is pop and experimental at the same time, swinging and melancholic, electronic and organic. In 2007, their first joint album, "The Correct Use Of Pets", was rewar- ded with the first prize at the Qwartz Electronic Music Awards, in « Discovery » category. After returning to their own solo projects for a while, the duo reforms in 2013 to present« Xin », their second opus together. Faithful to its principles, the band cultivates the confrontation between order and chaos, figurative and abstract, grotesque and melancholy, new wave and exotica, with a keen interest in strangeness. In this album, there is an abundance of surprising musical items. There are also pictures at times unseemly where the ghosts of the Cure in its « The Top » period are mixing with those of Jean-Jacques Perrey, Wire and Pierre Schaeffer. Unlikely conjunctions with a melting-pot of eurodance, easy listening and coldwave in the background. Hypo & EDH are now giving a bigger place to analogic creation, while not rejecting their electronic roots. EDH scatters bass guitar - her new favourite instrument - through the album with a technique recalling the one used by ESG. EDH also plays with her voice in a new manner, pitching and un-pitching it at leisure. As for Hypo, he asked an expert in circuit-bending to create an improbable custom-made instrument for him which he is confronting with his know-how in the field of sampling. While keeping its freshness, the band gains a greater freedom and uses it largely in this new album.

[engl] On their second album IAMDISEASE, hardcore veterans from Slovenia, continue where they left off with their previous album. The tradition of metallized hardcore of the early 90's is here further extended and combined with Black Flag's proto-sludge and the hybrid application of various extreme metal subgenres, predominantly black and death metal. Clocking just under 25 minutes, these 7 new tracks offer a consistent execution of fast-paced rhythms, jangly, dark guitar riffs with discordant melodic passages and precise bass lines under a rasp, angry vocal that delivers engaged messages to the listener. The resulting recording is an interesting blend of sounds that is nowadays found in less than a few local bands, and a welcoming addition to a progressing hardcore scene. Featuring members of bands as Man In The Shadow, Low Punch, The Hoax Problem, Elodea, Kennyball Smith and A Murder Theory.

[engl] Official reissue limited to 500 copies.

[engl] “Imposition Man’s newest extended player takes the unique blend of desperation and cynicism littered throughout their sporadically released demos and EPs and transforms it into an official statement. 8 tracks of isolated music for isolated people, this is impeccably executed dystopian post punk. Menacing basslines that bounce and wriggle through the barbed wire, urged mercilessly forward all the while by that relentless Alesis snare as, marched forward like all of us, against our will, into the roaring twenties. Vocals echo detachment while a chorused guitar still somehow emits hope of a silver lining. Tough times are ahead but at least Imposition Man provide the vessel to express whatever the fuck it is we’re all going through. Out now on Zoom." (Onton / Diät, Clock of Time

[engl] Homespun psych–punk–garage–pop from 1985!! Over a decade ago, Steve Krakow aka Plastic Crimewave found a cassette by a mysterious 80s band called In Time at a Chicago thrift shop. When he returned home and listened to it, he was amazed: "I had flashes of the TV Personalities (one of my fave "DIY" bands), early "paisley underground" like Three O’Clock (maybe when they were the Salvation Army), wobbly but illuminated 60s folk–garage like Faine Jade, and even first wave UK punk like Subway Sect or yes, thee Pistols. There were even jagged post–punk moves ala the Swell Maps or Scrotum Poles, outrageous phasing, trumpet, and something lacking so deeply in bands today–PERSONALITY". Obsessed with it, Steve tracked down one of the band members in Pennsylvania and found out that there was more unreleased stuff. So here’s the first ever IN TIME vinyl LP. Including most of the songs from their ultra–rare cassette plus previously unreleased tracks. Like Steve says: "self–depreciating jangle–pop, furious power–chorded decrees, full–tilt psychedelia, experimental texture pieces––and actual tunes that will burrow into one’s skull for weeks."

[engl] Inutili returns with a new 12” LP on Aagoo Records. From the city of Teramo, Italy comes this heady, hypnotic, improvisational rock. The plural of inutile, Inutili means pointless, useless, or unprofitable, yet their music is anything but. Terminal Boredom says, “A galloping bass line leads the way unwavering for five minutes plus as the guitars thread and weave around it, slowly working their way into a full tilt Itallio space war of cosmic carnage”. As well, their album “Satori” (Bat Shit/Goodbye Boozy) was praised on The Styrofoam Drone: “Snarling guitar shards lead the way for a majority of the 15 minutes, sending us through a barrage of warbled, dagger-like shredding that does not go down easily.” Inutili’s 12” is comprised of only two songs. The A-side “Fry your Brain” starts out otherworldly. Dreamy sequences lead into a sweet, spaced-out, riffed-up jam that ends up pounding your face off (in a ‘Blissful the Oceanic’ kinda way). The B-side is a bluesier epic that starts out peaceful; but by the seven minute mark, a flurry of timeless of psych disaster is fully unleashed. I can listen to some bands play for hours--Trad Gras Och Steiner, Pharaoh Overload, Oneida--and now I can add one more to the list: Inutili.