With their self-titled album out in just a few weeks, it would seem that Austin’s Porcelain aren’t holding any punches. The band’s first full length, due February 16th via Portrayal of Guilt Records is jagged and rampant, an album that seems to burst at the seams, a missive of explosive peaks and dynamic arrangements.
Hailing from Champaign, IL, Hum always provided more substance to their recordings than any hit single might suggest. For this reason, the re-release of their catalog on vinyl – Electra 2000, You’d Prefer an Astronaut, Downward is Heavenward, and Inlet – is deserved and will hopefully give them renewed attention.
Historically, Vastum’s signature flavor of lyrical blasphemy centered around sins of the flesh taken to disgustingly perverse extremes and communicated via gratuitous and cavernous death metal. Inward to Gethsemane shifts the focus of its subject matter from the visceral profanity of sex to the suffocating, metaphysical anguish of religion.
It's Sorted is the fourth full length from LA’s Cheekface, another building block of their unique approach to sing-speak vocals and melodies that refuse to leave your head. Greg Katz and Amanda Tannen have mastered writing ear-worms, continuing to charm and surprise audiences with songs that poke and prod at the world around them.
“Will Get Fooled Again” is the latest single off SAVAK’s upcoming album, Flavors of Paradise, releasing on March 1st. The track courses with a surf rock groove, upon their trademark post-punk, and is laced with minor key guitar lines. “Will Get Fooled Again” provides an ebb of respite from the band members’ backgrounds.
There have been more than enough high highs and low lows to go around since Rick Rude’s last album, and yet, Laverne feels like a celebration. It’s a record that revels in the glow of family and friends, remembering the best of times, the moments of pure joy, but it’s also mindful that we all need support to maintain stable footing.
Warm Dust, the sophomore album of Silt, takes place in the liminal season where blossoms have yet to defrost, the earliest day of spring. Ben Currotto’s initial vision of stripped, acoustic focus – metaphorically, the aftermath of the 2018 album Cold Clod Breaks Up, was transformed into a dynamic gathering of this new five-piece band.
On new single “Hope For Rain,” the band channels the kinetic force that defined their earlier records into a more harmony-saturated, fuzz-laden sound. In the same vein as previously released tracks “Mother Mary” and “Self Control,” their latest single blends melancholic melodies and pedal steel into the group’s usual mix of heavy guitar.
Brought out by the gentle whims of Blaine Teppema, a librarian by day, the music of Sleeper’s Bell is as simple as writing a diary entry and as bold as reading it out loud from a stage. With Umarell recently getting reissued by Angel Tapes, Sleeper’s Bell are bringing out their delicate beauty from the quietest parts of Teppema’s vivid memories.
Misery Whip, the hardcore band from Portland, Maine, released their self-titled debut back in 2022, a decimating introduction to band that thrashed between reckless speed and primal density. MWII, the band’s upcoming EP is eight and a half minutes of blistering carnage that feels vital, pointed, piercing, and vicious in its justified scorn.
Hot Air Balloon continues Pile’s mastery of intricate post-hardcore, animating a skeleton of sludge with the weeping flesh of psychedelic folk. Off the heels of their latest album All Fiction, the EP is composed of songs left off the final cut. Far from scraps, each song on Hot Air Balloon is striking enough to stand alone.
Colin Newman toyed with sparsity and repetition well into the ‘80s, upon Wire’s reunion with mechanical electro-industrial pop. Given Newman’s ever-changing creative mind, Bastard was a naturally unforeseen left turn. Bastard was a clinical and primitive, yet charming exercise of playing with trip-hop, downtempo, and minimalist techno.
