Back catalogue: All genres

Review: BOOM! Our favourites, Cititrax, roll the third editions of Tracks out onto our shelves, and the results are unsurprisingly strong on this excellent various artists comp. It's a mixed bag of skills, as per usual, and the sounds are those of a new NYC, fuelled by a new sort of post-industrial sensibility. Amato Y Mariana open with the tight beats and groove of "Queires Bailar", followed closely by the ominous compositions of the EBM-flavoured "Montgat" from The Sixteen Steps. On the flip, His Dirty Secrets bleeps out some morphed acid on "Structures", and "Another Stranger" from Further Reductions churns out a slow, mild-mannered house experiment with its roots clearly planted in the coldest of waves. Sick.

Review: Sheffield's Hedge Maze is back with Riding The Wave EP, a great 12" that is drenched in distortion and grime. 'Strukku's Beat' kicks off with thick, slimy textures and vocals fragmented like blunt objects that evoke raw anguish. The title track intensifies with relentless beats, static-dipped drums, and haunting melodies, and as things progress, Hedge Maze refines his sound into a serrated syrup with 'Zown Spirit,' where ruffled rhythms play off with distant echoes and reverb. 'O X O (Zero Times Zero)' maintains the eerie aura with filtered textures, while 'Over and Out' closes the EP with post-punk gloom, featuring raw vocals and trademark distortion.

Review: Borrowing a title from a 50ft sport climbing route in Oliana, Spain, there's definitely something big and wonderfully overbearing about the debut offering from Hot Face. Freshly pressed onto London's revered and always-forward thinking Speedy Wunderground imprint, the work here more than lives up to the label's name, going at listeners with pedal to the metal for the most. Comprising two tracks, an original and 'dub', the opener nods to the likes of King Gizzard and other sprawling, epic prog-metal-psyche outfits, offering up huge guitar solos and switching tempos with cunning, guile and groove. Flip it to find the alternative take, which ups the impact of drums, taking us closer to dance music as it's more widely recognised, and the heyday of big beat, if anyone remembers that one?

Review: The fourth full-length from Mexico's post-metal-tinged melodic crust-punks Habak follows on from two previous collaborative efforts with also Tijuana-based post-rockers Fractal and Los Angeles crust-punk outfit Lagrimas, marking their first sole studio full-length since 2020's Ningun Muro Consiguio Jamas Contener la Primavera. Expanding their diverse, abrasive sonic palette more than ever before, drawing on elements of late 90s "skramz" era screamo, blackened hardcore and shoegazing post-rock, yet all coalesced under the black breath of their obligatory crust-punk sound, Mil Orquiideas en Medio del Desierto illustrates a band reaching the peak of their prowess and potential while offering a unique perspective on all of the above mentioned subgenres, with just that tincture of Mexican folklore for that added, incomparable aura.

Review: Coinciding with their upcoming 40th anniversary tour and the imminent premiere of a documentary on their history titled 'The Most Australia Band Ever', I Like You A Lot Getting Older shall serve as the latest full-length from the most recent iteration of legendary Aussie hardcore/snot-nosed/power-pop punk mob Hard Ons. The third LP from the group since enlisting Tim Rogers (You Am I) on lead vocals, the record follows on from 2021's I'm Sorry Sir, That Riff's Been Taken, and 2023's Ripper '23; further expanding this newly revitalised era since the messy departure of original drummer/vocalist Keish de Silva in 2021. Proudly described by guitarist Peter 'Blackie' Black as - "Our best collaboration so far", the increase of melodious psychedelia offered by Rogers, yet still retained within the band's now signature sugar-punk gems, offer up sonic hard ons across the entire runtime.

Review: UK noise maverick Russell Haswell has had an impressive, star-studded career, and we're pleased to see that he's sticking close to the underground thanks to his recent friendship with Powell's Diagonal imprint. After a series of appearances for the lo-fi imprint, Haswell comes through with an album, a whopping seventeen tracks of brutal power electronics and quasi techno. This is the sort of shit you can stand back and be thrown backwards by, or exactly the sort of gear you can layer over DJ sets for added damage. There are pieces such as "Wholly Unaware" and "Gas Attack", which do verge onto the 4/4 sphere. In any case, this is some serious stuff and it comes hotly recommended

Review: Following on from 2023's acclaimed debut full-length All Gas No Brakes, Bristolian noise-punks Heavy Lungs return with the definition of an antithetical sophomore LP with Caviar. Clocking in at under 30 minutes (significantly less than their initial outing) and recorded live in dingy church rehearsal spaces to capture the unhinged intensity of their live performances, this is the sound of a band vehemently disinterested with mainstream appeal, exposure or playing the game by any terms apart from their own. While vocalist Danny Nedelko would be the named subject of one of the biggest singles from fellow Bristol natives Idles' 2018 breakout second album Joy As An Act Of Resistance, where his peers have expanded their sound and embraced myriads of melody, Heavy Lungs are poignantly going the opposite route, full speed towards oblivion with only chaos and anarchy on their collective minds.

Review: Michigan based emo revivalist pop-punks Hot Mulligan have grown over the past decade from impressionable upstarts eager to make a dent in the scene they admired so greatly, to one of, if not the definitive leaders of the latest wave, taking up the mantle initially passed from the likes of New Found Glory to The Wonder Years. Sharpening their balancing act of twinkling math-rock noodles with angst-riddled, throat-shredding hooks, 2023's third full-length Why Would I Watch marked a maturity and refinement with heightened intricacy and more succinct compositions, while lyrically delving into confessionals regarding familial addiction, the fear of inherited drug dependency, and the rigors of living life on the road, while the heart-rendering acoustic ode to deceased feline 'Betty' offers the most intense emotional (cat) gut-punch.

Review: While influencing a massive array of modern emo, pop-punk and indie-rock outfits, Hot Water Music have made it abundantly clear that they don't feel the need to go home just yet.

Their latest, sad times lamenting opus, 'Feel The Void', sees the group recording for the first time with latest addition Chris Cresswell (The Flatliners), who stepped into the band initially for live settings upon Chris Wollard taking a sabbatical for mental health reasons.

Now, for the first time since 2004's 'The New What Next', the band have opted to work with producer Brian McTiernan, arguably responsible for the three best albums to come from HWM during their 'glory days'.

Beyond a return to form, everything from the anthemic 'Hearts Stay Full' to the muted crawl of 'Ride High', screams of a seasoned group of artists with so much more to say. While often replicated, 'Feel The Void' outsads, outfeels and outriffs any would be imitators, and only further cements a status that really was in no need of maintenance.

Review: A slice of superbly rare OG hardcore punk to separate the posers from the lifers. Hailing from Long Beach, California, Hypnotics were another group of snarling youths in the early 80s scene with a bark and bite to match peers who would grow into legends of their own such as TSOL and Circle Jerks. Originally released in 1983, Expendables would serve as their second full-length LP, but due to label Enigma Records imploding in the interim, the members themselves were forced to press a minuscule batch of 100 copies, which as you can imagine have been requesting a pretty penny on the Discogs marketplace for far too many a moon. Limited to 540 copies (five times as many as the OG!) and complete with a four-page booklet of photos and artefacts for that authentic hardcore time capsule vibe.