Back catalogue: Punk/Hardcore

Review: Pinhead Gunpowder are most famous for featuring Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day in a more furious mood than his day job requires, but the band was originally formed by Aaron Cometbus who remained the main songwriter. In 2000 they released a split EP with Dillinger Four, and the three Pinhead Gunpowder tracks from that release now make their mark on this release. Included is the searing 'At Your Funeral', which sounds like classic Armstrong finding artful ways of expressing his hatred for someone in snotty punk style. The B side is made up of live cuts from radio shows, making this a must grab for fans of the band and West Coast punk in general.

Review: Full of Hell join forces with Primitive Man for the new release Suffocating Hallucination, a collaborative record that is followed up by both bands touring. The music is controlled chaos with lots of harsh sonics and violent textures across the tracks which all drag you kicking and screaming through pure metal misery and torture. Walls of guitar noise, heavy doom and gloom atmospheres and plenty of distortion define this most abrasive of listens - which will no doubt be a joy to the ears of hardcore metal fans. What a monster of an album and a real showcase of sonic scuzzery.

Review: Parkway Drive are huge metal stars from Aus and this is the band's 20th anniversary. Winston McCall (vocals), Luke Kilpatrick (guitar), Jeff Ling(guitar), Jia O'Connor (bass), and Ben Gordon (drums) are marking the occasion by making their Don't Close Your Eyes album available for the first time ever on vinyl. The eight original tunes re included as well as some bonus cuts from their split record with I Killed The Prom Queen and compilation albums What We've Built and True Til Death, Volume 1. Several versions of this one are out there and this is a limited edition gatefold with translucent gold vinyl so is not to be sniffed at for fans old or new.

Review: Celebrating its 30 year anniversary, the sophomore LP from Hermosa Beach, California punk rock mainstays Pennywise is considered by many to be the band's most pivotal work, following the groundswell of momentum gained thanks to their preceding self-titled effort. While frontman Jim Lindberg would depart the group following the hectic touring that accompanied their debut, he would soon rejoin in the midst of the writing process for Unknown Road; a project whose positive lyrics and message of inclusivity would become a rallying cry for Generation X. The record is also noted for retroactively becoming the first album with the band's current line up due to the inclusion of bass players Randy Bradbury and Jason Thirsk, who would handle vocal duties in Lindberg's absence before being ultimately replaced by Bradbury following his untimely death in 1996.

Review: UK punk rockers Peter & The Test Tube Babies made an initial splash not only with a ghastly band name, but also with a distinctively gritty sound and jokey lyrics, as exemplified by this live album Keep Britain Untidy. All live takes on the band's originally energetic and humorous punk rock, it cathces in full effect. riding on a wave of their nascent popular inclusion in the "punk pathetique" microgenre. Grumbly vocals and raucous drumkit-guitar-crunch slappages come across fourteen wild live moments.

Review: True to the Radiation knack for reissuing only the most vital and unfairly forgotten gems of their time, the blues punkabilly grit of 'Pissed & Proud' has finally found a modern home on wax. The harmonica-blaring, ludicrously catchy oi-punk tempering of Peter & The Test Tube Babies was a far cry from their impish, boyish upstart demeanour, while timeless scrappy anthems such as 'Banned From The Pubs' are an era keepsake unto themselves.

These live collections were recorded over an August Bank Holiday weekend in 1982 with performances in Hammersmith and Wood Green, as well as their hometown, Brighton, and they couldn't sound more of and ahead of their time, simultaneously. You can practically hear the absorbed pub walls dripping with dingy sweat.

Review: Pinhead Gunpowder started out as a recording project only back in the 90s. Bt the band soon realised they had a fully formed sound that translated well, as evidenced by this 1997 album Goodbye Ellston Avenue. It's a record that takes cues from brands like The Big Cats and Green Day but with their own fresh influences. It originally came on Lookout Records and for this one has been recut at 45rpm on limited edition and coloured vinyl. This is the first part on a multi-phase and ongoing reissue project across 2022 so fans should keep their eyes peeled for more.

Review: Pink Siifu's haunting, uncompromising masterpiece 'Negro Deluxe' gets a limited 3xLP press. An ultra cathartic, hard-hitting haze of hardcore punk, free jazz, and harsh noise-adjacent sound design with violent and corrupt cops firmly in its crosshairs, it emerged in 2020 a month prior to the murder of George Floyd. Originally titled ‘To Be Angry’, NEGRO draws influence from Afrocentric jazz, sci-fi literature and the music of Bad Brains, Death, the late Ras G, among others. One of the most arresting and immediate LPs hailing from the hip hop continuum of the last ten years, it's not to be missed!

Review: Seven long years on from the Lydia Lunch/Arthur Rizk produced, genre-mangling opus that was 2017's Why Love Now, Pennsylvania hardcore noise-rock auteurs Pissed Jeans make their filthy return on the fuzzy, feral and vehemently pissed off Half Divorced. Aged, seasoned, and peppered with hate, this 30 minute concoction of bruising riffs, anthemic hooks and positive nihilism hits like an old friend who still greets with a gut-punch, while frontman Matt Korvette succinctly presents the project's mission statement as "Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, 'I don't want this reality'. There's a power in being able to say, 'I realize you want me to pay attention to these things, but I'm telling you that they don't matter.' I'm already looking elsewhere." Well, in that case, the elusive elsewhere appears to be wherever we find our means of peace in an ever-unpeaceful world, and this grinding soundtrack to scoffing at the end times couldn't land a minute sooner.

Review: Last year East Bay, California by way of Austin, Texas newfound hardcore bruisers, Planet On A Chain, karate kicked in the door of Revelation Records with their immensely pissed out debut full-length Boxed In. A group of seasoned veterans in their own right, with members previously operating in Look Back & Laugh, Tear It Up, Talk Is Poison, Dead Nation and Mutilated Tongue, the snarling energy they bring to the table exudes all of the traits of sharpened hardcore lifers. Following on from their 11-track, 19-minute sonic car crash of a debut comes an even uglier sophomore effort in the form of Culture Of Death, sharpening, honing and steeping their sound in even more crossover thrash meets beatdown chaos. Ultimately, POAC simultaneously celebrate hardcore's purpose and past while also cementing its increasing relevancy and legacy in the modern spectrum.

Review: Though soliciting some confusion as to whether it was written in 1977 or 2023, Pleasants' latest sonic gut-jab Rocanrol In Mono is a raw and toothy nostalgic throwback. Recorded in its entirety by frontman Al Uminium on four-track cassette, this whirlwind of an album revels in the unserious and fleeting, squashing every blues lick, top-reg solo and/or drum line under flattening walls of compression that nonetheless allow for much hilarity and dynamism and finding joy in the little things in life ('Loose Change', 'Interwebs', Rubix Cube').

Review: We must hold fast, and insist that the allegation that record collectors are pretentious arseholes is an inconclusive one. Of course, if we agreed with it, we wouldn't make any sales. But the purpose of anarchy is, of course, to spread confusion, not eliminate it. Such is still the ethos behind Poison Idea, the Portland-Oregon band that formed in 1980 but are still wonderfully active today. Thirteen tracks of fast and furious straight-edge sonic blades raze our ears on this second ever EP, now reissued via American Leather. Covers of Iggy Pop, in-jokes and an overall sense of diehard angst make this a compelling sophomore play for arguably one of the best-named punk bands out there. Because you can't kill an idea; not least a toxic one.

Review: Featuring members of modern hardcore prestige acts such as Turnstile, Angel Du$t and Have Heart, there's an undeniable merging of the older and newer interpretations of the scene found within the sound of Praise. With a sound both energetic and ferocious, yet inescapably melodic, 'All In A Dream' marks the group's sophomore effort, recorded during lockdown, and comes courtesy of iconic punk label Revelation, as well as modern hardcore and metal home, Deathwish Inc. Until now, a hushed side-project, Praise look set to elevate themselves to independent respect and regard with this exceptional new full-length.

Review: Washington DC has one of the America's richest histories of punk and post-punk, so much so that it gave its name to the hugely influential DC Hardcore scene. DC four piece Priests are a part of the city's newest wave in the genre. On their second album 'Nothing Feels Natural', Priests wear the raw and brash aggression of their punk forebears well, but with a forward-thinking and twisted approach. Opener 'Appropriate' sounds like a classic sub-pop single, 'Jj' morphs them into a hardcore/post-punk/surf-pop group, 'No Big Bang' is a raw spoken word chugger cattle-prodded by insistent and unexpected 808 handclaps. What's most surprising is the album's dividing interlude - a minute of beautiful and wrenching effect-laden strings, that acts as a short breather in a record that otherwise rips and roars with ferocious intensity. Quite simply, anybody who thinks post-punk has become trite in recent years needs to hear Priests.

Review: Originally released in 2017, In Riot We Trust is the second of two studio albums so far released by feminist protest group Pussy Riot, whose provocative punk regularly takes potshots at Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his regime. Since 2011, the Moscow band founded by then-22-year-old Nadya Tolokonnikova has had the membership of 11 women, who are arguably most well known for their guerrilla gigs and stunts, often in sites of national, cultural, or religious significance. Despite the real focus of the group being on speaking out against issues such as Russia's ingrained sexism, homophobia, and racism, totalitarian rule and oppression of rights, and the limelight falling on their IRL actions, this is more than enough evidence that their rage and talent can be distilled onto record to some degree. Potent to say the least.

Review: Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs have more than proven their music knowledge across a stellar run of prior compilations, including The Daisy Age, Fell From The Sun and English Weather. This time around, they're tapping into the freeform climes of the late 70s and early 80s, as punk exploded and a myriad of bands channelled the unique, downcast mood of Britain into wildly creative, nervously urgent songs. Across four sides we take in all manner of cult selections and outer limits largely in the loose fit realm of post-punk. It's flawlessly selected and programmed - another reminder of how immersive a proper compilation can be.