Drunken Sailor Records Posted April 26, 2019 Share Posted April 26, 2019 Negative Space - Cruelty 12", Scrap Brain - A Journey Into Madness LP, No Negative - The Last Offices and Corner Boys - Waiting For 2020 LP, Out May 3rd Scrap Brain - A Journey Into Madness LP Split label release with Thrilling Living Records (U.S.) London / Oxford-based SCRAP BRAIN are back with a long player that expands and improves on their dirgey and unconventional brand of hardcore punk. This time around the group embraces a wall of sound approach; this is a record that sounds both huge and claustrophobic at once. A dissonant take on FLIPPER with one of the best lyricists in contemporary music. Limited to 500 copies on black vinyl Buy It http://www.drunkensailorrecords.co.uk/products/640380-scrap-brain-a-journey-into-madness-lp-drunken-sailor-records-drunkensailor-108 Stream It https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-journey-into-madness-lp Corner Boys - Waiting For 2020 LP What’s that you say? ‘The punk album of 2019’? Ahhh, c’mon man, it’s way too early for grand statements like that. What, you think you can make this claim? Just because Vancouver trio Corner Boys have managed to mesh the finest elements of Good Vibrations heroes like Rudi, Protex and (sure) The Undertones with the buzzsaw powerpop of their city forefathers, the Pointed Sticks? Just because songs like (I’m Such A) Mess flow so effortlessly into your consciousness that you’ll start wondering how your brain ever functioned without ‘em? Hell, just because this might just be a perfectly-executed example of the sort of spiky, addictively essential treat we’d all started to wonder if we’d ever hear again? ‘Waiting For The 2020’ follows a duo of excellent singles (2017’s Just Don’t Care and last year’s Love Tourist, released by Drunken Sailor and Dirt Cult respectively) and it doesn’t just pick up where they left off – it does what you always hope the follow-up to an opening salvo will do. It takes the promise they set forth and does way more than merely deliver on it, instead providing us with hook after hook and pogo-worthy pop classic after pogo-worthy pop classic. It makes you want to bounce around the room and dance on the steering wheel of a bulldozer as it ploughs through the local Conservative club… only to flip the disc and return the needle to the start as soon as it leaves the groove. So no, let’s not call it the punk album of 2019 just yet; let’s give it some time to breathe and see how we all feel many months down the line. Still, sometimes you just get a hunch… Will Fitzpatrick. First 100 on Mustard Vinyl Buy It http://www.drunkensailorrecords.co.uk/products/640377-corner-boys-waiting-for-2020-lp-drunken-sailor-records-drunkensailor-107 Stream It https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-for-2020-lp No Negative - The Last Offices LP How loud do you have to turn it up before your ears start to bleed? Before your speakers start to shred? Before you find yourself staring at a puddle of goo that was once your brain, now melted and bubbling on the hot ground beneath your feet? Pretty fucking loud, you’d imagine, although a short time in the presence of No Negative’s second album should help speed along that process. Following on from 2015’s mighty debut The Good Never Comes, new offering The Last Offices LP takes the Montreal quartet’s penchant for raw, ragged noise and lobs it into a drum of molten steel, before fashioning the cooling results into something truly formidable. First off, this is very audibly (and thrillingly) a punk rock record. Yeah, you can hear the metal fascination that drove Black Flag down ever-heavier routes in the 80s, but also echoes of the explorative, spacey psych of Hawkwind and the pointed mindfuckery of the Butthole Surfers at their most crushingly bleak. Hell, even the expansive kraut-punk spirit of John Dwyer’s Oh Sees can be found here, albeit buried under the sheer force of something that is unmistakably hardcore. “Your planet has been swallowed by a black hole… you can no longer taste or smell or see,” they claim on the ferociously bad trip of Transmission From The Black Hole, and that’s an accurate reflection of what it feels like to listen to this band operating at full pelt. They’re smart, they’re harrowing and they’re totally kick-ass. They’re the sound of a generation-wide existential crisis, making anthems for anyone who knows the only way through the mess of 2019 is to surrender your brain to the healing powers of The Riff and just watch everything evaporate. Hey, isn’t that where we came in? Will Fitzpatrick. First 100 on White Vinyl. First 50 also come with an embroidered patch Buy It http://www.drunkensailorrecords.co.uk/products/640378-no-negative-the-last-offices-lp-drunken-sailor-records-drunkensailor-103 Stream It https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-offices-lp Negative Space - Cruelty 12" Not content with pouring their bleak urgency all over the trials and tribulations of modern existence with 2017 LP Gestalt, Negative Space return with a seven-song slab of brutalist post-punk – and it’s another triumph. Seething with fury, it almost (but not quite) masks its venomously-spat lyrical content behind angular basslines that Steve Hanley would’ve been proud to call his own and guitar chords thet teeter and totter between the blunt force of Black Flag and the dissonant crunch of Gang of Four. This is no easy ride; it’s music that wraps itself up in peril before clawing its way out and stomping on whatever’s left. With song titles like Theft Utopia and Performative, you know what you’re getting – a pointed railing against those who hide behind hypocrisy and illusion, while the monochrome glare of the music makes it clear that none of this is to be fucked with. At times it even sounds like we’ve been caught up in the textured smoosh of Sonic Youth’s Washing Machine, with guitars exploding into senses-crushing fog even as the mechanical clank of the rhythm section continues its relentless, insistent pounding. Sometimes, of course, they just give way to waves of intense hardcore riffery that’s part frustration, part release – but all of it sounds like everyday life, condensed into one thrilling piece of rock music that’s way too smart for its own good. More like this, please. Will Fitzpatrick. First 100 on Clear Vinyl. Comes with risographed insert Buy It http://www.drunkensailorrecords.co.uk/products/640379-negative-space-cruelty-12-drunken-sailor-records-drunkensailor-104 Stream It https://drunkensailorrecords.bandcamp.com/album/cruelty-12 Still Hot. The Cool Greenhouse - Landlords 7", Vintage Crop - Company Man 7", Freak Genes - III LP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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