Back catalogue: Punk/Hardcore

Review: The second full-length from Los Angeles crust-punk/powerviolence mob ACxDC (Antichrist Demoncore) arrived in 2020, six years after their venomous self-titled debut made good on the promise of over a decade's worth of demos, EPs and splits. Satan Is King (a nod to Kanye West's 'Jesus Is King' released the year prior) is another caustic batch of pummelling d-beat punk funnelled through a rusted scuzzy decanter of hardcore fury and satanic worship, featuring feel good hits of the summer such as 'Copsucker'. In all seriousness, if you find your current hardcore lacking in the blasphemy department or just a tad too sanitised, then look no further than this crushing collection of audible violence from true cavern crawlers of the underground.

Review: Agnostic Front's debut 7" EP from 1983 sees a reissue via Bridge Nine. Described as part of the first wave of New York hardcore - a musical style and subculture emergent in the city in the early 80s, when the punk shockwave was already well dispersed - United Blood is their cacophonous ten-tracker of short, usually no-less-than-a-minute-per-track bursts of rabble and feedback, casting grating aspersions on every social ill from war to discrimination to private property. Best among the bunch is the 15-second long track 'Fight' and the central ultimatum, 'Friend Or Foe'.

Review: Alkaline Trio continue to enjoy their heyday with the strong Blood, Hair and Eyeballs, their tenth album to date. The band's first ever album to be made with their new drummer Atom Willard (Rocket From The Crypt, Angels & Airwaves), this is both nominally and sonically a visceral album, a veritable oozing-forth of metallic-punkish blood and guts after a bloody groundswell built up over the long silence that followed 2018's Is This Thing Cursed?.

Review: First out in the summer of 2000, Problematic would mark the fourth full-length with vocalist Chad Price, as well as the final new album from Descendents offshoot All. Though the band was originally conceived as a project to keep busy while vocalist Milo Aukerman studied to become a full-time microbiologist (very punk), All would eventually blossom into own its much adored outfit with a devout cult following who bounced with the group through three separate vocalists and several adventures with mascot Allroy. Not necessarily defunct, but far more inactive in these modern times, with most members devoting any roadage to the primary focus of Descendents, while Price keeps busy with Drag the River; this reissue of their last batch of new material still goes as hard and chaotic as any modern hardcore/pop-punk acts a third of their median age at the time of said recording.

Review: Having just reformed earlier this year for their first headline tour in almost a decade, what better time to revisit the criminally underrated and often overlooked fourth full-length from power-pop-punks The All-American Rejects? Originally released in 2012, and following on from the mega successful yet sonically safe When The World Comes Down, the band strived to push themselves further out of their comfort zones than they'd initially ever thought possible. Channelling everything from 60s mod garage rock to orchestral big band jazz, yet all coalesced within the whimsical, sardonic and endearingly earnest penmanship of primary songwriter Tyson Ritter, Kids In The Street is that curious project that offered fans an entirely new, static-shattering chapter that they weren't at the time ready to digest. A decade on, what was once considered their swan song might not clasp onto that title for too long more, yet is in dire need of reappraisal either way.

Review: You don't get to call your band Amyl & The Sniffers if the music is anything short of corrosive, in the best possible way. Launching at a serious pace from the off, this is punk at its modern best - a juggernaut of sweat, swearing and uncompromising songwriting that's only rival for your attention comes in the form of riffs and gritty chord instrumentation.

But the Melbourne, Australia band's second LP is far from a simple rehash of the first, which we could have also described in similar terms to those you just read above. This time round things feel more thoughtful, perhaps even patient in certain moments. Of course they still wear 'weirdos' on their sleeves, tongues often firmly placed in cheeks. But there's a depth here to the songwriting, a retro and introspective feeling that reveals far more than the debut album let us hear.

Review: Never too shy for irony, Australian rock band from Melbourne, Amyl and The Sniffers, are keeping the mullet cuts and beer spitting sound of the southern land's sound well alive. It's Rough Trade that have taken up Amyl and The Sniffers for their debut album recorded in Sheffield with Ross Orton towards the end of 2018. Six months on and the four piece are rattling the walls more than ever with a raucous ballyhoo of garage-punk that sees the band's ferocious Pouges-y mix of Irish drunkenness hit the wall with the Californian sounds of Pennywise and Australia's own Frenzal Rhomb. With thrashings of guitars, unique and raw Australianisms, and sweaty, smashing drums: Amyl and The Sniffers are popping off.

Review: Hardcore punk anomaly Angel Du$t have made an artform out of keeping their audience constantly guessing. The brainchild of Trapped Under Ice frontman Justice Tripp, the group have journeyed from playful, pop-inflected breakdowns to Lemonheads worshipping indie-rock, thanks in no small part to the contributions of three of the four core members of Turnstile who have since amicably vacated this project due to Turnstile's major increase in popularity. Brand New Soul serves as the fifth LP from the project but first with an all new line-up who do their utmost to aid Tripp in melding all of the differing sonics toyed with thus far into one endearing and ludicrous formula. Part aggro hardcore, part Vampire Weekend world-pop, all the while strengthened by an earnest homage to rock n' roll rhythm n' blues, this is an audible diagram of the blues to punk with a myriad of musical stops along the route.

Review: Constantly cryptic, aesthetically absurd, and musically unhinged to the point of smothering compression, harshcore dissonance and synthetic whimsy, semi-anonymous collective The Armed have garnered legions of equally endeared yet bewildered followers, thanks to their unique brand of methodical, chaotic, hyper-punk experimentation, which was formulated across 2015's Untitled and the electro-fury of 2018's Only Love, before peaking/imploding on the majorly complex Ultrapop; ranked as one of Juno's top albums of 2021. Enlisting help from a myriad of collaborators including Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe), Converge's Jacob Bannon, Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Deafheaven), and Boygenius member Julien Baker, to name a small handful, Perfect Saviors promises to see The Armed reach for full-scale stadium rock grandiosity, whilst retaining their endlessly elaborate and intimidating level of caustic sonic craft and abandon.