Malmö’s MISSILES have released a new single, ‘Living In A Nuclear Town’, from their upcoming album Weaponize Tomorrow (10th May 2024).
MISSILES explains the backgrounds of the new single, out today on Svart Records:
“’Living in a Nuclear’ Town was one of the last – if not the last – song to be finished before we started the recording process. It’s also one of the tracks that was finished first and saw few changes whilst others got a good beating. Lyrically, the song deals with the rough realities, both the ones reported and seen as well as the ongoing hidden waiting to happen”.
The members of MISSILES are no new kids on the block. Coming from punk, rock, and metal, as well as surf and rather diverse backgrounds, they all answered to the call of their good friend Gabriel Forslund – sincerely interested in doing something new and exciting together. The band’s trajectory began with a 7" single released by the Swedish label Fetish in 2016. Initially viewed as a project, MISSILES have organically evolved into a fully dedicated band with a laser-guided focus, causing shock waves in the underground with their jet-fuel genre-clash. Combining abandoned sounds with new inventions on Weaponize Tomorrow, MISSILES promises to both pat you on the head and stab you in the back, delivering a unique blend of post-punk with a touch of goth rock.
Listen to ‘Living in a Nuclear Town’ here:
AA
MISSILES claim their debut is a one-of-a-kind album, truly a loved bastard. Weaponize Tomorrow will appeal to those who enjoyed the certain “je ne sais quoi” found in the New Wave movement, a line of thought that is liberating to hear today when artists go to the bank with a genre description. MISSILES couldn’t be bothered; it’s rock, it’s pop, it’s punk, it’s je ne sais quoi. Hard to pin down, but undeniable to freak out to, Weaponize Tomorrow is a high yield blast wave that will leave MISSILES hot on the tongues of those looking for a sudden and dramatic, incendiary kick. A gut smashing future shock that will resonate across diverse musical landscapes, Weaponize Tomorrow will be the perfect atomic cocktail for fans of Wipers, Dead Moon, The Birthday Party, The Gun Club and even modern iconoclasts Molchat Doma and Beastmilk.
‘Ride Or Die’ is the first single release in nearly two years by Swedish post-punk/goth icons Then Comes Silence. It is also an opening statement of intent from their stunning new album, Trickery, which is out on 5th April, with vocalist Alex Svenson stating: “Friendship is love. It is important and worth fighting for. It’s ride or die."
Indeed, much of Trickery celebrates friendship, unity and the feeling of belonging to a tribe, with TCS explaining that “being a part of the post-punk and goth scene is a great privilege. After being on the road for so many years, we have experienced caring and welcoming audiences, both old and young, some with a similar background and some just for the love of the music and the culture that comes with the lifestyle. Uniting and harmonising with other people, we feel an incredible community together and it is a feeling that is both priceless and a blessing."
Trickery is also the audio definition of triumph over adversity. Backtracking to 2022, on the eve of their first-ever US tour and eager to promote their just released ‘Hunger’ album and its 2020 predecessor ’Machine’, TCS were suddenly and unexpectedly reduced to a three-piece. Would their famed darkwave wall-of-sound still work in a trio format? Fortunately, the answer was resoundingly positive, so much so that they resolved to continue with this slimmed-down line-up on a permanent basis, a period that has already included further US and European tours, followed by their return to the studio to make Trickery.
The inadvertent metamorphosis of the band has also led to a different way of creating new music. In order to capture the heart and essence of the trio’s live prowess, Trickery was recorded in just three days in Kapsylen Studio in Stockholm. With Jonas Fransson (a band member since 2015) laying down an energetic punk backbeat and sleaze punk fan Hugo Zombie (a 2018 recruit) providing inventive and rhythmic guitar lines, the main focus remains on singer and bassist Svenson, the sole surviving founder member from the band’s 2012 debut album. His velvety croon and solid bass lines are enhanced on ‘Trickery’ by retro synth sounds reminiscent of his recent solo futurist wave project, Neonpocalypse. "The electronic elements are essential to ‘Trickery’," he adds, "but are also a salute to punk music, the cradle of Then Comes Silence and the cradle of post-punk.”
Founded by Svenson in 2012 and touring frequently to promote three albums released in quick succession, TCS soon found a large audience in Germany. Signing to Nuclear Blast in 2016 for the release of Blood, their fanbase widened as they shared stages with artists such as A Place To Bury Strangers, Chameleons and Fields Of The Nephilim and performed at festivals all over mainland Europe. Firmly in the vanguard of the new generation of post-punk, darkwave and goth artists releasing high quality new material, they work hard to promote it and are recognised as a leading live act in their genre. They have also built a significant UK following and 2024 has already seen them play a sold out London show at the 229 venue.
TCS recently signed to Metropolis Records for the worldwide release of Trickery.
People often say they hate surprises. I know where they’re coming from, although by and large, the surprise is less the issue than their reaction being seen. As children, we’ve all had the Christmas party and the birthday where we’ve suffered a head-exploding embarrassment where something’s been sprung unexpectedly, and where, as a consequence the walls have closed in and you’ve felt entrapped within a tight, tunnelling space and simply wanted to disappear – right? But there are two kinds of surprises: good ones and bad ones, just as there are two kinds of music: good, and bad.
‘Cryptic Bodies’ is good music, and the perfect surprise, presenting as a discordant chaotic mess of purgatorial abrasion, which smashes its way into a collision of post-punk and… well, what else is hard to say, beyond sinewy, straining dissonance. Really, this is one of those ‘what the fuck is this?’ releases. Personally, I absolutely love this kind of stuff, that’s challenging, shouty, difficult to listen to, let alone define. The music shifts in tone and intensity, a meandering twisting thread of jangliness and extraneous noise that bears jazz influences without being jazz, noise-rock elements without being noise-rock. What does it mean? What is it for? Cryptic is certainly the word, and perhaps it’s best to simply revel in the strangeness than attempt to unravel and decipher it.
But there’s more. The track is lifted from Hungarian artist Porteleki’s forthcoming album Smearing, which is out in March, and it’s not his first work by the title ‘Cryptic Bodies’, as a moment’s cursory research brings us to a ‘documentary’ film on YouTube, uploaded in three parts, which captures Porteleki – a percussionist first and foremost – performing a solo score, which is ‘structured yet improvised’ as the audio backdrop to ‘a contemporary dance piece, where 5 dancers traverse through space, body and time to throbbing experimental live metal music. The work is inspired by ancient bodily practices such as Egyptian mummification and Mesopotamian occult healing rites’.
Being instrumental, and extending to around forty minutes, it’s a powerful soundtrack to a visually striking and remarkably compelling multimedia experience, which also showcases Porteleki’s inventive, atmosphere-building approach to guitar playing. Elsewhere online, his SoundCloud uploads present an array of experimental works, ranging from minimalist dark ambience to wild, maximalist bursts of noise, meaning how representative of the album this cut might be is anyone’s guess. But given the title track, which is currently streaming on Bandcamp, there’s a strong possibility that it’s going to be an extremely varied and extremely unusual collection of highly experimental bits and pieces. ‘No genres’ he states on his Bandcamp. No kidding: Porteleki’s modus operandi appears to be to shatter every mould there is. He isn’t so much leftfield, or outside the box, but outside the field, and he’s burned the box to ashes.
Porteleki clearly likes to push boundaries, and none more than his own. ‘Cryptic Bodies’ offers a gateway into the world of an artist who warrants exploration – but not if you don’t like surprises.
Leeds based militant dance-punk duo Polevaulter dropped their debut album ‘Hang Wave’ on Friday to widespread acclaim.
If you haven’t heard it yet, it’s a superb sonic assault of seismically sharp bass and loin-grinding beats, and we wrote about it at length recently.
Now following the album release and ahead of their UK / EU tour starting this week, Polevaulter have unveiled a brand-new video for the album’s latest single ‘Pissed In The Baths’, which you can watch here:
The sonic assault the two create is almost arrogant, fathered from the marriage of seismically sharp bass and loin-grinding beats. The words are quipped and brayed atop the aural landscape. They are boastful, accusing, repellent and inviting, they question and skewer the veins of masculinity, sexuality, the order of things, the music industry and the miserable reality of the North. Polevaulter have toured with JOHN, shared a stage with Thank, Mandy Indiana, Pink Turns Blue, Bambara, A Place To Bury Strangers, VR Sex, and others.
Now, following the album release and ahead of their UK / EU tour starting this week, Polevaulter have unveiled a brand new video for the album’s latest single ‘Pissed In The Baths’.
On writing the track, Polevaulter’s Jon Franz explains; “Pissed In The Baths came about from Dan’s chorus riff which he just pulled out of thin air, we made the verses more straight and got it to swing with my delay. I wrote the lyrics pretty quickly on a bus to the doctors, lyrically it’s about manifesting strength and about us setting sail, I tied the chorus into it as those lines came from a while ago about warming oceans and rising sea levels, it all got glued together.”
The result is a cacophonous injection of climate change activism, brimming with hypnotic beats and thick fuzzy bass and glossed in a coat of sharp unnerving darkness. Chaotic and smashing you in the face with its tidal wave of full-on noise and addictive shouted refrains, Polevaulter are not holding any punches with ‘Pissed In The Baths’ as they continue on their bulldozer-like mission to tear up boundaries.
Debut Polevaulter album ‘Hang Wave’, is a hard-hitting dark and fiercely off-kilter slab of awesome sickly noise alongside baritone-led lyricism acerbic, vitriolic and intense throughout, raising eyebrows and dropping jaws. The album features recent hits like ‘Trend’ and newly released single ‘Violently Ill’ which Polevaulter’s Jon Franz explains- “has more sparse vocals than most of our tracks, gives our music a chance to shine. Its maybe my favourite song on the album.” Other tracks like ‘Pissed In The Baths’, ‘Mint Condition’ and ‘Mia Goth Made Me Do It’ all stand out in what is essentially an absolute mind melting juggernaut of a punk electro dance record for 2024, which lays down the gauntlet from a studio perspective alongside Polevaulter’s diligent process to earnestly take the title of ‘hardest working band in showbusiness’.
Polevaulter weren’t always a duo though as Jon Franz recalls, “We were steaming along as a post-punk band with various noise elements and then lost some members over covid, but me and Dan wanted to keep going. We thought about starting a new band, but we felt that this still had legs. Ultimately, it’s not that different, me and Dan did most of the composition, and we’ve got a clear vision on what we want to do. After touring last year as a two-piece, figuring out whether we could even do it, we realised there’s definitely no reason to stop – and it’s definitely getting better every time we have a round of gigs. I like not carrying instruments around – that’s quite nice. Although, having said that, we’re a duo now and we have more amps, which is weird. Dan has three amps now, and I have two.”
The album was co-produced by longtime friend and artist Shaene Hunter which straddles confidently atop several themes, to which Jon Franz says, “This being our first album or our maiden voyage, I dunno why, but I like a lot of nautical terminology and see that kind of visual imagery when this album was being made. I also write a lot of lyrics about things that directly affect me, like my masculinity, my mind, about being tough and overly arrogant to sell the image of us we’ve created. We have a lot of reference points that I work in, and since we’ve become a two piece, I think there is a lot more depth to everything we do now. We’ve made ‘Hang Wave’ because it’s about time we made this kind of a statement about who we are, what we want to do and what we sound like after multiple line-up changes and situations slowed the progress me and Dan were desperate to make. Since we’ve been a two piece, we’ve got far more done, and we both feel really proud of this album, and we feel strongly that it will do what we need it to do.”
Polevaulter recently performed their debut album on repeat for 8 hours straight via a livestream to raise funds for the Gaza Sunbirds, a para cycling team based in the Gaza Strip. The team is currently providing emergency food parcels and aid to families sheltering around the Gaza Strip. Watch the livestream back here:
New year, new lineup, new project… having wrapped up their ‘open-ended’ album project Songs from the Black Hat and been whittled down to a three-piece, the prodigiously productive Argonaut herald the arrival of 2024 with a song for Dry January. They describe ‘The Hole’ as ‘A ten minute hymn to sobriety, hibernation and transcending the January blues. A lullaby of heartfelt harmonies trailing into ambient drone to aid deep, meditative alcohol free sleep…’
Lyrically, it’s sparse, and self-explanatory:
People say it’s hard
Because there’s a hole
A gap in your heart
A space in your soul
But I say it’s easy
Because the hole is a bin
To throw the self destructive thoughts
And all the alcohol in
I’m not one for dry January myself, although I certainly respect anyone who does, and I certainly get it. A lot of people do very much overdo it in December, stretching festivities out over the entire month. There are work dos, friends and family to catch up with, and more often than not, doing so involves feed and drink. It’s no wonder people feel like shit and feel the need to quit booze, go on a diet, do Veganuary, and take out a gym membership while making a new year’s resolution to lose the stone or so they gained the previous month.
Perhaps what’s every bit as hard as demonstrating brutal discipline in January – the darkest, bleakest month of the year – is maintaining moderation the whole year round. Such asceticism isn’t easy in such grim times: people naturally seek comfort in food and whatever else makes them feel better – and it’s alright if it makes you feel better, to lift a line from Shellac’s ‘Song of the Minerals’.
I digress: ‘The Hole’ does mark a significant shift for Argonaut, who have pushed forth strongly pursuing a trajectory of snappy to the point songs best defined as choppy lo-fi indie / post-punk crossover with lots of fuzz and reverb. This is a dreamy, drifty dronezer, dominated by thick reverb-soaked synths which surge and swell, ebb and flow. It very much does transport s back to the early 90s on so many levels. It’s not quite The Orb, but it is a very spacey effort which is predominantly instrumental and built around the repetitio of a synth wave and looped bass – or xylophone, or something – sequence of a handful of notes. And so it goes (and yes, I’m referencing Vonnegut there). And it goes… and it goes. It is every bit as meditative and ambient as they suggest, and I can feel my blood pressure dropping as the track progresses.
Counterpart release / nominal B-side, the ‘ambient mix’ runs for some twenty-two minutes, and it’s a thrumming buzz, a piece which stings like a swarm of bees frustrated at their confinement. It’s more of a track to let drift over your, rather than one to listen to intently. But this ‘Post-industrial ambience for urban meditation’ is far from soothing, even by candlelight. The tones are serrated around the edges, and possess a certain edge of aggression. Perhaps I need another whisky. Make it a double.
The members of MISSILES are no new kids on the block. Coming from punk, rock, and metal, as well as surf and rather diverse backgrounds, they all answered to the call of their good friend Gabriel Forslund – sincerely interested in doing something new and exciting together.
The band’s trajectory began with a 7" single released by the Swedish label Fetish in 2016. Initially viewed as a project, MISSILES have organically evolved into a fully dedicated band with a laser-guided focus, causing shock waves in the underground with their jet-fuel genre-clash. Combining abandoned sounds with new inventions on Weaponize Tomorrow, MISSILES promises to both pat you on the head and stab you in the back, delivering a unique blend of post-punk with a touch of goth rock.
MISSILES claim their debut is a one-of-a-kind album, truly a loved bastard. Weaponize Tomorrow will appeal to those who enjoyed the certain “je ne sais quoi” found in the New Wave movement, a line of thought that is liberating to hear today when artists go to the bank with a genre description. MISSILES couldn’t be bothered; it’s rock, it’s pop, its punk, it’s je ne sais quoi.
Hard to pin down, but undeniable to freak out to, Weaponize Tomorrow is a high yield blast wave that will leave MISSILES hot on the tongues of those looking for a sudden and dramatic, incendiary kick. A gut smashing future shock that will resonate across diverse musical landscapes, Weaponize Tomorrow will be the perfect atomic cocktail for fans of Wipers, Dead Moon, The Birthday Party, The Gun Club and even modern iconoclasts Molchat Doma and Beastmilk.
Their inaugural album, Weaponize Tomorrow is out on May 10, 2024, under the banner of Svart Records. Witness the album’s opening track ‘Dead Summer Moon’ here:
They may have switched labels and stepped things up a bit, but you couldn’t exactly say they’ve sold out.
Watch the video here:
The video was filmed in a barn in Roxbury, NY, and follows their Partisan debut single ‘It’s The Magic’, which earned them praise from Rolling Stone (‘Song You Need To Know’), NME (“on their way to becoming the next great NYC band”), Paste (“an apocalyptic wasteland of NYC’s best underground punk”) and more.
‘The Heart’ is a high-speed train of delirious percussion (two drummers!) and wonderfully demented electronic samples, weaving in and out of frontman Bret Kaser’s lyrics that inquire into the state of spiritual marketplace and the isolating results of consumption. It’s an exhilarating and singular piece of hardcore electronic punk, with Lip Critic using a broad palette of only the most extreme hues of emotion, each marked by a distinctive danceable mania.
Fresh off dates with Screaming Females for their last-ever tour and shows in London and Pitchfork Paris, Lip Critic will tour extensively in 2024. Their first-ever headline tour will kick off this summer. Prior to that, the band will play a special hometown show on 22 Feb at Elsewhere (Zone 1) in Brooklyn and stop at SXSW for a string of shows.
Standing alone in the cold north, militant DIY dance punk duo, Polevaulter toil and labour to explore the limits of underground achievement. Known the land over for their hypnotic live performances home and away, the Northern noisemakers have built from nothing something few can argue with.
The sonic assault the two create is almost arrogant, fathered from the marriage of seismically sharp bass and loin-grinding beats. The words are quipped and brayed atop the aural landscape. They are boastful, accusing, repellent and inviting, they question and skewer the veins of masculinity, sexuality, the order of things, the music industry and the miserable reality of the North. Toured with JOHN, shared a stage with Thank, Mandy Indiana, Pink Turns Blue, Bambara, A Place To Bury Strangers, VR Sex, and others.
New Polevaulter single ‘Violently Ill’, is as the title suggests, a hard-hitting dark and fiercely off-kilter slab of awesome sickly noise and follows recent acclaim for the duos work from the likes of The Needle Drop’s Anthony Fantano and Louder Than War. The track combines pulsating beats and glitchy electronics with intense repeating shouts to create an intoxicating and exhilarating experience. With the track, Polevaulter announce their debut album ‘Hang Wave’ for release on 26th January and UK/EU tour dates starting February.
On ‘Violently Ill’, Polevaulter’s Jon Franz explains- “I created the track out of a sample I found from a free library, it was inspired by our trip to Tallinn in April. I demoed the track pretty much as is as soon as we got back, and Dan liked the sampling a lot, so we moved forwards. The lyrics were the first things I thought out at practice, and I like the fact that it has more sparse vocals than most of our tracks, gives our music chance to shine. Its maybe my favourite song on the album.”
Watch the video here:
Alongside the single release, Polevaulter are set to perform the debut album on repeat for 8 hours straight from 4pm to midnight on 13th January via a livestream to raise funds for the Gaza Sunbirds, a para cycling team based in the Gaza Strip. The team is currently providing emergency food parcels and aid to families sheltering around the Gaza Strip. For more info and to donate visit: https://www.justgiving.com/page/polevaulterforgazasunbirds
My introduction to West Wickhams was the day their debut single ‘He’s Acquired a New Face’ crashed my inbox in the Autumn of 2019. Something about it absolutely gripped me. Something about it was strange and different. And of course, it’s no longer available anywhere. But it was the only thing they had out at the time, and for various reasons, I didn’t get wind of subsequent releases, the first of which arrived almost a year later, and now it turns out I’ve got some catching up to do, as it turns out they’ve knocked out not one, but two five-track EPs since June 2022. But first, Vivre Sa Vie. A nine track EP!!!
Admittedly, when most of the tracks are around two to two-and-a-half minutes in length, it’s definitely got an EP running time, and would easily fit on a 10” record, but still.
It’s a joy to discover that while the songwriting has evolved and expanded, they’re still magnificently idiosyncratic, and still revel in every layer of echo and reverb going. ‘I am Sparkling Cyanide’ is a mid-tempo shimmery tune that’s almost poppy, bringing together early 80s synth pop with a dash of The Jesus and Mary Chain, all spun through a shoegaze filter. But ‘The Maddening Crowd’ is a piston-pumping blast of fucked-up psychedelic surf rock with an agitated bassline and relentless cheapy drum machine creating a rigid spine, over which even cheaper synth notes tinkle and twinkle.
With its nagging bassline and monotonous programmed beat ‘Carla Suspiria’ plunges into haunting early 80s goth territory, its heavy atmospherics reminiscent of early Danse Society. The vocals – like the guitar – are almost lost in a cavernous reverb. The atmosphere gets darker still on ‘I’m Spinning I’m Spinning’: the fat bass sound is pure Cure and listening to it feels like floating in space – detached, disorientated, out of body.
‘At the Cinema’ transforms the mundane into a heightened emotional experience, channelling Joy Division all the way, even down to the sounds of breaking glass.
The large number of tracks is by no means an indication that they’ve just bunged everything on there just because they’ve got it: Vivre Sa Vie is quality all the way, and they’ve utilised the space afforded by the longer format to structure the sequence in a way that feels like there’s a flow and a certain linearity, punctuating the really bleak gloomers with the poppier efforts.
The final track, ‘Damned Defiant!’ crashes in on a barrage of beefy percussion countered by chiming synths, and it’s a total assimilation of The Cure’s catalogue, and it’s rendered so magically, and in the space of two minutes and nine seconds that it can only be described as doomy goth-pop perfection.
It’s quite refreshing to find an EP with only three tracks. At the risk of coming on like a nostalgia sap, it takes me back to the late 80s and early 90s, when I first got into music and buying records, when 7” EPs would often contain three tracks. There was something tidy about the format. Then again, a lot of 80s releases would feature two tracks on the 7” and add an additional B-side to the 12”, which was also pretty tidy – before the days of extended remixes and CD EPs which would tediously pack out the space with multiple versions of the single, none of which were often worth the bother, but of course, collectors would feel compelled to buy all of the different formats and the single would achieve a higher chart placing thanks to cynical marketing.
The Supplements, from Fort Lauderdale, describe their sound as ‘moody post-punk meets riff-lead indie rock’, and while post-punk is my thing, it’s the indieness that draws me to this release, and nit only on account of the EP format and the fact the lead track is a mere 2:44, with the longest song being not much over three minutes.
While my loathing of Morrissey and a general sense of ‘outgrowing’ The Smiths in recent years may have eclipsed my one-massive love for the band, there’s no denying that they were the absolute kings of the perfectly succinct single, and there’s clearly an element of that tight songwriting in the zero-fat brevity on the songs The Supplements serve up here.
But another aspect of the band’s sound which is utterly compelling is that darker post-punk element, which is pure Interpol. Now, after hearing all the raving about Interpol being the new Joy Division, I was sorely disappointed the day I picked up their first two albums. But once I had come to terms with the fact that the critics were just wrong in their reviews, I came to love those albums, and the ones which followed (apart from the last one, which is toss). And it’s that dark but jangly thing – think ‘Say Hello to the Angels’, with the kind of descending runs which can be found on ‘Slow Hands’ – which The Supplements do so well.
‘Another Day’, the lead track, boasts a driving bass, and Ted O’Connell’s vocals are pitched around the baritone of Paul Banks’. ‘I Can’t Have Everything’ is defined by a choppy guitar underpinned by a chunky bass groove, and the last few bars seem to lean heavily on the intro to ‘Slow Hands’. ‘Different Light’ – nothing to do with The Bangles – again brings some nagging guitars reminiscent of the intro to ‘Roland’ and the mid-section of ‘The New’ and a strong rhythm section, where a strolling bass holds tight against some urgent drumming. With Moving On, The Supplements deserve to be moving up too, because this is pure quality.
Aural Aggravation 