Bandcamp has long been a home for DIY punk and hardcore from around the world, touching all of the myriad subgenre styles and helping to translate the simple effectiveness of cut-and-paste to the digital age. For March’s edition of the best punk releases on Bandcamp, Kerry Cardoza features a post-punk rerelease from England’s Twelve Cubic Feet, the freewheeling punk of Berlin’s Lemongrab, the pummeling D-beat of Holland’s Traumatizer, and much more!
Twelve Cubic Feet
Straight Out The Fridge
Vinyl LP
The latest rerelease from London’s Sealed Records is a remarkable post-punk gem. Twelve Cubic Feet was a short-lived English band; they put out two cassettes and this 10-inch before disbanding in 1983. Featuring members of Khmer Rouge, Doof, and Alternative TV, among many other bands, I’d file this group snugly beside the lo-fi twee pop of contemporaries like Marine Girls. The vocals are both chirpy and matter-of-fact, bouncing along on top of eerie, flutelike keys and sometimes sharp, sometimes jangly guitar. Some tracks dip into a funkier, more dissonant sound, as on the dub-adjacent “Mary’s Got the Bug”; others, like the girl group-esque “Hello Howard,” are more straightforward and sweet. After multiple listens, it’s impossible to pick a standout cut—each has its own complex charms.
Drill
Permanent
T-Shirt/Shirt
Philadelphia trio Drill goes out with a bang on Permanent, what the band has declared is its first and last LP. Across these eight turbulent tracks, Drill combines loose bass rhythms; shrill and squeaking synth; and nutty vocals to boisterous effect. The rattling percussion of opener “Within Reason” recalls the infectious beat of Deee-Lite’s “Groove is in the Heart,” while “Sweat” is a manic, almost hyperpop nightmare, with its constantly beeping keys. Think of Drill as a more unbridled Gauche: melodic, off-the-cuff, and spectacularly weird.
Beige Banquet
Ornamental Hermit
Vinyl LP
Beige Banquet started life as the solo project of Tom Brierley, playing robotic weirdo punk backed by a drum machine. Now a fully fleshed quintet, the London band keeps the jerky, Devo-style instrumentation but expands that sound in myriad ways, from the grooving, industrial lushness of “Substance Sustenance” to the throbbing synth-soaked instrumental “Condition Report.” The first half of the record, the band’s sophomore album, hews more closely to Beige Banquet’s traditional, repetitive, high-wire tension, but after “Mind Lapse”—the longest offering here—the sound seems to break open a bit. “Mind Lapse” is masterful dark punk, with the catchiness of New Wave; the six-minute length works to the band’s benefit, giving the instruments room to interact and coalesce, streamlining the various textures into a coherent composition. Here’s hoping the band leans into this new direction going forward.
Lemongrab
I Spy with my little Eye
Vinyl LP
In the three years since Berlin quintet Lemongrab’s last record, the band has grown tighter and punk-ier. From the matter-of-fact post-punk of “Politics,” with its simple verse and clever lyrics, to the catchy urgency of “Je Te Crache Dessus” (“I spit on you” in French), Lemongrab find a more abrasive cohesion across this full-length. (The yells at the end of the painfully funny “Guitar” closely recall Bikini Kill’s Tobi Vail.) The slower “Midnight Cowboy” is a sweet-natured sonic departure, with its simple distorted guitar, while the rangy, exasperated “Disco Party” veers between fast and slow. I Spy with my little Eye closes with the shortest track, a rollicking party song where both vocalists shout over one another in a euphoric frenzy.
Traumatizer
DE #127
7" Vinyl
This debut from Holland four-piece Traumatizer is caustic fury from start to finish. The vocalist delivers her lines in aggressive shouts, devolving into rapid-fire bursts of preverbal nonsense at the end of “Bulldozer,” as though possessed by a punk demon or speaking in tongues. Sonically, the band plays menacing D-beat, with thrashing, metallic guitar. (To get a taste of their metal bona fides, see this live video of the band sporting two Flying V’s.) “Traumatizer” builds slowly, with blasting synth sounds shooting over a steady, ominous low tone, until a wall of instrumentation kicks in at top volume. Let this unbridled ferocity be a harbinger of more pummeling hardcore to come.
JJ and the A’s
Eyeballer
7" Vinyl
On this new 7-inch, Copenhagen/Barcelona trio JJ and the A’s deliver more of their noisy, high-energy power pop meets SoCal punk, but this time with a stronger sense of melody. An eerie, buzzing organ wavers through the songs, creating an almost horror punk vibe, particularly on the urgent title track. The short, fast “Counterstrike” boasts a powerful guitar solo, while the more earnest closer mixes it up with a slower, pop punk-esque chorus. Still, it’s the opening track that is most likely to steal your attention, with its infectious hooks that beg for repeat listens.
Pure Shit
Reality Check
Cassette
The avant-garde dynamism of L.A.’s Pure Shit may stem from its core members, composers Francisco Marin and Alexandria Sloate, yet its sound is also influenced by the band’s rotating roster of contributors. On this EP, Matthew J.X. Doyle adds layers of percussion, from the machine-like claps on “False Societal Order” to the clanging electronic maracas sound on “Abstract General Entity” to the snappy drums on “Cleansed.” Ever present is Sloate’s alto-saxophone, something squeaking, sometimes smooth and moody, as on the dirgey “Sovereign Without a Throne.” Vocals show up just once, as spoken word, on the brief and heavy “Locked Out Of Life.” For Pure Shit, genre is beside the point; what matters is the shifting feeling of the sound, the humanness behind the collaboration.
Industry
A Self Portrait At The Stage Of Totalitarian Domination Of All Aspects Of Human Life
Vinyl LP
Berlin-based quartet Industry doesn’t mince words on this debut album, which features tracks named “Extract Wealth and Die” and “Apathy is Violence.” Over impassioned, breathlessly shouted vocals and phaser-loaded guitar, Industry urges you to do more to fight state violence and internal apathy. “This is the Future,” with its dirty bassline and thrashy anarcho-punk rhythm, is particularly strong, as is the melodic “Spiritual Debts,” with its rousing drum intro, harsh metallic edge to the guitar, and pained howls. The last two tracks hit the hardest, with their heavy, dirging cadences and unapologetic political declarations (“In the fight against fascism, you have to ask yourself, am I really doing enough?”)
Desintegración Violenta
La Bestia
7" Vinyl
Like their excellent 2021 debut, the new EP from Berlin-based Desintegración Violenta is a brutal piece of work; devilish screams frequently explode into maniacal laughs, and wild guitar lines and hard-hitting drums run amok. On highlights like “Devastacion,” the phaser-heavy guitar produces a metallic echoing effect, the sharp riffs slicing through the song like a knife. The noisy, raw sound quality recalls classic Japanese hardcore or contemporary Colombian acts like Muro. “Presidio” is especially sick, with a heavy intro trudging along until all hell breaks loose, with reverberating vocals and an onslaught of sound.
