Browsing Tag

Garage Punk

God Less America by The Revelons Turned Garage Punk into a Surfing Soundtrack for State Collapse

Posted on 13 July 2026

Lux Interior would surely be tipping his microphone stand towards The Revelons after hearing God Less America, an alt-punk protest single with a title sharp enough to make the entire psychobilly scene salute. The retro-focused outfit own the unhinged, manic, B-movie vocals and reverb-drenched moans as they shriek and surf across the ebb and flow of deliciously toned hillbilly guitars.

God Less America defies its garage punk aesthetic. The lo-fi atmosphere becomes the perfect mise en scene to cinematically soundtrack the demise of the States, which, maybe, were never that great to start with. There is satire in the sneer, fury in the twang and enough deranged theatricality to make the track feel like a drive-in horror film projected onto a burning flag.

The single sits comfortably inside the warped Americana vision of Rodeo Drive, Gregory Lee Pickard’s home-recorded Revelons project, where traditional folk instrumentation crashes headfirst into raw punk electricity. With performances augmented by renowned players from the early CBGB punk era, the record bends Americana until its bones start making strange noises.

The Revelons understand that protest music gains power when it refuses politeness. God Less America is scuzzy and ferally pointed, transforming retro references into something politically venomous enough for the present tense.

God Less America is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

WHEN I’M GONE Is Maiden Lane’s Fuzz-Pedal Funeral for Polished Punk

Posted on 8 June 2026

Someone may want to check on Maiden Lane’s fuzz and overdrive pedals after the Ontario solo punk rock project recorded WHEN I’M GONE, one of the seminal singles taken from their third LP, Bedouin Medicine. The grungy skate-punk aesthetics of Fidlar scathe their way into the feverish, scuzzy electricity of this short but serrated release, making the track feel like a gig poster plastered basement wall suddenly learned how to bite.

Hit play, and the artificial gloss of modernity is instantly scoured away as Maiden Lane rolls with all the rabid punches, harking back to the nostalgia of no-wave’s first crash to the shore of safe punk. Yousif Abusitta, the artist and producer behind the project, lets the guitar-driven aggression come through with total conviction, throwing groovy bass lines, melodic hooks, and raw-throated conviction into a sound built for rooms where sweat collects on the ceiling.

Since forming Maiden Lane in 2022 with The Black Cat Project, Abusitta has kept expanding the project’s political bite and garage-punk volition through releases including Pay The Man Before His Sweat Dries, Marijuana, I Pray To This Guitar, Tunnel (Dig Until I Die), and Lap Dog. WHEN I’M GONE carries that same refusal to sanitise the moment, bringing Bedouin Medicine’s ferocity into focus.

WHEN I’M GONE is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Glasgow Television: RINGARDS’ scuzzed riot between alt-punk performance and pandemonium

Posted on 2 November 2025

If you like music to bruise when it hits, you won’t be reaching for the remote to switch the channel with the hypersonically scuzzed alt-punk single, Glasgow Television, from RINGARDS.

For anyone sick of the posturing of IDLES and the insinuation that Yungblud represents the future of alternative music, Glasgow Television hits like a knuckled rebuke. The track howls with barbed visceralism, the kind that leaves you feeling slightly unclean for listening; it’s the kind of filth that feels alive. You can almost sense the floor of a basement venue vibrating beneath you, beer-sticky and sweat-drenched, as your brain takes a pounding from the bruising barrage of distorted guitars and punch-drunk percussion. RINGARDS hit the perfect equilibrium between sardonically deadpan and chaotically unhinged, as Enzo’s vocals detonate through the monolithic instrumentals with venomous swagger.

Sitting somewhere in the static between alt-rock and post-punk, where art punk flickers and indie rock still draws breath, RINGARDS’ sound is both a callback and a confrontation. Their live shows have earned them a reputation for performance verging on pandemonium, and with their debut album already recorded, they’re poised to unleash their snarled sermons on a wider scale.

The French-born frontman Enzo, once a production fixer in LA, jamming with Irish bassist Gary after a fateful “Join My Band” post quickly spiralled into something more ungovernable when Jasper, Noah, Will, and Albi joined the fold, each dragging a different shade of chaos into the sound.

Glasgow Television is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Sons of the City poured heart-in-throat romanticism into kaleidoscopic indie anthem, Can’t Get You Out of My Mind

Posted on 17 October 2025
Sons of the City

From the first shimmering chord of Can’t Get You Out of My Mind, Sons of the City prove they’re here to kick the door to the indie scene wide open. Hailing from Sheffield, the five-piece channel the creative pulse of their city into a sound steeped in heritage but shot through with unfiltered ambition. Formed by former members of acclaimed outfit Section 60, the band have already earned a devoted following across the North and sold out shows like their debut at Guitar Shack Sheffield, and this first single from their forthcoming 12-track LP makes it clear they’re ready to claim a bigger stage.

Filtered through a kaleidoscope of nuanced psychedelia, Can’t Get You Out of My Mind is a Britpop earworm built to lodge itself deep under your skin. It channels the soaring, tonally delicious guitar chords that once sent Manic Street Preachers fans into a fervour and carries the woozy, ecstatic pulse that made The Stone Roses feel like a fever dream you never wanted to wake from. Yet there’s nothing derivative about it; Sons of the City put their own indelible stamp on the romance of indie reverie with tinges of garagey proto-punk woven into the mix. You could almost imagine Michael Monroe taking the mic for the chorus, such is the unashamed melodic strut that powers through its heart-in-throat refrain.

The debut doesn’t tiptoe around potential; it swings straight for the rafters. With an instinctive command of soaring choruses and magnetic emotional weight, Sons of the City have arrived as one of the most promising new forces in British indie. If Can’t Get You Out of My Mind is a taste of what’s to come from their forthcoming album, the future is set to be loud, luminous, and unshakably theirs.

Can’t Get You Out of My Mind is now available on all major streaming platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Bristol’s art punk powerhouse, Phlegmonade, salved glitched-out minds with the surealist distortion in ‘Ode to a Machine’

Posted on 11 October 2025

Phlegmonade isn’t a band name you’d want to pronounce after a few pints, but you’ll want them on your radar after their latest single, Ode to a Machine. The Bristol-based art-punk provocateurs didn’t hold back when they turned their debut into a snarling, unrelenting barrage of garagey skate punk, injected with enough chaos to rip the soul clean from its technocratic casing. It’s a full-throttle blitz of fuzz-drenched fury that cuts through algorithmic apathy with serrated hooks and seething rhythmic momentum.

As the hypersonically twisted guitars oscillate around frenetic percussive blasts, the only reprieve from the onslaught is the occasional wave of woozy psych rock, bleeding colour into the white hot brutality. It’s an adrenaline shot of no-wave-esque distortion, and it carries enough mental static to grind your internal cogs into a blissfully dysfunctional haze.

Through the track’s raw instrumental assault, the metaphor of the mind and body as a faltering vehicle is delivered with abrasive, unflinching sincerity. You feel every rattling piston and spiralling feedback loop of the sonically visualised psychological collapse. And from that wreckage, Phlegmonade resurrects something oddly tender. Something that says: love the malfunction, embrace the glitch.

Drawing from years in the studio and band members scattered from Ireland to Italy to Bristol, Phlegmonade have alchemised a sound that sits somewhere between philosophical subversion and gleefully absurd destruction. Ode to a Machine is the first hit of what’s sure to be a mind fuck of a legacy.

Ode to a Machine is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 


Review by Amelia Vandergast

The Spikes Twisted Garage Indie Rock into a Sardonic Snarl with Guns for the Children

Posted on 12 July 2025

The Spikes let the scuzz slither and the rhythm salivate in Guns for the Children, a single that dropped with a visceral music video a year ago and hits just as hard today with its garagey nods to psychobilly in its Cramps-y reminiscences, tempered by an indie post-punk slick stylistic monochromatics and echoes of Jim Morrison.

If you’re still mourning the loss of Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster and The Jim Jones Revue, Guns for the Children has all of the sardonic snarls, salaciously serpentine rhythms, and devil-may-care antagonism to set you right. Guns for the Children proves that subversion is a far better weapon than preaching in the vein of Bono in the vain attempt of changing the world while raising your profile; Guns for the Children holds a mirror up to the societal rot that’s tearing its way through the fabric of our desiccated reality.

The man behind the menace, Iago Haussman, is no stranger to channelling unrest into visceral forms. A multidisciplinary artist born in Rome and now splitting time between Berlin and New York, Haussman crafts with a cinematic sensibility shaped by a childhood spent on film sets. Through The Spikes, he transposes that grit into his art-punk poetry and monochrome sonic theatre. As he prepares to release a full album in 2026, he’s already pulling the thread tighter with more singles planned for this summer.

Guns for the Children is now available on all major streaming platforms; watch the video on YouTube. 


Review by Amelia Vandergast

LA’s Skittish Cracked the Whip of Existential Backlash with the Sardonic Alt-Indie Hit ‘Kicking In’

Posted on 7 May 2025

Skittish nestled into a niche between indie rock urgency and alt-pop accessibility with the release of Kicking In, a track that flirts and orders drinks at the bar for garage punk and nostalgic neo-pop to entice them into the stylings of this scorned yet superlative anthem that writhes through collective frustration.

They may be outliers on the airwaves through their refusal to fall into lines of monotony, but anyone searching for visceral authenticity and the opportunity to connect with an artist unafraid to wear their authenticity on their guitar strings will find their own form of reverie within Kicking In. The ennui resounds at a palpable level in spite of the high-octane energy of the earworm, which is battle-ready with euphoric choruses, razor-sharp angular indie guitar licks, and crooning vocal lines pinched with sardonic wit.

Jeff Noller’s DIY defiance has always been the pulse of Skittish, but with this new Los Angeles-based incarnation, he’s enlisted sonic arsonists including guitarist Chris Lahn, who carved searing licks into the heart of Kicking In, and drummer Ian Prince, who kept the rhythmic volatility simmering beneath the pop polish. It’s just one example of the genre-fluid chaos that defines the new EP Ugly Makes Pretty—a record that dances through its existential crises and punches back with hooks.

Kicking In is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Spite Never Tasted So Sweet in the Snarling Alt-Indie-Punk Static of ‘Licorice’ by 92Steps

Posted on 1 May 2025
Skunk Radio Demos by 92Steps

With no interest in immaculate solos or the polished edges demanded by purists, 92Steps‘ lo-fi snarler Licorice tears through the pop-punk façade with a ragged confidence that sardonically smiles in the face of perfection. Produced in a Minneapolis flat, a family cabin, and a borrowed office space, Licorice is a product of unapologetic constraint—and it thrives in every rough-edged second.

A single-person operation run by Riley Schindler, 92Steps makes it clear from the get-go that this is punk for the disillusioned, the spiritually wrecked, and the quietly gluttonous. Drawing from the same well of misanthropy that fuelled the ‘90s, Licorice strips the polish away from pop-punk, delivering a snarled, lo-fi anthem of pure infectious volition—but there’s plenty more to hold onto than scorn.

Machiavellianly switching up vocal energy with deliberate abandon, the single doles out hooks with the sting of Fidlar and the songwriting stripes of The Offspring, forming a corrosively catchy callout aimed at a slick protagonist that’s easy to hate—probably because they’re hiding in everyone’s orbit.

It’s not clean. It’s not clever. It’s not trying to be. What Licorice is, however, is a shot of caustic humour on the vein of alt-indie-punk’s increasingly self-serious skin. There’s real venom in the charm, and sincerity stitched between the sneers.

Licorice is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Bandcamp.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Punk Fury and Bruised Egos: Itz Namo Lets Loose in ‘SCREAMING’

Posted on 26 October 2024

At just 20, Itz Namo from Grand Rapids, Michigan, has already carved his niche in the pop-punk rock scene by blending garagey grit with earworm-worthy hooks. What started as a musical joke during his high school years has now catapulted him into the alt-pop-punk spotlight with his latest single, ‘SCREAMING’.

Echoing the antagonised energy of Fidlar, Itz Namo exhibits a deft hand in weaving augmented instrumentals around razor-sharp hooks in the visceral confession of the humiliation that comes when you shoot your shot with someone way out of your league, only to be knocked back to reality. The track is a cathartic middle finger to rejection, and with any luck, it’ll be the anthem to blast in the ears of incels who sulk in frustration and lash out with contempt when it turns out feelings aren’t mutual.

Namo’s high-octane energy and raw delivery make the track an infectiously bouncy amalgamation of alt-pop punk chaos. Beneath the brash riffs and brimming aggression, there’s a deeper emotional core for anyone who has ever found themselves on the receiving end of romantic disappointment.

With ‘SCREAMING’, Itz Namo proves that his knack for blending personal confessions with high-energy punk is a goldmine for the genre. It’s only a matter of time before more people start tuning into the infectious chaos he’s bringing to the scene.

SCREAMING is now available to stream on all major platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Ditch the Demon is out for blood in their sonic screening of garage goth glamour, Fright Night

Posted on 16 August 2024

Fans of Zombina and the Skeletones, Lesbian Bed Death and the Creepshow won’t want to miss the installation of horror and garage goth glamour, Fright Night, prised from the crypt of Ditch the Demon’s LP, Ain’t Dead Yet.

With the percussive pulse of punk and the phantasmic reanimations of new wave indie conjured by the guitars filtered through a psychedelic prog rock lens and the livewire energy rippling through the production as a courtesy of Amanda Brooks-Byron’s histrionically haunted vocals, Fright Night hits with an exhilarating horror punk intensity.

After forming in 2018, the Hastings-hailing powerhouse has made chilling waves with their scintillatingly dark sonic signature; the launch of their debut album in 2023 marked the zenith of the band’s career so far but with their infamous live shows, Ditch the Demon isn’t a band to underestimate.

Stream the official music video for Fright Night on YouTube.

Review by Amelia Vandergast