Don't You Leave Tyrannamen

Melbourne rock troglodytes Tyrannamen is one of those bands I have heard about so often I assume I have seen them. I haven't. I assumed they had a plethora of scuzzy albums littered around the backwaters. They don't. This self-titled record is their first. And it is great - a cantankerous brand of punk RnR soul that the older roughnuts (think Coloured Balls and the sharpies movement) to the newer generation (Royal Headache and Oblivians being the most immediate punk peers) should all get behind. It's rough around the edges but riddled with hooks, harmonies and heart. Tyrannamen may have been five years in the making, but the result is electric - five guys thrashing out and about, grins plastered, beer spattered, and ready to grab the world by the scruff of the neck. Will it be a kiss? Will it be a headbutt to the bridge of the nose? Either way, the visceral connection is timeless. You can get Tyrannamen through Cool Death Records here.

Power Boogie

Nothing like a bit of straight up, straight ahead punk and roll. The band Power know how to deliver - Electric Glitter Boogie is dirty and loud as fuck. Raw with the right elements of gutter glam, pub drunk punk, riff-heavy rock and crunching noise, this is music of the past for the future. They bond over Coloured Balls, have the roaring intensity of MC5, and the staggered swagger of Bolan channelling Allin. A sweat drenched bolt out of the blue, I cannot get enough of this brutal cataclysm of a record. Grab the LP through Cool Death Records here.

Squalid Degreaser

I didn't even know that ex-Aussie Tim Evans' band Degreaser were still an active thing. I bought their first two albums, Bottom Feeder and Sweaty Hands, not that long ago, and those are two slices of fevered nastiness, unfettered, unrelenting, unrepentant. They also scream of a band born to implode. You can't tame such fetid beasts, and new record Rougher Squalor (out on Ever/Never Records) still attains some of the rust and grime of those awfully awesome releases. But it is clear on LP #3 that the trio want to fuse their dissonant elements into one awed, cellular whole, and in so doing have carved out a squalling psych behemoth where the trip is long and real yet the songs retain brevity and bite (not one of the eleven tracks breach four minutes). It's like someone herded Bo Ningen, White Hills, Straightjacket Nation and Coloured Balls into a holding pen then eviscerated the lot of them, scooped up the guts and sinew and molded them into the band we hear vomiting forth from the speakers. It's all in the wailing wah-riddled guitar, ripping the ozone apart fibre by fibre. There is still moments of Bird Blobs chicanery in the morbid monotone delivery of 'Do Me In', but mostly Rougher Squalor is all about cutting loose and steering straight for the eye of the sun, dragging us all kicking and screaming along with them. Fantastic stuff.