Never Clever

Still don't know how Clever haven't eaten up the Eastern Sea Board of Australia in their attempt to immolate all that is cautious and safe, burning the vanilla tastebuds from the bloated tongues of the elitist tastemakers, performing a Caesarean on the self-congratulatory nonpareil and casting the remains away in disgust. Is that too much? The snarling primordials don't take prisoners, that is fore sure, and their first album Kewdi Udi sandblasts this fact for half a blistering, boiling hour. But like most of the top-tier pigfuck punks, there is as much sneering inanity as there is molten fury, but the acid-in-the face vitriol won't allow you to know the difference. Don't bother trying to decipher Mitch Perkins' vocals - the dead-eyed stare, with the slightest twitch of the jaw signposting a degree of lightness in the dankness, is unrelenting, as is his red-lined vocal disintegration. Harry Byrne eats up Jesus Lizard guttural sludge and vomits it out in a bass slung like a bilge pump. Fred Gooch manages to slay most guitar gods and seem to stand still, deliberately fucking with the dead and the living; Callum Galletly comes over the top, a melodic Juggernaut, both grinding a groove and pummelling souls, a cathartic mortar and pestle.

Buy this piss-stained cyanide punch of a record from Homeless Records (who else?) here. Kewdi Udi slays.

Clever Kewdi Nightmares

Brisbane noisy nihilists Clever burst out of the gutter a couple years ago, wiping the floor with blood-and-sweat-stained alacrity. They started littering stages in 2014, after I had left, and I quickly lined them up to last year's Sonic Masala Fest - an amazing set, one of my favourites across the two festivals thus far. Their visceral gurning and flailing felt brutal and new, at least in these parts - aside from the dour disintegration of Kitchens Floor and gnashed madness of Sewers, this is the kind of sound more accustomed to the diseased denizens of Melbourne mainstays like Cuntz, Mutton and others that spill from the feedtime wellspring. But it shouldn't be a surprise that such arced anarchy was born out of the melding of dark-matter minds from members Per Purpose, Psy Ants and The Wrong Man. And now they have locked horns with Homeless Records (Cuntz, Spray Paint, Yes I'm Leaving) for their first LP Kewdi Udi. First cut 'Your Eyesore's Sweat' may not be the deepest, but it is infected with acrid angularity and fevered spit. Pre-order this denigrated gem here - first 100 LPs are piss-yellow, of course they are.

HMAS Scrap Rock Gods

Finishing off the week with not one but TWO Hobart-related posts, because. Homeless Records have not steered me wrong once, so when Richie sent me through the archival material of lost Tassies hMAS, as if I wasn’t going to dive headlong into the murky waters without testing the depths. Sure, Fear God Honour The King has enough aural debris, sonic outcroppings and shaggy rock to knock someone out, but these are the types of waters I regularly bathe in. Recorded in 1997 (!) and remixed by lazy sonuvabitch Mikey Young (and mastered by Ben Crothers), this bears much resemblance to the kind of fuzz-damaged literate silliness that Sonic Masala band Tape/Off spew out at irregular angles (‘Fungus’ sounds like the broken bridge between EP and album for the Brisbane slackdog millionaires), and is the unassuming cesspit that geographical brethren Treehouse sprouted from. Richie’s phrasing of hMAS as ‘pointless yet essential’ is a great way of describing the bent and blasted guitar rock here, as concerned with smashing things in some form of identifiable tempo and melody as they are at being noisily indecipherable – it’s the kind of cacophonous mess that is also bristling with hooks, tone deaf yet glistening with naïve-pop noise. The backwards oscillating loop that sounds like an stoner experiment takes up the first half of the appropriately titled ‘Absurd’ (the second half is a demo-esque punk blast of questionable quality, but what good punk isn’t?); the pig-fuck scrawl that permeates the pub-punk sweat-flecked ‘Bucket Boy’; the Devo-meets-addled-Jim-Carroll-with-added-space-wah ‘Friend Is Dead’ – it is all a bunch of friends fucking about. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be heard. Thank the Lord for Homeless that hMAS now has a home.

You can grab Fear God Honour The King here - be quick though because there are only 3 left! If you are lucky you can get versions of the other two releases – The Computer Tape, a experiment (hMAS to a tee) of their songs reconditioned to a Commodore Amiga 500, vocal melodies and all. A Kraftwerk-meets-Devo reimagined score of an Atari 8-bit version of Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome. Weird – and pretty amazing. Then there is 1996’s Goes Pop!, which was originally released for 25c with an added A4 zine, and has had some of the hiss and banter cut out. Lowest fidelity, the mud at the bottom of a creek beer, misplaced, waylaid, laced with memories. A remnant of what may have been, a holographic projection of fizzing, sparking, faux greatness. Get in.

Forced Cuntz

When it comes to Cuntz, you know what you are going to get. Force The Zone is their third record, and is as raucous, punishing, hilarious and vitriolic as ever from the Melbourne scum, that is, it’s bloody brilliant. There is equal parts breakneck hardcore punk run through a cement mixer with blue metal, glass and viscera ('Chinese Dreamboat', ‘Mould’) and damaged dirges (‘Factory Floor’, ‘Grill’). ‘Nah’ is diseased Wire angular aggression, a coiled purge. The top-and-tailing 'Cooked I/II' take us into the boiled headspace, with these warped ideas floating amongst the desiccated detritus of their minds, the loosest the boys have ever been - so cooked, basically. So Force The Zone gets weirder and murkier of purpose - and altogether more interesting. Homeless have less than fifty LPs left - get one here.

Night Duty Down In The Sewers

Things have changed a bit since gutter gnashers Sewers hoisted themselves out of the muck and mire to bring us Hoisted. There have been band member additions and changeovers (Per Purpose's Harry Byrne tears the guitar from Shan Corrigan so he can spit vitriol without inhibition, while Thigh Master's Matt Ford takes over the drums from a travelling Dan Decsi). Incoming LP Weight (also coming out on the excellent Homeless Records) shows very little has changed however. Lead track 'Night Duty' starts out with an acoustic twang before Corrigan's drawled round-vowelled sneer steers the ship towards the rocks. I've been lucky to have the album for over a month and it's a bit cleaner, a bit easier to discern purpose, but no less decrepit and depraved. A review is in the offing - but for now, start your Night Duty by drooling bile in anticipation. Stop dozing and step in for the kill - still stinging. Pre-order Weight here. Sewers head to the US later this month - here are the dates:

June 29 - NYC at Clockwork

June 30 - NYC at Alphaville 

July 2 - Cleveland at Now That’s Class

July 3 - Columbus at Ace of Cups

July 4 - Detroit at Nancy Whiskey 

July 5 - Chicago at The Burlington + Permanent in-store @ 5 pm

July 7 - Lafayette at Spot Tavern

July 8 - Louisville or Bloomington?

July 9 - Memphis at TBA

July 11 - Austin at Beerland 

July 14 - Tucson at Sky Bar

July 15 - LA at 4th St. Vine

July 16 - San Pedro at Harold’s Place (+Perm in-store)

July 18 - San Francisco at Hemlock 

Good Famine/Bad Gentlemen

Before Melbourne leather-clad degenerates Gentlemen bring out their new album, I thought I would delve back into their last two short-form releases, and carefully peel back the diseased canvas to show you what writhes and pulses beneath. The first 7" is 終焉 on Tokyo label Episode Sounds, which delves much deeper into their hardcore roots with 'Good Omen/Bad Husband' before hitting a spewing, mewling punk squall on 'Dead Hand' and 'WD2F' melts it into one insoluble mess.



Then there is Pro Famine, out through Ken Rock. 'Gaunt Boys' is the Gentlemen I know and love - sub three minutes of hateful vitriol, staring into the abyss with dead eyes - the Bird Blobs connection is well and clear. Australia knows how to mewl and gnash teeth in the dark, covered in shit and piss, and love it. No objections from me.

Another Lash Of Bloody, Acidic Spray Paint

One of my favourite bands of the last few years has been Austin angular misanthropes Spray Paint. Their self-titled record on SS Records was an unheralded sucker punch of a record; and at the tail end of last year they followed it up with a great 7" on London's Upset The Rhythm label in Cussin and a new album in Clean Blood, Regular Acid. I have spoken about this excellent record already, but feel the need to mention it again as it is being released in Australia this month (through the excellent Homeless Records via Monofonus Press) and it inexplicably slipped through my fingers first time around.

Suffice to say that Spray Paint's third album is a tour de force of rusted and warped guitar, slow yet incessant drums, a fetid heartbeat bass and barbed, deadpan lyrics chanted with narcotic-numbed nonchalance (Homeless' head honcho Richie claimed it as his album of the year in 2014). Kicking off with the discordant twangs of seemingly incompetent musicians, the uneasy metronome that develops into a mordant urgency on opener 'Wet Beer' is maintained for the entirety of the album. 'Texas Talking Powder' comes across like Supersuckers boiled to their basest elements and lit with bare wires; 'Threesomes Can Wait' takes some of the anodyne precision of Disappears, flays it open with the brutality of a drunken butcher while The Cramps and B-52s beat each other to death with their own shoes on the crackling, blood spattered wireless radio.



There is a rich seam of American rock music at the moment that maniacally latches onto the literate outliers, intent to amuse and unseat, to entice and endanger. Parquet Courts are the light; Pile lurk in the dappled shadows; and Spray Paint twitch and mewl in the darkness, seemingly lost of faculties, ranting pitch black platitudes, all the while luring you closer and closer until you wake up, a jittering soothsayer, covered in filth, viscera and arcane words spiked in Nikko. Buy Clean Blood, Regular Acid here - you'll thank me later.

A Not-so-subtle Turn Of The Homeless Hips

Let's start the week with some unhinged French punk rock, yeah? Subtle Turnhips actually brought Redhair With Some out back in June (through great Aussie label Homeless Records no less) but it slipped through my fingers until this weekend. As I was charring sausages to within an inch of their lives, smoke billowing around me, a pint near at hand, the meltdowns this trio dole out fit perfectly with my fried mind. It swings from crunchy blues with feral hues to gravel-rash gutter punk and broken glass rock, all with unfettered, crazy-eyed abandon. And the connection to Homeless is clear from the bent-string anarchy of 'Cousin' and the last-gasp whisky rasp of 'Digit (five)' to the (suppression) rings being run on 'Slime'. Redhair With Some is the missing link in Franco-Oz punxploitation (even the artwork is like a lewd reimagining of a Mick Turner/Dirty Three watercolour) - get it here.

Get The Shovels Out And DIG

I have been a big fan of San Francisco native Michael Beach for some time. He came floating into my sonic peripherals with his solo fare; firstly his A Horse 7" through Twin Lakes Records back in 2011, but most prominently when he released Golden Theft, one of my favourite albums of 2013. I even had the privilege of putting him on a show at the Beetle Bar in Brisbane back in November (with a stellar line-up of Soda Eaves, Tiny Migrants and Tape/Off – but due to torrential rain it was a poorly attended show, despite it being one of my favourite of the year also). He was joined with a backing band, bassist Adam Camilleri and drummer Peter Warden. But they aren’t really just a backing band – the trio form Shovels, and their debut LP (out through Homeless Records) is one of apocryphal dirges and imploding delights.


There are moments throughout Shovels where I felt I was listening to one of Australia’s truly underrated rock bands, Turnpike. Whilst nowhere near as intricately frenetic, there is an incessant gnarled tension throughout these tracks, such as opener 'MB Jacket' or 'Multiple Farrow', from the deathmarch basslines and cathartic drums to Beach’s impassioned howls and sharp guitar stabs and swathes. The monolithic ‘Clyde’ stands stark here, just over five minutes of drowning militaristic rancour; as Beach shouts ‘the leader of the FBI’ there is a nascent aura pervading, as if the anger is on the cusp of being superseded by impotent exasperation. But the muscularity remains, and therein lies one of the secret ingredients that so many bands forget – you can strut and bluster all you want, you can turn things up as loud as they will go, but if you don’t wield your strengths at the right time, with tempered aggression, with knowledge of when to strike and when to recede into the shadows, you are nothing but a cardboard cutout. Even the sparse, foreboding languidity of ‘Expire’ holds more strength in its aural tendrils than most bombastic offerings. There is nothing impotent about Shovels – contrary, this album digs mass graves for us all to gratefully slumber in, led by Pied Pipers of angularity.

Grab Shovels here – it’s a necessity.

No One Is Leaving Here Homeless

There is something going on in Sydney. Something very different to what the harbourside restaurants, beaches and opera houses would have you believe. There is something soaking up through the drains, rising through the damp. And it’s asking questions. What about the rest of us? The ones who don’t get a run in your elevators and views and corner offices?

Yes I’m Leaving are at the forefront of it. The forefront of a disaffected noise that pummels and pummels at the wrought iron bars of old Sydney. Forget your interior design anxieties and fall back into your foam mattress; this is a world away from the innocuous pleasantries of the latest inner city wine bar. It’s stained and loud and open to everyone.


Pre-order your copy of Slow Release from Homeless Records to get one of the hundred Grey Splatter versions. Because if ‘One’ is anything to go by, Grey Splatter is the colour this should be. They are honestly one of the best bands in Australia.

Gentlemen Prefer Sex Tapes

(Photo by Glen Schenau)

Boy oh boy. I feel aggrieved, embarrassed, dirty and fucking excited whenever I put on Sex Tape, the record that Melbourne miscreants Gentlemen put out through Homeless Records. I've only had it since Sunday - it's just about sold out (there were two copies left at Collectors Corner in the Melbourne CBD, not sure if there are many more). Its the sort of atonal noise rock that the term pigfuck was invented for. Sure, there isn't inherent melodicism being skewered or insanely tight engine room in the muck and the mire here, but there is plenty of abrasive yowls, riffs, smashed drums and stalker-with-dead-eyes basslines here to give a corpse an erection. Matt Korvette over at Yellow Green Red took umbrage to the BDSM imagery the band take on with the cover art - and I get his point - but this is the kind of noise that is destined to dwell in the seventh level of Satan's bowel (and what his band Pissed Jeans are basically known to do). 'Military Style Massage' - now if you are resistant to that bludgeoning, we ain't friends, pure and simple. And to be honest there are some serious Melbourne bands that are fist deep in this corrosive sound - personally, I think it's brilliant. Listen to 'Perry' and bring on the pig.

Redeeming The Stickmen

The Tasmanian music scene has always mirrored the way us mainland Aussies treat the Apple Islers – as outsiders, bereft of this country in most respects, left to their own devices. I love Tasmania – its possibly the most beautiful place in Australia. This geographical ostracism is what allows this beauty to remain untouched – but is also why those persistent inter-family rumours also persist. Its nasty and untrue (I assume).

But being ostracised and forced into inbreeding does bring about great dividends (stay with me…) Because of this ostracism, both geographically and musically, the Tasmanian musical community was left to fester and ferment, scrounging together the smallest scraps of sonic alleviation and epiphany to carve out whatever they could. Thus the music that came out of Hobart in the late 90s and early 2000s is acrid, warped, coruscated – and utterly mesmeric. Most people will know about The Nation Blue and their rise from this bastion of musical barbarity, but there were many bands strangling instruments and concepts with blue-veined glee. (If you haven’t listened to Sea Scouts, for example, do yourself a favour and sort that out RIGHT NOW).

Another of these young bands doing incredible things within this nebulous musical landscape was The Stickmen. Their music was instantly recognisable yet deliberately obfuscated the accepted norm – taking the supposed trappings of post-punk and hewing out of them a nervy, chaotic dynamism that was instantly recognisable. Plenty of likeminded bands exist now that mirror this aesthetic, but the Stickmen were one of a unique few bands that truly challenged any form of sonic norm. And the inclusion of turntables is probably the only time I can think of where it belongs in rock music. It’s a bizarre concept, but when you hear the skittish scratches on songs like the excellent ‘Who Said’, it is a stroke of ardent genius. And on songs like ‘Night’, Aldous Kelly could stand up alongside the greats of the post-punk beginners, his wail as impassioned, as cathartic, as confronting.

 The Stickmen brought out two albums only – 1998’s self-titled debut, and Man Made Stars the following year. And that was it – this combustible ball finally imploded. But they never truly left the ether of the aggravated Australian musical fringes, and when The Drones convinced the band to reform for last year’s ATP Melbourne, they were an unbelievable surprise package for most – myself included. Tom Lyngcoln of The Nation Blue insisted I catch their set – and I am forever in his debt. Whilst the Per Purposes and indeed The Drones’ of the world are a breathtaking menagerie of energy and unease, it was somehow more engrossing to see The Stickmen easily in command of their raw, rancid realm.

Now the great Melbourne imprint Homeless Records have released both of these “lost” albums on 12” vinyl. If you don’t partake in this frontier freneticism, you have no right walking this earth. Tap in to something inherently visceral, a fission of collective fidgeting energies, and enjoy.

Spiralling Down Into Theremin-Fuelled Night Terrors

The Night Terrors are an interesting band in that they manage to straddle the boundaries of tension, murky darkness, and garish monochrome lushness at the flick of a hand at a Theremin antenna. Miles Brown’s infatuation with the much-maligned instrument has gleaned some otherworldly and exciting results, none moreso than the band’s latest opus Spiral Vortex. It goes without saying that a band with a Theremin in it is going to be lumbered with horror score tropes – in fact this is heightened by the vintage synth that permeates each track. But this is never a bad thing, especially when you have such an intense skinsman as Damien Coward (Heirs) propelling things inexorably forward. It also makes sense why Spencer Hickman from famed horror soundtrack enthusiasts Death Waltz Records would be such a fervent fan.

I personally think Spiral Vortex is brilliant. It is the kind of late night spiral (it can’t be helped) into the black hole of feverish lament and Giallo deconstruction (and dismemberment). And the spectral cinematics are evidently something the band revels in – titles like ‘Lasers For Eyes’, ‘Monster’ and especially ‘The Devil Played Backwards’ serves to drive this heavy theme home. Brown’s utterly jaw dropping control of the Theremin notwithstanding, though, Spiral Vortex belongs to the synthesiser and its Master Controllers, Brown and Sarah Lim. There are artists out there on labels such as Not Not Fun or Dark Entries that take these sounds to dark and sensuous places, but never have I revelled in the deliciousness that borderline macabre cheese can bring. 70s/80s expressionism is subliminally evoked in every lush line that flows forth – Prince Of Darkness, Lifeforce, Phantasm, Suspiria, all of these movies that are schizophrenic and ridiculous and yet so seductive in their lurid imagery and use of colour. Spiral Vortex easily encompasses these elements – and at times easily surpasses them.

Spiral Vortex is out now through Homeless Records – grab it here.

These Mates Are Solid Cuntz

I only showed their fake baby handling skills on Monday, but here we are again, talking about Cuntz. The Melbourne devildrivers have polished off a second album in a year (we spoke favourably of their earlier effort Aloha here), and Solid Mates is a excellent counterstrike. It allows more of a focused caterwaul of baseness, becoming more vitriolic in the process. The bitterest pill to swallow - it goes down better, but cyanide is still cyanide. When a song about walking the dog (violently - I think it's a love song) hemorrhages into 'Ation', a song about masturbation, any innocence you were desperately clinging to is ripped from you and crushed into the ground. Bonus points for the song 'Brizbane' having throat-shredder Ben Mackie sounding the most bored and pissed he has been in his life before yelling the title over and over with his eyes bugging out - and yes, the cabs are fucking expensive. Pissed jeans and wet dreams - regardless of whether this is your idea of a nightmare or an orgasm, you're still left with the wet patch.

Pre-order Solid Mates from Homeless Records here. They've just completed their US tour that included an electrifying Gonerfest set. Yep, these guys are cuntz.

Hoisted Out Of The Sewers

(photo by Glen Schenau)

Nihilistic nightdwellers Sewers have been slaving away in the darkness for some time now. They fit into some of the seamier, leerier cracks of the Brisbane scene, but regardless of whether they are flaying the locals at Chardons Corner, spitting venom at Crowbar or bleeding into the cement underneath a dilapidated house, they always managed to be cut from much coarser stuff than those around them. It's been captured to some degree of success on a couple of cassettes, but leave it to Homeless Records to pour some acetone on the festering wound and produce their first LP, Hoisted. Things are still as diseased as you'd expect - Shan is growling through decimated chords and depraved drums, dead eyes and hateful lullabies all present and accounted for. But there is just the right amount of cleanliness applied to the recordings that wipes away the grime and gives off enough light to peer through into the belly of the beast - which makes these songs that more terrifying. Sewers often feels displaced - they should be in the bowels of Brooklyn, or even the back alleys of 1980s Sydney - but Hoisted more than effectively smashes such notions (and seven shades of shit) out of all naysayers. Drive the nail.

You can buy Hoisted here - I can hear your palms sweating already.

A Farewell (and Hello) to Cuntz

It was my birthday this week. I went to the Planetarium on Sunday morning to celebrate and ended up feeling very fucking small. When I got home I finished A Farewell to Arms and felt even smaller. If there are any gods out there, they're all cunts.

'I'm completely lost, again. Help me?' Cuntz yell into the black chaos of the universe. They get a return volley of indecipherable guitar squall (work that one out Jodie Foster) and crystal meth for their troubles. Yeah, thanks cunts.

But there's other moments on Cuntz new album Aloha (15 physical copies left through Homeless Records as I write this) that brighten the quagmire. Like the meteor that smashed the dinosaurs out of existence only to leave the planet ready for small mammals, aloha means goodbye and also hello.



The best part for me is the knock-off AC/DC riff in the middle of 'Punt'. That, and the fact that 'punt' clearly rhymes with 'cunt', yet they abstain. That part made me feel a little better. Then it made me feel really great when, over the top of it, the neighbourhood amateur saxophonist started to repeatedly and unsuccessfully play the Star Wars theme.

We might be insects, but not all of that sucks.