Eyes Wide x Ninety

I’ve been meaning to write about this busted rock’n’roll release for ages – a Brisbane tour-de-force to be sure. Led by ex Standing 8 Counts madman Tom Beaumont and joined by Ben Buchanan (Chinese Burns), Rick and X (Eat Laser Scumbag!, Chinese Burns), Eyes Ninety's debut LP has all of these sounds rattling around its rustbucket offering like a soul trying to bust itself out of a sweltering outback prison – decrepit, fetid, disintegrated and a ramshackle mess that is mesmerising. The lung-flaying opener 'I Don’t Wanna Live (In Your World)’ pulls no punches, offering a rusted garage caterwaul. Other great tracks (they are all pretty great) includes the scourged 70s pub punk of ‘Canton II’, the Eddy Current static-tetchy growl and punch of ‘Ants’, the Stooges with no fidelity in a tin shed appeal of closer ‘New Key’. It makes sense that this bruiser is on Swashbuckling Hobo Records – this kind of skewed rock punk (as opposed to punk rock) is right at home in its dirty halls. Get into this here.

Busymen Attack!

Swashbuckling Hobo loves their trashy, thrashy rock, and The Busymen are at the top of that particular pile. They have just released Under Attack Of The Busymen, a 10” that embraces dumpster garage echoes, 60s rock organ, and drunken snarls with aplomb. It rolls along at a rampant pace, and is equal parts silly and sordid. Mission accomplished.

Eat A Gravel Samwidge Comes With Medicinal Requirements

What to say about Gravel Samwidge's new album Medicinal Requirements that doesn't require battery acid and a bilge pump? This shit is thick, diseased, and the best thing they have possibly ever done. They have been active of late, releasing smaller bits and pieces that seemed to exemplify the Gravel Samwidge of today - oh how wrong we were. This is all laid on the table from the first track 'Nervepowder', a song that has been doing the rounds for a while but is irrevocably turned into a behemoth here. Mark Spinks is in eye-rolled-in-back-of-the-head raging brilliance, and the guitars grind together (Spinks joined here by Kitchens Floor's Matt Kennedy) like a medieval torture implement, begging for dismemberment.


The buzzsaw attack continues into 'Rock God', where Spinks' vocal delivery delves back into his more recognisable deadpan rant, but the instrumentation here is what marks these tracks a cut above what has come before - Ashley Jenkins' bass cuts a swathe through the angular anger, a wrecking ball of monotone monstrosity. Alex Morrison lopes along, a pummelling metronome. 'Get Your Shit Together' and 'Carpool' march all over you with their Gestapo shitheel boots, and you love it, bloodied maw and all. 'Contact' is a tone-deaf precursor to closer 'Pronouncement', a warped swirling mess buoying forth Gerald Keaney's cracked poetics, before the speakers are blasted beyond all repair.

Such a virile and bilious shot in the arm - Medicinal Requirements is out now through Swashbuckling Hobo Records (you can grab it here). To add to the rough and tumble, Gravel Samwidge are supporting rock gods Mudhoney and obvious touchstones Feedtime in Brisbane at The Zoo Saturday 18th January! And here is a pic of the album in the new bin in the world's best radio station, WMFU! Thanks Ron!