Blending elements of gothic metal, a touch of industrial groove and layering that with occasional death metal growls, Gods of Decay served up some really huge sounds on their 2021 LP ‘Collective Psychosis’.
British punk band Al Pacinos Sister formed during the pandemic lockdown in 2021, but it wouldn’t be until the following year that they really exploded into life. Their ‘Trained In Karate’ and ‘DOGZ’ EPs (released in February and July of that year) marked their place as one of the UK’s noisiest underground bands. It almost immediately placed them alongside Pizzatramp and Socks On label mates Get The Fuck Out of Dodge – a role that the somewhat faceless act seemed to be taking very seriously.
Considering how Bruce Springsteen has long been a devotee of the music from Phil Spector’s stable and many of his deeper album cuts convey the sounds of Detroit via their horns and storytelling, he’s taken a long time to get around to recording an album of soul covers. Perhaps that has much to do with him being a prolific songwriter himself – Bruce has effectively shelved albums and albums worth of material that many artists would consider top tier work – meaning that recording other peoples’ songs has never seemed like a priority.
In the summer of 2022, following a string of singles and EPs, US punks The Venemous Pinks finally released their full length debut. The ten cuts on ‘Vita Mors’ captured a really punchy style that took the no-nonsense guts of the much missed Soviettes and blended it with a more contemporary sound. Loaded with riffs, its twenty seven minutes left no room for filler.
At the end of September ’22, Davey Lane’s band The Pictures made a long overdue return. The release of the ‘I Can’t Hold Back’ single marked the end of a fifteen year silence for the band, but in many ways, the track played as if it’d been a mere heartbeat since their previous release.