From the release of their 2011 EP through to 2022’s ‘Voodoo’, Kill Your Boyfriend have steadily crafted an impressive mix of post punk and heavy electronica sounds. Over the course of more than a decade, they’ve remained true to themselves, never really sought commercial acceptance, or softened their sound. On 2025’s ‘Disco Kills’, there are a couple of interesting musical deviations, but the bulk of their material remains incredibly harsh.
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MUGGER – Get A Clue EP
Following their very promising demo from 2022, which shared eight tracks of blistering hardcore punk, noise-making Texans Mugger sound a little more polished on their first “proper” release. It’s clear, though, within a few bars of the first track, that any actual polishing is relative. Yes, their ‘Get A Clue’ release (being touted as an EP, despite only featuring two tracks) sounds bigger and a touch more professional, but it really doesn’t present the band in any more of a commercially viable manner.
RUDIMENTARY PASTE – Six Examples Of The Wilhelm Scream EP
Affiliated with the independent Socks On Records, Rudimentary Paste are label mates with brilliant noise makers Das Kapitans, Get The Fuck Outta Dodge, Al Pacinos Sister, and Soviet Films. That fact alone will give some listeners a reasonable idea of what to expect from the band’s ‘Six Examples of The Wilhelm Scream’ EP before even going in. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but even though this band actually features a couple of faces associated with other Socks On acts, the Paste sound isn’t just a carbon copy of their peers.
JUDO CHOP! – Cosmic EP
When a band advertises themselves as “throwing melodic punk, thrash metal, martial arts and Jimmy Barnes into the pit, with no rules, no ref and no care for the victor!”, you’ll get a sense of a band who value fun as much as musical prowess. Although it’s not entirely clear how one of Australia’s national heroes actually figures in Judo CHOP!’s work, the rest of those descriptors are a fairly good fit for five of the six tracks that make up their ‘Cosmic’ EP.
THE DRY RETCH – Straight Outta Cuba!
It’s rather common for musical artists to lighten up as the years pass, but this is to be expected with age. It’s often impossible to cling onto the anger of youth. Just ask Paul Weller or James Dean Bradfield. Even Henry Rollins sounded like a pale imitation of himself on the Rollins Band’s disappointingly lightweight swansong ‘Nice’ in 2001. There are notable exceptions, of course: the first couple of OFF! albums showcase a punk “retirement age” Keith Morris with as much fire as he had in his Black Flag days, and Slayer’s ‘Repentless’ from 2015 attacks a huge amount of energy and absolute fury, resulting in their best work for a quarter of a century. It could even rank within their top five best albums ever.
Over twenty years on from the release of their ‘Columbus Was Wrong…’ album, The Dry Retch prove to be another exception to the idea that getting older means a retreat to a safe space. ‘Straight Outta Cuba!’, released in October 2024, captures the Liverpool-based noise-makers in a savage mood, and rightly so, considering the state of the entire world at the time of its recording.