At the beginning of 2021, members of Pennsylvanian noise-makers Backwoods Payback formed a new side project, Boozewa, whose main aim would be to provide an even sludgier extension to their world of riffs. Their first release, the four track cassette ‘First Contact’, presented the ultimate in lo-fi metal. With three of its four recordings being so demo-like and raw it made the Melvins’ ‘10 Songs’ sound like the expensive and expansive recordings from Todd Rundgren’s ‘A Wizard/A True Star’, the cassette wouldn’t necessarily be to everyone’s tastes. However, for those who like things to sound as spontaneous as possible, it brought riff after riff in a way that made the band’s talents more than clear, even if the recording sometimes sounded as if were coming from a water damaged source played back through an old sock. The combination of Rylan Caspar’s Buzz Osborne-esque hollering, Jessica Baker’s bottom end grooves, and occasional Sabbath-isms (most obvious during an instrumental piece named after the notorious “No Name Maddox”) had already been effective via Backwood’s Payback’s own brand of stoner – a Fu Manchu meets Melvins meets TAD juggernaut – but this was something else. It was also enough for the legendary Thomas Andrew Doyle to get on board and master their follow up recording.
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THE MORNING LINE – Yard Sale
Back in 2019, The Morning Line released their third album ‘North’. With its retro sound calling back to some of the 90s college rock greats, it was easy to draw parallels with the album’s best material and past classics by Buffalo Tom, Soul Asylum and Third Eye Blind. It became one of that year’s best DIY releases and gained praise from all seventeen people that actually heard it. A follow up single ‘Back On Earth’ appeared at the beginning of 2021, and although it showed off a more sedate side to the band with hints of ‘Behind The Sun’ era R.E.M. at its core, the same retro charms were more than present, cementing Stephen Smith’s reputation as a fine songwriter.
NUEVO CATECISMO CATOLICO & KURT BAKER – Quarantine Blues EP
Spanish punks Neuvo Catecismo Católico have been cranking out tunes since the early/mid 90s. Despite being fairly prolific, they’ve not always gained a huge following outside of their home country due to the core of their material not being in English, but a trawl through a sizable back catalogue presents some great music. Exploration of past works also shows a band who more than know their way around a decent melody.
SEIZED UP – Marching Down The Spiral EP
Bringing together a few familiar faces from the punk/hardcore scene, Seized Up are a supergroup of sorts. Drummer Andy Granelli was previously a member of Nerve Agents, but reached a far bigger audience when he played on The Distillers’ best selling ‘Coral Fang’ album in 2003; bassist Chuck Platt will be known to a lot of punk fans through his associations with Good Riddance, and vocalist Clifford Densmore is the vocalist with hardcore band Bl’ast. Together, they sound greater than the sum of their parts. On their 2020 debut ‘Brace Yourself’, the combination of pure hardcore blasts (‘Human Locusts’, ‘Older And Wiser’) complimented the more drawn out anger of tracks like ‘Shadow Panther’ to showcase the kind of band that, not only sounded truly comfortable in their new configuration, but more than able to bring a classic hardcore sound up to date if necessary.
DEATH ON FIRE – Six Foot Box EP
Indiana death metal/extreme metal band Death On Fire cover a wide musical ground on the follow up to their 2020 long player ‘Ghost Songs’. The ‘Six Foot Box’ EP only features three tracks, but by taking elements of old school thrash metal, a pinch of black metal coldness and broad strokes of doom, the material almost feels as if it crams in a full album’s worth of ideas into a little under fifteen minutes.