UK hardcore punk scene was always awesome, filled with excellent bands and Manchester´s AVAS are one of them. This is their new e.p. and I listened to the record and reviewed it for this webzine.
Formed in 2010., Avas released two albums and two ep-s, played live a lot of times and shared stages with H2O, SNFU, Death Before Dishonor and many more. This record contains four songs of high explosive energetic hardcore. “Think” is a pure hardcore song with gang backing vocals, positive attitude and more similar in my opinion to NYHC school than to European hardcore school. “Friendzone” is punkrock song with shouting back vocals just made for jumping and shouting at the gig and it reminded me a lot of Sick Of It All punkier anthems. “You and I” is another hardcore fast bomb in the old school youth crew way, an ode to friendship, scene and hardcore which reminded me when I was a kid like 20 or 25 years ago, when I went out with my hardcore crew and we felt invincible band of brothers. The best song on this record for me is ” Open Heart” which is the most melodic song on the record with beautiful sung vocals, great anthem and the whole song somehow reminded me of Endpoint. You might notice that I compare the bands a lot, but this in no way means that Avas are clones of those bands or stuff like that. Quite the contrary, this is an awesome hardcore e.p. which made my day and filled me with pure hardcore energy!
Croatian punk hardcore scene is now better than ever. I have been a part of it for more than 25 years now, and I can safely say that there are many great bands, kids who promote gigs, venues and all that goes with it. Žulj are Croatian band from the city of Rijeka. This is their second demo album that came out a couple of days before and I listened to it and reviewed it for this webzine.
I reviewed their debut release “Vlažne pjesme” a while ago and it was an okay debut demo release. Now, this second record is really strong. This band started in 2015.but the members of the band have been active around playing in bands before so this record is much, much stronger than the debut. Record contains 10 songs. The songs are angry punk as fuck with rawer and dirtier production which is great for that kind of punk. The lyrics are shouted in Croatian and they are mainly political and very angry inspired by all the wrong shit that´s been going on in this country for the last couple of years. It really reminded me of the legendary Croatian punk hardcore band Nula which was one of my favorite Croatian punk band in the 90-ies. I really loved this record because almost no one plays punk as fuck in the Croatian scene anymore and that´s not good. Don´t get me wrong, I love the more melodic side of punk hardcore, but we should also have angry, energetic punk hardcore bands and Žulj are just that. Great record!