I watched Teenage Bottlerocket twice during last four years play live and they destroyed it both times, being one of the best live bands I have ever witnessed. I met Ray and Kody and they are both down to Earth nice guys and I was very happy when I heard their new full length album is out with Fat. This time they offer twelve songs of their recognizable melodic punk rock, Ramonescore the subgenre of punk they helped give birth to and quite a number of bands play it now. That means, beautiful dual vocals of guitarists Ray and Kody, superb melodies and fantastic catchy up tempo punk songs like Ramones delivered decades ago. It is hard to say which songs I prefer because all of them are so great, but if I must, I would say that would be Youre Never Going Out Of Style, Hello Dana and Moving On. This band is so close to my heart that it is really hard to write objective review, but damn it, this is my zine, so I can write about what I like and dont give a flying f..k about it. This is for sure one of the best punk rock releases this year.
Time for a band from our own scene to grace the pages of this webzine, namely ŠIZA from Koprivnica, Croatia. I recently witnessed show of this band at 3FF festival in our hometown and it blew me away as one of the absolute highlights of this festival. This band are only two guys, Bruno and Marko. Bruno plays bass and sings, Marko is drummer. Music when played live sounds so powerful like there is whole five members band on stage. These guys played and still play in many bands and projects of our scene, but let us concentrate on this one. Music of Šiza is a mixture of energetic punk, garage punk, noise and post punk and although this sounds a bit pretentious, it is not, believe me. There are uptempo straight forward punk songs, and more slower rolling apocalyptic songs, but songwriting is complex and beautiful with atmosphere being very dark for me as a listener, angry too. Lyrics are in Croatian and I am very happy about that, since most bands in our country nowadays use only English. Lyrics are smart, one of the best I have read in a while, personal but also thematically lead to some of the burning problems, like survival, violence, mental health, egoism and more. This band is what our scene needed and this is for sure one of the best releases this year to come out of Croatian underground.
Just when I think that WTF Records can t amaze me more with their fantastic releases, I open mail and see this jewel. Okay, I put it on and was immediately blown away by the music of Once I Cry. This record is in fact their re mastered 7 inch, unreleased songs and live tracks. Once I Cry are old school hardcore band from Holland, like the ones I grew up listening to, featuring former members of Crivits, Phlebotomized, Shelter, North and many more. That means full on speed youth crew hardcore, melody, great lyrics and sing along parts and believe it or not, some songs made goosebumps on my skin, like rarely a band manages to do to me today. Songs like Platitude, I won t be there, A fire inside, New Youth Crew and similar bring to the forefront some feelings that I think I almost buried along the way, being hardcore pride, sxe pride and smile upon my tired face hehe. Superb record!
KRAYKULLA-WEBZINE 