Slices 'Still Cruising'

Iron Lung (Kim Phuc, Total Control) offer up new album from Slices 'Still Cruising'. Mike Kasunic (Tusk Lord)/Bass, Mike Ovens/Drums, John Kasunic/Guitar and Greg Kamerdze/Vocals make up the four piece who are now on their second record. These ten songs clocking in at just over twenty minutes are a maelstrom of hardcore numbers fraught with pummeling beats, antagonistic vocals and fierce guitars summoning bouts of stir-crazed punk rock. In amongst the carnage there are curious interjections of quieted instrumental sections like on "Forever Cruising/Hurt On The Job" acting as a pallet cleanser before the stampede continues. Personal highlight is "Class Time", a riotous air punching track with swarming guitars, palpitating rhythms and howling vocals. 'Still Cruising' is the perfect soundtrack to stave off daily doldrums, another great hardcore record from Pittsburgh.
You can find copies here

Pink Reason 'Desparate Living'

I'm beyond excited about Pink Reason's upcoming album 'Shit In The Garden' on Siltbreeze. Spanning a career that must be reaching a decade now, Kevin DeBroux has released nine 7"s and one full length to date. His squalid blues songs instantly sound isolating but, don't describe being lonely but being a loner. His approach to writing songs turns the ugly into something beautiful, from using broken equipment to dealing with crass subject matter his brilliantly disaffected songs are Lo-Fi in the very truest sense of the word, even debasing it.

To wet our appetite for the upcoming album Almost Ready has put out EP 'Desperate Living'. DeBroux's songs continue to have an element of emotional violence in them, "Alienation, my best friend" is sung/spoken through noisy thrashing guitars and drums on second track "Song With No Name". The abrasive manner in which the instruments are played combined with a wall of reverb and cold, tinny recording quality puts all of the sound upfront making the songs confrontational. The thing I'm really thrilled about is, in 2008 Pink Reason put out single "Borrowed Time" (Fashionable Idiots) which was a head spinning Punk number and my personal favourite song by him to date. 'Desperate Living' picks up and builds upon where this single left off by flipping Punk into Hardcore. There are few bands that can test the limits of Lo-Fi and achieve what Pink Reason can - this is as raw and real as it gets.

"Song With No Name" on Soundcloud

Pink Reason Facebook