The Penetrators, "Drive Me Crazy"

Warped, frustrated strut from Syracuse proto-punks. Self-appointed "kings of basement rock" find their queen: Christian D'Orbit, the here-today guest fronting this squad of toughs, keeps it saucy, each line encased in prickly spite. Instructive musings on the life of a mannequin occasion the boiling point; primitive dueling guitars keep us guessing. Manlier cuts can be found on the almost-recent Swami anthology, from which the adjoining artwork is lifted.

"Drive Me Crazy"

A Fine Boat, That Coffin! "Ey, haste ne Bombe geköpft oder was?"

Mangled jazz ground into post-emotive oblivion. German technicians approach the asymptote of prog but back off, splicing influences, before the beast can swallow them alive. Peerless — totally unpredictable and occasionally, like the plague of your choice, a little catchy.

"Ey, haste ne Bombe geköpft oder was?"

BRUNCH: Manrae

All-business patiencecore jets the Ebullition groove trans-Atlantic. Leicester boys spin yarns of injury, regret, and the inadequacy of language. By 1995, nothing new, but Manrae's steady builds and articulate mouthpiece — or is it just the accent? — present a new vision of emo composure, measured and contemplative without the "violent" histrionics. This time, chaos ain't me.

"Mr. Leuchter"
"Pacata Hibernia"
"Sleight of Hand"

L'Amico di Martucci, "Invierno y verano"

Thrash italiano. La Piovra justifiably swelled up during their short life, but first there was L'Amico di Martucci, Venetian pugilists with the errant D.R.I. cover and some songs in Spanish. This is one of them, but the high-octane screams aren't the main event — those in tune with American "razacore" and, say, Piovra realize that HC conventions level what phonetic differences do persist between the two tongues. Think of the rhythm section here as a kind of exploratory committee, or a team of chefs: thrash three ways. Again genre conventions take hold: each "verse" shuffles the canonically admissible beats in and out, from a downbeat stomp to double time, back again, and on to blast beats for good measure. Martucci seem playfully in control of the blinders limning their craft, but the little slice-and-dice doesn't distract from the basic songsmithery — never consumes the project but informs it.

"Invierno y verano"

Crystal Stilts, "Converging in the Quiet"

Subdued jangle reapplies Mark E. Smith's three R's in a new idiom. For this quintet in Brooklyn that claims a Vivian Girl on drums and Calvin Johnson's conscience holding the mic, repetition rules the day — no deviation at all from the near-motorik chord structure, and no discernable emotion. Maybe "Crippled Croon" has the superior melody — the whole EP is strong, so don't not look elsewhere — but this one exploits the stubborn circularity to its very fullest potential. Cold-weather pop, Kiwi flavor aside.

"Converging in the Quiet"

BRUNCH: Talulah Gosh

Tinny test runs of four faves, recorded before "Beatnik Boy" made it official. The mix sort of crashes together; only the supple bass asserts itself, bubbling under all the static and pots and pans. "Just a Dream" lags, but "I Told You So" here eclipses the eventual flexi edition, thriving on the ramshackle production, seething, scheming. The earliest yelps from the greatest pop band, template for a legion of unequals. See: '86.

"Steaming Train"
"I Told You So"
"Just a Dream"
"Sunny Inside"

Pants Yell!, "Two French Sisters"

Cambridge pop dons administer one of the most wrenching album-closers in recent memory. Sparse nice-boy plucking washes over the plaintive narrative that, from other lips, might seem bitter and solipsistic. Effortlessly cites the Smiths, but this twee-archivist trio — the record is titled Alison Statton — feels radically unchained to specific forebears. Epic, immediate, definitive — and the spoken interlude is reason enough to leave that office and never come back.

"Two French Sisters"

Finally Punk, "Missile"

Tantrum anthem par excellence. Before their extant hiatus, these girls slapped together an album of short conniptions on penguins, piranhas, cacti, and gout. Spun at 78, "Missile" would approach Chipmunk power violence; as it stands, FP churns a messy oom-pah beneath indignant faux-puerile rantings, and it's fun, fun, fun. This is my house!

"Missile"

BRUNCH: Belle Epoque

Intricate French dynamicore resists distortion, recalls any number of mid-'90s pleaders, actually keeps the quiet parts interesting. Waltzing guitars and time-sig hijinx populate this titanic 25-minute "EP"; the hoarse vocals are probably embarrassing to a native speaker, but they convince as is. See also last year's Emo Apocalypse comp on React with Protest for an amusing, coerced transposition of this band's long-form chansons into 30-second format.

"La danse finie, les masques tombent"
"Le mal à penser"
"Naufragées volontaires"
"Il est trop tard"
"On cultive la distance"
"Une simple étoile"

Jellyroll Rockheads, "Only Silence"

Osaka hedonists relentlessly make thrash fun again, broken English and all. Precision insanity with a side of tambourine. Enjoy those few seconds of '77 riffage, then duck: the uninflected barrage of syllables rides atop a locomotive of jumpy blast beats and assorted six-string terrorism. Great for calisthenics.

"Only Silence"

Lögnhalsmottagningen, "Va e poängen?"

Unpronounceable Scandimania from Boyracer alumnus. British distillation of Swedish hardcore with nothing lost in translation — and probably the crunchiest record Slumberland has ever released. Proverbial buzzsaw guitars neither bob nor weave; spot-on drum fills keep to the robotic minimum. No real dynamics here, and no catharsis: when business is this good, what's the point?

"Va e poängen?"

BRUNCH: Formaldehyde Junkies

Minnesota nihilists exorcise the spirit of '82 in most economic fashion. Spastic, trebly guitar buttresses a blunt holler and carves out space, machete-like, for each little song (four in three minutes) to breathe. The anti-solo in "NBSD" (Negligent Binge of Self-Destruction), emitted atop a more or less structurally unsound beat — give the drummer some — amuses, and then it's all over.

"Jesus Christ Vice Grip"
"Violence OD"
"PCP Funtime"
"NBSD"

Guyana Punch Line, "Better Off Dead"

Bipartite étude in fear and self-doubt. Negative dialecticians forsake Columbia, S.C., for visions of "Smashist" post-politics, a more coherent counter-ideology than NoU or Orchid could ever muster. And at every turn in GPL's catalogue, the consumer finds himself steamrolled by an acrid, taut, highly specific syncopated figure (here, the rhythmic carpet on which the lyrics "better off dead" float). It's a simple enough trope over 4/4 time, but Bickel and band condense it, clip it, contort it, push it to the point of total absurdity, a veritable hardcore leitmotif. Other tracks on the Irritainment LP feign innocence at first, aping relevant sub-genres before entering the blender and submitting to the Jonestown Sound. This one–two salvo is the core text, as deft an exercise in theme and variation as can be found this side of thrash.

"Better Off Dead (One)"
"Better Off Dead (Two)"