Music

Top 5 Punk Releases: June Edition

by Sam Sutherland

Each month, tons of new music from many taste-spanning genres is released into a fast-consuming, unforgiving audience; it can be tough to get a handle on what’s new before it’s on to the next. In an attempt to highlight the standout releases, at the end of each month, AUX staff re-cap the month in Punk, Metal, Indie/Pop/Rock, Hip Hop, Pop, and Electronica/Dance with the top five releases in each. Consider it your cheat sheet for year-end lists.

Top 5 Punk Releases:
June Edition

 

Fucked Up – David Comes to Life

Enough ink has been spilled about genre-demolishing Toronto hardcore outfit Fucked Up that you probably already have your mind made up about this record. But unless your mind has decided that this is an early contender for album of the year, you should take a long, soulful look inside yourself and try to decide if you want to be on the winning side of the weird cultural war that Fucked Up have come to embody.

Touche Amore – Parting the Seas Between Brightness and Me

This record begins innocently enough, but it quickly blasts in with a near-perfect blend of pg. 99-like screamo and ferocious originality. Part of a strange, eclectic mix of bands that emerged from L.A. in the last five years that caused me to reconsider if it might possibly be a cool city after all, Touche Amore channel a universal desperation through the songs on Parting, the kind of isolated and high volume existence typified by a city like Los Angeles.

The Wonder Years – Suburbia I’ve Given You All and Now I’m Nothing

If this record were just the first thirty seconds of opener “Came Out Swinging,” it still would have landed a well-deserved spot on this list. Purveyors of the kind of nasal-voiced pop-punk that makes anyone not born in the mid ’80s cringe in disgust, the Wonder Years have blossomed from a paint-by-numbers punk act into a versatile, intelligent, and surprisingly dynamic pop-punk outfit. Last year’s breakthrough The Upsides hinted at the band’s new direction, but Suburbia has taken shits that were better than that record. It crushes the past and sets a new highwater mark for the band and their contemporaries.

White Wives – Happeners

The thing that keep Chris #2 from Anti-Flag busy when he’s not, you know, doing Anti-Flag, or Wharf Rats, or just generally being a friendly, good dude, White Wives is an exploration of a whole new set of influences for the well-known AF vocalist and bassist. Almost every song here possess an anthemic quality, built on top of a base of Pixies and Replacements worship that occasionally ends up sounding like old Brand New, or a de-whined Further Seems Forever. While the project is sure to interest fans of the members’ day jobs, it’s an album that anyone with a taste for risk-taking punk would do well to check out.

Ampere – Like Shadows

Ampere has never been a band you’re supposed to love listening to; they are aggressively confrontational and musically boundary-pushing, rooted in the spastic guitar work of guitarist Will Killingsworth, formerly of the Orchid. Active since 2002, Like Shadows is easily the best-sounding release in the band’s catalogue, giving all the member’s contributions a chance to compete for the listener’s attention. The clean, crisp sound of this record only makes it a more overwhelming, destructive sonic experience.

Surprises, disappointments and albums to watch for next month

Surprise of the month: Who would have thought that an album by Green Day‘s offspring called Don’t Be a Dick would be as actually totally good as Emily’s Army‘s debut is? Featuring Billy Joe Armstrong’s teenage son on drums, the band (who must have had a hell of a time getting the elder Armstrong to produce this record) is the best incarnation of your own 16 year-old punk outfit, but with the guy from Green Day messing with the knobs and telling you how to sound better, and more like the Clash. The gimmick will lead most people to check this out, but songs like “Broadcast This” are just good, period.

Disappointments: All Time Low still a band, making music.

Out in June: Alkaline Trio’s Damnesia, Bomb the Music Industry’s Vacation, Greg Attonito’s Natural Disaster, Heartsounds’ Drifter, and more.