punk this week: alien nosejob, downtown boys, debt rag + 12 more

Hey, it’s Punk This Week, the punk and rock'n'roll recommendations column from see/saw. It’s been a busy week over here with the Shop Talk chat, Kings Road Merch Union story, and new episode of the podcast. Now it’s time to talk about new records from Alien Nosejob, Downtown Boys, Debt Rag, CS Cleaners, Consensus Madness, and so many others.

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Alien Nosejob: How a Mosquito Operates [Iron Lung/Anti Fade]

Every blurb written about Alien Nosejob in the past five years by anybody with any sense of dude’s work gets into Jake Robertson’s pluralistic and prolific nature. Every blurb about How a Mosquito Operates is going to be about the short/fast hardcore approach and how much we all love Hardcore Jake—how that’s been true since the Iron Lung releases that preceded this record. Will any of us focus enough on how this often sounds like ’77 punk or Goner garage punk melodies amped way the fuck up and shouted over? 

Some facts are just unavoidable, though. Jake has long been the sort of artist who not only rips unreal solos when he feels like it, but writes genuinely classic songs. The shout-along nature of “The Executioner” already feels mythical, both in its subject matter and in its approach, and he keeps knocking them out of the park from there. Of course it’s a hardcore record, but what makes it special is the way the music fully departs the rails on “Nowhere to Go,” a track where his frankly bizarre screams sound like they’re being forcibly pulled out of him. All his guts are on the table across 17 turbo-charged bulldozers calibrated to spin your head around and around and around.