…YOU MISSED • As part of our yearly recap the …You Missed series attempts to collect interesting releases I’d otherwise missed, didn’t cover, or didn’t appreciate until later. This is -NOT- a best of, but a collection of interesting curios worth mentioning as we reflect upon the year. // In an attempt to be more conversational these are more easygoing and casual than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself. — If you find something you dig go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase! If you’d like your music reviewed, read the FAQ and send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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Go ahead and judge a book by its cover in the case of Helsingborg, Sweden-based noise rock trio BACON WAGON who’ve gone for chaotic scuff in building expectations for their whole early 90’s grunge/alt-rock adjacent scumming through the absurd on this debut LP. There is a story here and I dunno if it is one of patience, determination, or just zero pressure terms but these folks formed back in 2003 and eeked out a decent EP (‘Savant‘, 2005) before hitting pause to start a different group, Hooves Not Hands. It wasn’t until a few years ago they’d brought Bastard Grave‘s drummer along and cranked this first record out and I suppose the result is a dilation of experience gained. These songs are more buoyant, clumsier swung in their grooves compared to the stiff-necked ‘Heroin Man‘-esque scrub they’d put out twenty years ago, far less introverted in effect. The barreling scrounge through “A Voodoo That Actually Works” is the early hinge into action here where squalls of guitar feedback and fuzzed guitar tones gear up the momentum of the full listen, most of the album hangs onto this tip. Much as style and the general nostalgic hum of their approach is the pull-in for my own taste ‘Trauma Cake‘ persists for the sake of its dissociative bent behind its noisome grooves, a paling psychedelic excess behind its AmRep-feeling grind.

Polish fellowes BEZ|KRES are another group to suggest an idea from nearly two decades ago has been realized within their debut LP but in this case ‘bez|kres‘ is a logical extension of the atmoblack ’til post-punk band Kły who’d split a few years back and focused on this darkwave/cold wave inspired sound. Described as a conscious pursuit of minimalism there isn’t any extreme metal to be found within these gloomed-over, bopping-low pieces beyond a growling throat here and there. The result is sublimely awkward in combining mecha-tamped out beats next to the album’s coldly diarized station and springing basslines, a confessional deal which still finds time to delve into guitar tirades, unique sounds, and wildly immersive walking paced step. Translating an enigmatic band’s presence, or even just their words (all in Polish) might be a struggle for some but I think it suits the often ambiguous emotional resonance of their work. “srodglos” and “doglos” are the type of song I could loop for hours, probably never understand a word of and still appreciate no less.

When Kalamazoo, Michigan-based duo BRONSON ARM first materialized their sound was naturally centered around the interplay between (baritone) guitar and drums, ensuring a tightly wound relationship featured as their main signature while style pointed to an interest in psychedelia, sludge rock and a general droning distant feel. Here on their first official LP (self-titled compiled past work with new songs) all is more immediately cast, tightened into heavier, noisier aplomb. The huge guitar sound is even bigger as booming production values make it an easy ~half hour to scrape through despite the more challenging tension created by tightened arrangements and politically struck musings this time around. The overall tension created is still stoney, even the more declarative bap of the title track (“Casket Schwagg”) has its own harmonic lushness away from the entirely cold alienation one might expect from the noise rock tag and this helps to characterize what could’ve been an abysmal drain through (for better or worse.) While I appreciate the band’s sound and I feel like we get the live sound and energy of their gig from this record the only thing I was left wanting here was something to break up the feature of that one singular guitar tone as a point of focus.

I’ve always found fan reviews of BRIANBOMBS releases entertaining for how extreme the Swedish band’s work is perceived by folks who’ve barely experienced fringe-ass rock music, diagnosing their own mental illnesses through projected reactions to ‘Obey‘. I’m not immune to this from any angle but I still find it amusing. Their sound has evolved brilliantly from scuffed arty noise punk and its infamous murderous rants to the aped The Stooges‘ riffs (see: “See You Cry”) cycled into a krauty stroll we find across most of this latest album ‘Die‘. Garage punk guitar scrambling (re: “Afternoon Sun”) is a big part of the appeal here for my own taste but once I’d had enough of the slow-rolling rock seated bump of this record the lyrics became the puzzle to unlock here and I spent way too much time parsing what they were up to. Wah pedals, horns, ’79 post-punk chord scraping movement, all of the old machine’s parts are here and they’re no less conflicted in motion as they convey more of this razor’s edge addled mind palace they’re known for. I dunno how dangerous it feels to hang with this record but that doesn’t stop it from being a good time.

Denton, Texas-based “extreme” experimental rock band FLESH NARC offer truly mind-flaying disorder within this second of two full-lengths released this year where their skronking avant-garde noise punk mind meld here on ‘Yokers‘ is appreciably different from the even more loose, performative inanity of ‘You’re Done‘ (2025). From the first peep of opener “Meteor Man” to the absolute post n’ pans rattling sass through “The Executive” this record puts the pressure on early and makes a real racket of it, likely driving away all but the most diabolic specialist ear per the sheer tuneless drag through. Fans of U.S. Maple and Psychic Graveyard should appreciate their approach outright though their own abrasion does evolve beyond those first two songs where psychedelic rock, electro-interference, and the garage rock tumult available to their dual-drummer station allow for all manner of bizarro tunneling. ‘Yokers‘ feels like a brutal tax on the mind, an alarm ringing throughout everyday life which becomes oppressive beyond the usual smartphone induced delirium and as such I had to put it down and check out after just a few spins. In this category that is basically a good thing.

Austin, Texas-based quartet HOLY WATER are now known as SMALL COFFIN but before the name change occurred they’d released ‘Forest Floor‘, an album which further explores their doomed and sometimes blackened take on post-punk. Driven by distorted basslines and variously dueling guitars the main vector here is yet a hymnal yet bleak-toned approach to layered vocals which carry their relatively short vignettes through doldrums. Composed of mostly contained and brief thoughts this album’s 17 tracks aren’t in danger of spreading their idea thin so much as presenting them at too high a density, lingering on a few of their ‘Doolittle‘ inspired drifters along the way but generally quickly cutting through for the sake of easy flow. To me it reads something like no wave but it neither escapes the implication of tunefulness nor generates anything directly memorable from it. They’ve found a sound that warrants more structured, repetitious songcraft though I’m not sure that aligns with their larger goals.

Dark/chaotic hardcore, sludge, and noise rock are the mound built thus far as Tampa, Florida-based crew MEATWOUND re-emerge from the soil one huge leap away from where they’d left off back in 2019 or so. This fourth full-length album, ‘Macho‘, doesn’t render their work unrecognizable per se but no doubt the experimental nature of the quartet’s craft has undergone intense revision within the last five or so years wherein the result doesn’t fully slot into the general “noise rock” category but doesn’t necessarily fit into one category or another as they experiment with electro-beaten moves, harsher noise, and such. Opener “Compressed Hell” kinda promises more than certain parts of the full listen deliver, especially the experiments laced into the back half, but songs like “Obese Variants” and “Frank Stallone” extrapolate more than expected from that initial dynamic. The elemental clash of ‘Macho‘ isn’t the full spectacle here, the points of Unsane-esque groove heavy downturn is where I lock in most, but once you’ve hit “Pigs, Tu” and “Labor” the appeal of this one as a step into fresh skin, something even more thier own should be well apparent.

Seattle, Washington-based quartet MERCY TIES could be believably mushed into the noise rock realm via their sludge informed, brooding take on math-metallic hardcore. This is especially true when their kick into short and shouted songs like “A New Hell Every Day” aim to hit as bluntly as possible but it’ll be the lumbering n’ twanging push through “Survivor’s Guilt” and slow raze of “No Longer Human” that sell the fully bleak picture on offer. There is an appropriately cold, distraught reaction to be gleaned from the kinetic harass of ‘Reflections and Criticisms‘ which’d struck me each time I listened to it, just how dissonant it gets in terms of outlook while still punching at the metallic hardcore side of things was an impressive balance of mechanism and expression. This, Knub‘s record and Florida Man‘s album were my favorites from TGIC Records this year.

Cologne, Germany-based quartet TV CULT present what they describe as “brutal post-punk” where they approximate the chiming mope of the late 70’s/80’s with shouted vocals and a few harder trampling beats. Though I would normally pass by a record like this based on the mildness of its opener (“Communion”) the suggestion that the song “Crack the Whip” intentionally “confronts the moral vacuum left by modern politics, reclaiming Christian values as a form of rebellion.” was such a strange thing to read at face value, an uncomfortably ouroboric logic ’til I’d read what they’d meant by it. It was enough to pull me into a full listen and from there “Overpressure”, “Gavage” and to a lesser degree “Primary Crusher” held up. The dryly shouted vocals will most likely be what keeps this record from blooming in mind in my case, not so much for their harsh affect but moreso the lack of variance in their attack.

‘Chaos Will Send No Warning‘ is a quick five minute EP from Ternopil, Ukraine-based noise rock duo GLITCH RECALL who’ve clearly taken the noisome, spastic flux of earlier Lightning Bolt as general muse for these two pieces. The two minute “The Glitch” which opens this record is appreciably intense in its movement, adrenaline worthy shocks of trampling drums atop no less shocked-out guitar tone. The scrape of their rhythm guitar tone is a boon to the experience, especially in the context of such a compact single which doesn’t waste a moment catching its breath in motion. They show a bit more personality on “Destroy. Disorder. Sabotage” where the effects on the vocals are given more room to extend their wave and their echoic charge building up to a psychedelic merge is probably the highlight of these five minutes of fisticuffs. Instant appeal for my own taste but I’d like to see what they could do with a full album or a solid twenty minutes of material.

Allentown, Pennsylvania-based trio WIPES are more or less an offshoot, or, continuation beyond the split of Tile a grunged-up noise rock band who’d called in quits around 2020 or so. At this point only bassist/vocalist Ray Gurz remains from that previous band and naturally their style has changed, evolved considerably over the course of the last five years. The band’s focus occasionally veers into an ‘In Utero‘-esque lilt but most of the album creates spongey, obsessive and highly repetitious grooves anchored by hardcorish shouts. A song like “Machine” does well to emphasize the spaced and shouted effect which isn’t necessarily ‘End Transmission‘ in spirit but hits somewhere between the exasperated, bass tackling maul of noise/sludge rock (“Taste the Chain”) and something more tunefully present a la demented garage rock (“Afterall”). This second album is all the more miserable than their first and better for the sourness it wrestles out.

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