💨 Weekly Underground: May 11–17
24 under the radar artists. The Week on IDIOTEQ.com: 18+ genres and styles, 12 countries.
Three reunions (End of the Line, Car vs. Driver, Dead to Fall, a 30-year-old reissue, interviews with Sparta and Mono. Also: an Indian mathcore band that wrote a six-minute song without a single bar in 4/4, and a Norwegian bassist running a powerviolence project with no guitar. And a lot more! Let’s see what we’ve got:
🔥 Hardcore
END OF THE LINE (San Diego, USA — early 90s hardcore) Interview with Matt Anderson and Cory Linstrum ahead of June reunion shows with Downcast at Che Café and The Smell. The band started in 1991 as a one-off farewell show for a vocalist who was quitting hardcore - everyone else kept going for eight months, sparked a label bidding war between Vermiform and Ebullition, and recorded a debut album they knew wouldn’t outlast the band. The reunion is the first time the two bands have shared a stage since 1992.
ALARM! (Stockholm, Sweden — hardcore punk) Second LP “Failure By Design” out May 8 on De:Nihil Records - the title came from a Noam Chomsky-referenced book arguing that financial crashes aren’t accidents, they’re policy choices. Vocalist Gareth grew up in Corby, a steel town his family worked in until the Tories shut it down in the early 80s. Former members of Victims and Outlast reconnecting 25 years later, with new vocalist Henrik Lindqvist back after not releasing music since 2009.
BLUNT FORCE (Philadelphia, USA — metallic hardcore / powerviolence) Debut demo out on Manic Mantra — formed when a guitarist spotted the vocalist’s No Time shirt at a Spectral Voice show and the two stayed talking through the whole gig. Five members from Denver, Pittsburgh, and Philly projects spanning ages 26 to 36. Vocalist Cole, who previously screamed for Raw Breed and Candy Apple, on apolitical hardcore: “Everything is political, to be apolitical is fencewalking bullshit.”
DEAD TO FALL (Detroit, USA — metalcore) Their 2001 demo gets its first-ever vinyl pressing via Tarnished Records — 300 copies, four variants, remixed and mastered by Dereck Blackburn. The original was cut in 24 hours in a warehouse at Cloud City Studios with Mike Hasty, the band sleeping on the floor between sessions. They were still hammering Victory Records’ door before the session existed; they drove overnight from a Georgia show and slept in the van in the Victory parking lot so they’d be there at opening. The unaligned vocal doubles in Blackburn’s remix are deliberate: “If everything lands perfectly, you lose some of the danger.”
DISPOSAL (Barcelona, Spain — death metal / beatdown hardcore) Debut demo “In Reverence to Nothing” — HM-2 buzzsaw tones and 90s NYDM crush in a city where the government keeps shutting down underground venues. The cover art depicts an execution where every figure looks identical to the others: “It’s about executing the worst parts of yourself.”
WRVNG (Belgium — metallic hardcore) Debut EP “Slow Motion Ruins” arriving via Pasidaryk Pats, Vina Records, and Hecatombe Records — four veterans of Belgian punk and hardcore who had the same amount of anger sitting in everyone and decided 2026 called for it. They had the name Wrang until a Dutch black metal band turned up with it on Spotify; they kept the letters, added a V where the A was, and describe the result as “still WRANG, but a little more chaotic.”
TÆEL (Oslo, Norway — powerviolence / no guitar) Self-titled second album out May 1 across seven international labels — fifteen tracks, eleven under a minute, with one bass doing the work of both guitar and bass. Drummer Magnus had “basically never played a blast beat” before joining the band, which Antonio describes as a blessing in disguise: he adds hardcore punk feel to the fills instead of the standard powerviolence approach. The band donates a portion of earnings from every run of shows.
👩🎤 Punk Rock
THE CRIMSON GHOST (Bergamo, Italy — horror punk) Third and final EP “Witchcraft” closes a trilogy: lycanthropy, vampirism, witchcraft, each delivered in three-song installments to honor the 70s concept-album tradition without asking anyone to sit through 45 minutes in one go. Their main musical reference for the trilogy is Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours.” They’ve left a prize at the merch booth for anyone who can name every cult horror film referenced across the nine tracks.
BRAT FARRAR (Melbourne, Australia — garage punk / new wave) Sixth full-length “Group” — first record made as an actual band rather than a solo bedroom project, tracked almost entirely live in a single day at Soundpark. The demo drums, demo guitars, and demo vocals kept getting rejected in favour of the originals because the proper re-recorded takes were too clean. Out on Beast Records (France), Ghost Highway (Spain), and Take The City (Spain), with the Australian side handled in-house.
SMALLWAYS. (Sydney, Australia — punk rock / alt*) Second single “WHAT I’M DOIN’” from debut album BROKE BRAIN Part 2 — their heaviest track yet, no chorus by design, the shape of the song refusing to land. The cover art, hand-drawn by Dirk Kruithof, pairs a priest with a scientist, a king with a soldier, a peasant with a homeless person: same roles across centuries, different uniforms.
🎸 Rock, Alt, Shoegaze, Noise Rock
SPARTA (El Paso, USA — post-hardcore / alt rock) Full sit-down interview with Jim Ward on “Cut A Silhouette,” out May 29 on Equal Vision / Dine Alone. Produced by J. Robbins in seven days at Magpie Cage, with Frank Iero co-writing two tracks, Kemble Walters (Chevelle) on another, and Carlos Arévalo from Chicano Batman on “Midnights.” Ward’s records that left a silhouette on him recently: IDLES, Turnstile, Hayley Williams. On where Sparta is now: “This feels like we’re a fucking band again.”
honeybee (Cleveland, USA — shoegaze / post-grunge) Debut LP “Only Dark Shit” out May 15 on Candlepin, Flesh and Bone, and Pleasure Tapes — the title made YouTube demonetize every clip and ad platforms flag every post. They kept it anyway. Their self-described philosophy “slowpunk”: being punk after you get a mortgage, corporate job, and fewer shows. “Hate is easy. Support your friends.”
TOJO YAMAMOTO (USA — psych noise / noise rock) New 7″ featuring a cover of R.E.M.’s “Man on the Moon” tracked by a guitarist who doesn’t actually like R.E.M., using bass pickups pointed at a kick drum to add a weird texture to the drum sound. The whole band is part of an ongoing cover series tying Memphis wrestling history to noise rock. Guitarist Elwood, currently touring with ZZ Top Wednesday through Sunday, runs the sessions from a tour bus by text.
MARCH DOVE (Warsaw, Poland — grungegaze / shoegaze) New single "Jubilation" from upcoming debut LP "I want to live" — married couple Helena and Mateusz building an album concept around Jungian shadow work, from confronting the worst parts of yourself through to cautious joy at the road behind. Every released song so far points back to the album title without naming it. The band has had four songs out and the album still isn't ready; their youngest daughter arrived and the timeline moved.
GAB DE LA VEGA (Brescia, Italy — acoustic punk rock) 26-date Canadian tour underway — Pouzza Fest in Montreal through Medicine Hat, Alberta, entirely self-booked as always. Songs written in Brescia playing rooms in small Ontario towns most international tours skip, for people he’s never met, in places he’s never been. “It still feels surreal that songs written in Brescia can travel this far and take on a life of their own.”
🖤 Emo, Post Hardcore, Indie, Pop Punk
CAR VS. DRIVER (Atlanta, USA — post-hardcore / emo) “Deja Grateful,” their 1993 debut, back in print for the first time in 30 years via Stickfigure and Lunchbox Records, with Carl Saff on the remaster. The band made record covers out of manila envelopes, slept on top of their van, and played basements and living rooms alongside Current, Policy of 3, Braid, Cap’n Jazz, and Hoover. Drummer James Joyce was 17 when the band started and 19 when they played their last show.
GOL OLÍMPICO (Monterrey / North Carolina / BC — emo / shoegaze) New single “respirar en cuadro” - a six-minute fuzz-and-reverb panic attack song whose title refers to box breathing, the calming technique Andrés Pérez learned from his therapist. Co-produced by Kar of Accidents, who showed Pérez at age 16 that emo could be done in Spanish; Pérez hadn’t written a song in English since. They met in person for the first time at a Tijuana show last October, swapped band t-shirts like footballers at full time, and the collaboration grew from there.
COMPREHENDING / FOR EXAMPLE JOHN (Uppsala, Sweden / Warsaw, Poland — math rock / post-rock) Tour diary and backstory on Comprehending’s first shows outside Sweden - May dates in Poland, June in Sweden. The whole thing almost fell apart when a Stockholm venue cancelled with no notice, leaving For Example John holding hotels and travel plans for a city that dropped off the map. A month of asking around produced a replacement in Örebro one month before the date.
LOU LOU LOUIE! (Nebraska, USA — emo) Debut LP “Social Smoking” — the title comes from a Dragon Ball technique that boosts your power by burning life energy, which the band saw as the perfect analogy for the social smoker. Two-hour drives to shows in either direction, no money for housing so always driving back home after, lost jobs and relationships to the time commitment. They play with each other because there’s basically nobody else in the local scene to play with.
ROBO PUMPKIN (Boston, USA — indie emo) Debut LP “The Autumn Here” — a concept record about two people watching their friends leave Boston one by one while staying in their shared house as the seasons cycle. No guitar on the record, every melody played on bass by Max Adams, for whom “writing with the bass guitar has become second nature” after four albums and ten years of doing exactly this.
EVERETT TEA (Camas, Washington, USA — emo / pop punk) New single “long-tailed cat” ahead of second LP “smoke signals” out July 10 — the lead single was chosen because it shows both extremes of where the record ends up. Debut was written alone in a college dorm; this one had multiple co-writers, a new drummer, and a producer who also played glockenspiel and trumpet. The annual backyard show they run in Camas exists because growing up there, the two founding members mostly just played with each other.
🌊 Post-Rock
MONO (Tokyo, Japan — post-rock / orchestral) Long Q&A with Taka about “Snowdrop,” out June 12 via Temporary Residence Ltd. and New Noise — their first album recorded without Steve Albini in 27 years, tracked at Electrical Audio with Brad Wood. The record was shaped by three losses in four years: Taka’s father, Steve Albini, and his father-in-law, who died on January 1, 2025. At the funeral on January 11, he played a song he’d written for his wife and recorded with Albini in Chicago, still unreleased. The next day, he sat down with everything he’d been writing for years and the album came together at once.
🔩 Metal, Progressive
MANEATING ORCHID (Bengaluru, India — mathcore / death metal) Video premiere for “Cosmic Shroud” from upcoming LP “Cold Logic” — six minutes with not a single bar in 4/4, but written so you can still headbang throughout. The main riff came from spread-triad exercises the guitarist was running; the late-song detour into what they call “jazz metal” pulls from a John Zorn influence. They describe the track as “probably the closest thing we have to a radio single, but just about cacophonous enough to avoid the airwaves.”
THE CHRONICLES OF MANIMAL AND SAMARA (London, UK — progressive rock / post-metal) Fourth album “Misantropi” out June 12 on 12″ vinyl — built as a direct argument against AI music: real instruments, real bodies, no generative tools anywhere on the record including the music video. Vocalist Daphne Ang and guitarist Andrea Papi describe the last few years as having “challenged our ability to see a positive future,” and the record follows accordingly. The music video uses only 20th-century public domain film footage to avoid any AI-generated images.
~ That’s all. I’ll be back, very soon! Karol
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Honeybee was worth checking out!