punk Archives - Vinyl From The Vault

Cosmic Psychos “Go the Hack”

sfilzen — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:51:45 +0000

Cosmic Psychos “Go the Hack” 1989. Survival Records (Australia)/SubPop Records (US), reissue on Goner Records. The second full length LP from thunderous Aussie punks that one helpful Discogs reviewer calls “the missing links between Australian pub rock, Detroit proto-punk, and the sludgy, beer-soaked attitude that would later define Seattle’s underground…Cosmic Psychos played with the simplicity of Motörhead, the swagger of The Saints, and the reckless spirit of the Stooges, but filtered it through an unmistakably Australian sense of humour and working-class grit.” I’m going to add AC/DC to the above comparison/quote: while trite it’s also important to note their hard, deep sound that not all 80’s punks had. I’m also not convinced with the grunge comparison unless you consider bands like L7 (who covered the Psychos “Lost Cause”) and Nashville Pussy from that era “grunge” (I don’t). Cosmic Psychos are way too punchy and fast to easily be lumped in with the swampy sludge of 90’s grunge.

We saw our first Cosmic Psychos show almost exactly three years ago at The Rave, along with fellow Australian punks The Chats and then again a little over two years ago in Las Vegas at Punk Rock Bowling (The Chats were there, too). Go the Hack is loud, fun, obnoxious – precisely what I expect from Australian punks. The whole record is a banger but my top picks are album opener “Lost Cause,” the Motörhead-ringer “Rip ‘n’ Dig” and the lightning-speed shredder “Back in Town.”

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Lambrini Girls “God’s Country”

sfilzen — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:22:01 +0000

Lambrini Girls “God’s Country” 2024. City Slang records, purple vinyl. We saw Lambrini Girls last night at the Vic Theatre in Chicago and it was just as feral and insane as expected. The mosh pit not only was tolerated but was actively encouraged – and sometimes orchestrated – by singer/guitarist Phoebe Lunny. Body passing and pogo’ing abounded. Lambrini Girls (the name I finally made an effort just now to understand: they took their name from Lambrini, a brand of pear wine described by a British daily as “aimed at the undiscriminating female drinker” and by Phoebe Lunny as “toilet wine for sluts.” (wiki)

The band played “God’s Country” (see my videoclip on Instagram), a single-only release which is backed with “Body of Mine” (which they did not play last night). The rest of their set was a mix of tracks from their 2023 release You’re Welcome including “Mr Lovebomb,” “Help Me I’m Gay” and “Craig David.” From Who Let the Dogs Out (2025) album they performed “Bad Apple,” “Company Culture, “Y0u’re Not From Around Here,” “Cuntology 101” (as a singalong!) and for their last song of the night the always epically awesome “Big Dick Energy.”

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Gino & the Goons and Chinese Junk “Talk Trash With…”

sfilzen — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:17:46 +0000

Gino & the Goons and Chinese Junk “Talk Trash With…” 2025. Big Neck Records, red & white marbled vinyl. Split EP of upbeat, snotty garage/punk. Gino & the Goons are from South Carolina and it looks like they’ve been around and releasing albums and singles since 2013. Their side of the split (the Goon Side) is sloppy lo-fi perfection with my top picks the ass-shaking “Nothing At All” and the psychobilly tinged breakneck “Mess You Up.” Chinese Junk is a three-piece from the UK and a bit newer (though definitely not younger: both vocalist/bassist Ben Nuthink and guitarist/vocalist Steve Legend were formerly in Griswalds from the 90’s) with single releases starting in 2020 and one full-length LP in 2023. Tighter and more 70’s/80’s punk than garage slop, their side (the Junk Side) has hard-driving, chugga chugga guitar riffs, frenetic drums with a lot of fun subversiveness and snot: “Shut Up About the USA,” “Crimewave” and the sassy, rat-a-tat-tatty “Your Family Are Robots” (“your family are robots, your family is square, your family ain’t real”).

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M545 “Seven” and “I’ll Kill For Yesterday”

sfilzen — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 17:15:33 +0000

M545 “Seven” and “I’ll Kill For Yesterday” two 45″ singles, 2021 & 2022. Yesterday we went to our first ever Packers Halftime Show at Cactus Club to see M545 play a short and sharp 15 minute set (note the Packers helmet on the wall behind the band, they were finishing their set as the 3rd quarter was starting). M545 are a local (Bay View, Milwaukee) punk band, one of neighborhood favorites. They play great classic-style hardcore punk: fast, tight with neither whining nor growling vocals (I can’t stand either end of that spectrum in the punk canon). We picked up both of these singles at the show and both are great! Each has 3 tracks and my top is “Displaced” (from 2020): it has a very 80’s punk vibe with a menacing bass line. Also great is “Let Go” from the same disc with its barely controlled chaos and pogo-friendly beat. Members Juan (guitar/vocals) and Ted (bass/vocals) traded off singing during yesterday’s set while drummer Scottie (also backup vocals) kept things tight and on track.

Fun fact: when googling M545 is you’ll get a hit for jazz musician Pat Metheny as M545 is the catalog matrix for specific localized printing of the 1993 Turkish cassette edition of the Pat Metheny Group’s The Road To You. I’ve never listened to that album but I’m very confident it has nothing in common with Milwaukee’s M545.

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Rocket From the Tombs “The Day the Earth Met The…”

sfilzen — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:54:59 +0000

Rocket From the Tombs “The Day the Earth Met The…” Subtitled “Live From Punk Ground Zero, Cleveland 1975.” 2002. Smog Veil Records. Subtitled “Live From Punk Ground Zero, Cleveland 1975” on marbled vinyl. Spinning this pre-Dead Boys comp of demos and live tracks in honor of Cheetah Chrome (b. Eugene Richard O’Connor 1955, d. September 13th 2026) who died yesterday at the age of 71. We briefly met Cheetah almost 10 years ago in April 2017 at Rush Mor Records (and saw he and Johnny Blitz perform later that night down the street at Club Garibaldi). That’s Cheetah giving Joe bunny ears. Sides 1 and 2 were recorded in February 1975 at the band’s rehearsal loft onto a borrowed reel-to-reel; Sides 3 and 4 are from a show on July 24th 1975 at The Piccadilly Inn in Cleveland (Television also performed and the internet tells me tickets were $3). I wrote about this LP back then and here’s what I had to say:

The Stooges-influenced 70′s band, plagued with internal strife from the outset, split after just a couple of years and formed The Dead Boys (Chrome and Blitz plus the fantastic Stiv Bators). The other half, Peter Laughner and David Thomas (Crocus Behemoth) formed Pere Ubu. This double LP (“the greatest album never recorded”) has early versions of “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” and “Final Solution,” which Pere Ubu would later rerecord and self-release as singles, as well as the entirely insane “Life Stinks” (on The Modern Dance). “What Love Is,” “Ain’t It Fun,” “Down in Flames” and “Sonic Reducer” all showed up on on the Dead Boys’ debut Young Loud and Snotty. RFTT also honor The Stooges with fairly authentic covers of “Raw Power” and “Search & Destroy” plus there’s a sludgy punk version of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”

Here’s a video from someone who was at that Club Garibaldi show in 2017:

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Circle Jerks “When the Shit Hits the Fan”

sfilzen — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:15:59 +0000

Circle Jerks “When the Shit Hits the Fan” limited edition red vinyl, Repo Man version 2025. Trust Records. Last night we saw Circle Jerks perform a full set at the Oriental Theatre in Milwaukee, followed by a Q&A with Keith Morris, Repo Man writer and directer Alex Cox, and Circle Jerks’ bassist (though not when the movie and song was originally released) + Repo Man actor Zander Schloss (he played Kevin, the nerdy, acne + curly mohawk’d friend to Emilio Estevez’s Otto); this all before a screening of the full 1984 film. What an experience!!! The evening started with Alex Cox taking vocals on the song “Repo Man” (by Iggy Pop) – in the Q&A we learned that Keith refused to sing it because he thought the lyrics were stupid…and Alex knew all the words. The Keith came out and the band ripped through a full set of, like, everything like “Coup D’Etat,” “Wild in the Streets” and “When the Shit Hits the Fan.” The Q&A was hilarious – Keith let us know he hated the lounge version of “When the Shit Hits the Fan” — which appears on the b-side of this single and we got to hear all about the filming for that scene in Repo Man (it was the hottest day of the year and they spent something like 18 hours in their custom tuxes waiting for that scene to be shot), how Zander got the role (Chris Penn was the original Kevin) and got hooked up with Circle Jerks, and a bit about Alex Cox’s other past, present and future projects. The absolute highlight of pretty much the whole night was when a little boy who couldn’t have been over 8 years old and under 4 feet tall took the mic to ask, sweetly, “How did you come up with the name of the band” to Keith. The entire sold-out theatre erupted into hysterical laughing and it only got more raucous as Keith proceeded to answer the question in great detail, yet he somehow managed to keep his answer (mostly) PG. We then screened Repo Man, a movie I first saw back in ’86 on VHS (or maybe Beta), its soundtrack one of the punk staples in the 80’s. We purchased a bunch of merch, too, including the show poster (this tour is extremely limited to I think five or six dates around the Midwest), this single plus a Circle Jerks/Descendents split, a t-shirt and one of my favorite show souvenirs ever, a generic Repo Man x Circle Jerks beer coozie.

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Oddfellows “Oddfellows”

sfilzen — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 16:44:56 +0000

Oddfellows “Oddfellows” 2026. Dirtnap Records, Green Noise exclusive clear vinyl variant. Texas OG punks reunited! The band first got together in ’94, played a bit, sort of split into a zillion (famous) pieces and have now reformed for their first LP (they did put out a 7″ in ’95). Oddfellows features Chris Pulliam (The Reds, High Tension Wires) on guitar, bass and vocals; Mark Ryan (The Reds, The Marked Men, High Tension Wires, O-D-EX, Radioactivity, Mind Spiders) also on guitar, bass, and vocals; and Mike Throneberry (The Reds, The Marked Men, Mind Spiders, Mazinga Phaser, Stumptone) on drums and vocals. Meaning we’ve seen Ryan and Throneberry play at least a couple of times at Dirtnap Fests since a few of those bands are also on the Dirtnap label. Oddfellows is punchy poppy garage punk, exactly the Dirtnap vibe, and it’s great! SO many bangers! The snotty “I Hate Rules,” the messy lo-fi “Late on Love,” the ass-shaking “Eraser,” the jangly and incongruously mod happy/snappy “I Burned Your Lawn,” the odd (but awesome) jangle-grunge of “You’ll Never Get to Mars” (think The Kinks meets Screaming Trees – it’s weird but totally works) – what a fun record!

I cannot find a single live performance of this Oddfellows band (there are other ones out there, a rabbit hole I’m not willing to fall into) so here’s The Marked Men’s full set from Dirtnap Fest 2025 at X-Ray Arcade and yes we were there.

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Avengers “We Are the One”

sfilzen — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:28:59 +0000

Avengers “We Are the One” 1977. Originally released on Dangerhouse Records, this version limited edition repress, blue vinyl on Superior Viaduct. We got to see the first wave SanFran punks last week at their first and most likely last show in Milwaukee on the 49th(!!!) anniversary of their very first show on June 11th 1977. “We Are the One” was the Avengers first single (this 3 song 7″ is considered an EP for whatever reason); all three tracks would appear on their 1983 album Avengers. Besides being an excellent straightforward punk anthem, it also is notable as the first time a West Coast punk band issued music on an independent label (Dangerhouse). They of course played “We Are the One” (video of Thursday’s performance below, recorded by Joe), one of their best-known tracks, plus a slew of other old favorites like “The American in Me” and “White N****r” which they obviously have changed the title and lyrics to (“Gold Digger is it’s new name/lyrics). Also on the 7” is “I Believe in Me” and “Car Crash” which I think they played but honestly I can’t remember at this point.

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The Sleeveens “National Anthem”

sfilzen — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 15:50:02 +0000

The Sleeveens “National Anthem” 2026. Goner Records, limited edition white vinyl variant. The latest from Dublin/Nashville punks – love these guys! We’ve been fans since even before their debut LP (on Dirtnap Records) was released having gotten the inside scoop from Dirtnap Ken back in late 2023 or early 2024. National Anthem is a raucous garage soaked good time, reminiscent of the 70s punk sound (The Clash, Ramones, Buzzcocks and Stiff Little Fingers — I think two of the Nashville-based band members still do tech for SLF tours – here’s a photo of Sleeven bassist, who also recorded and mixed National Anthem – doing guitar tech before the Stiff Little Fingers set at Punk Rock Bowling in 2024 ): fun, melodic and a bit snotty. There’s even a bit 60s-style girl group energy (which is of course also like the Ramones) meets jangly power pop (think early Elvis Costello) on “My Pretend Girlfriend” and some country twang on the title track “National Anthem” (though it is sarcastic AF). As usual, my top tracks are the bangers like the opener “If I Was a Casual,” “Six Counties Punk” and the snappy “Cowboy Queen.” Despite the album’s name, there’s just one song that I’d describe having an anthemic sound: the hypnotic, driving “Town of Horseheads” that definitely leans into heavy garage psych territory. There’s just one cover on National Anthem – “The Rat” originally by The Walkmen (2004) and since I’m not familiar with that indie rock band I’ll just go ahead and say The Sleeveens version is great.

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The Bags “All Bagged Up”

sfilzen — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:49:56 +0000

The Bags “All Bagged Up” the collected works 1977-1980. Artifix Records. Last night we had the immense pleasure of seeing the Alice Bag Band at Anodyne Coffee here in Milwaukee – omg she is still so fantastic: vibrant, intelligent, a great storyteller, lovely but still a pissed off punk at heart. A US punk pioneer, Alice Bag led The Bags, a first-wave L.A. punk band that didn’t really receive the national (underground) attention as they’re LA contemporaries like the Germs and Black Flag. All Bagged Up is a compilation of original Bags that Artifix says is “After years (Literally) of hunting, researching, tracking down and finageling, Artifix is proud to present ALL BAGGED UP…the collected works 1977-1980. This 12″ LP represents everything we could dig up by L.A.’s infamous BAGS.” (from Artifix’s website). On it are The Bags first single “Survive” and “Babylonian Gorgon” which, along with “We Don’t Need the English” and “We Will Bury You” were recorded in 1978 at the Dangerhouse recording studio. Last night “Survive” was the encore (video Joe recorded below) and Alice told a delightful story to introduce “We Don’t Need the English” – former Bags bassist Patricia Rainone (Pat Bag) had married The Damned’s Dave Vanian and while the song was not written about him, the band decided it would be funnier to introduce the song saying it was definitely about him. Four tracks were recorded live at The Masque on February 24th, 1978 – this show just 2 weeks after their debut performance at the Masque (at which The Germs Darby Crash – then going by Bobby Pyn – was there and rushed the stage yanking off the bags from The Bags’ heads). Recorded live in 1979 in Oregon are the songs “7 and 7 is” – a Love cover, “1, 2, 3,” “Gluttony” (which Alice played last night, introducing it as a song written by an original Bags member who suffered from an eating disorder – can’t remember if she said which one but it was one of the guys; this song also appears in The Bags appearance in the 1981 Penelope Spheeris directed concert/documentary film Decline of Western Civilization) plus “In Love with Romance” and “Survive.” There’s also a few studio rehearsal recordings and their first demo “Bag Bondage.” Finding any Bags on vinyl has always been a challenge so having some of their classic tracks compiled in one place has been a long time in coming.

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