Various: Killed by Meth #5 12"

Our take: For the past several years, It’s Trash Records has been pumping out these Killed by Meth compilation LPs full of tracks by current garage-punk bands from the North American rust belt, a largely economically depressed area around the Great Lakes that takes in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and extends north into Ontario, Canada. While the bands that appear on the Killed by Meth compilations overlap with what I think of as the Total Punk world, the vibe that emerges is different than Total Punk’s sunnier, Floridian take on the style. Maybe this is me projecting, but it feels like bands on these comps are grittier, more stripped down, and more in touch with the gray skies and crumbling post-industrial landscapes of their part of the world. I’ve listened to every volume of Killed by Meth, and this 5th entry might be my favorite. While the earlier volumes felt more eclectic, Volume 5 feels more uniform and more of the tracks rely on pop-style songwriting (though there are exceptions, like Archaeas’s sax-laced Flipper-style dirge). Standouts include tracks by Erik Nervous (who never disappoints), Silicon Heartbeat’s Lost Sounds-esque synth-punk, Doppler Radar and the Local News’s New Bomb Turks-esque riffy garage-punk, Mononegatives’ jittery, drum machine-fueled egg punk, and the Stools’ primitive proto-hardcore. If you’re into a broad range of garage-punk styles, this, like all the other volumes of Killed by Meth, will introduce you to a few new favorites and serves as a fine listen on its own.