Make Out Molly

Hailing from the skirts of Haarlem, Make Out Molly are a new two-piece fuzz band based in Amsterdam city. With a few gigs on their back and a new EP coming out on the 1st of April, they are slowly crawling into the Amsterdam’s tight but welcoming music scene. They will be playing our first Heatwave gig of the year together with Londoners More Kicks, so make sure you come down to check them out at Cinetol on the 29th of March.

Paper Spook

Paper Spook are the new dream duo from Berlin, Germany. They’re young and very fresh and you can clearly tell that these two beauties just wanna have a little bit of fun! Their music sounds like a mix of bubblegum sweet pop and garage punk rock from the 70s.

Ulrika Spacek

The first time I heard Ulrika Spacek during their support show at Old Blue I knew this band would get far in their music career. They have this specific fuzzy sound mixed with this lovely, delicate melody that takes you somewhere else and lyrics that touch your heart. Ulrika Spacek is a five-piece band, originally formed by Rhys Williams and Rhys Edwards in Berlin, but it was when these two moved back to London that the journey began.

Dirty Fences

“We moved to New York after high school because we wanted to be the Ramones,” said Jack Daves, the Dirty Fences’ globetrotting front man. The Brooklyn based band was formed in 2009 by singer and guitarist, Jack, along with guitarist, Max Roseglass, bassist, Max Comaskey and drummer, Max Hiersteiner. These guys are real punk rockers – their music is inspired by a big shared-love of Johnny Thunders, the Ramones, and the Stooges. Combine those punk legends with early KISS and Motley Crue for a hard rockin’ blast geared towards 21st century, sweat-soaked warehouse partiers!

Tall Juan: A Modern Punk Hero

We have people who claim punk is dead, but then there’s us lot who know that it isn’t. It won’t ever die. It’s something you have inside of you. It’s not just a sound. It means something different to everyone. For me, it’s an attitude but for others it, and I don’t understand it, is a safety pin through their ear.

Bazooka: Unconditional Greek Psychpunk

Their music could be described as psychedelic and very raw, like garage punk with a unique sense of youth mixed with frustration vibes. If you are a fan of twin drums that sound like one massive instrument, twin guitar and the singular baselines, here you go, Bazooka is the one for you!

NFT: From Gaggers to Miscalculations

By now, you’ve all read about the history of No Front Teeth Records but let’s get back to the reason why these DIY record labels exist. These labels exist for the sake of punk rock music

Detroit’s Sonic Reducer – Jim Diamond: ‘Exile on Ghetto Street’

Jim Diamond needs no introduction. Since 1996 the wizard proprietor of Detroit’s legendary, now sadly defunct, Ghetto Recorders has put his magic touch on an impressive collection of some of the world’s best records from the garage and real rock n roll scene.

Hvitmalt Gjerde

Here is something quite ‘art school’. It’s a three-piece group called Hvitmalt Gjerde. The band hails from somewhere in a neighbourhood called Minde in Bergen, Norway, which is a very nice place. In fact, I think I may have even seen them in the crowd somewhere at the last Mojo Weekend there in October.

Lucy and the Rats

With its members coming from bands inspired by 60s garage and 77 punk, these melodic, warm and fuzzy harmonies get a special punch that turns the band into some kind of power-pop-punk reinvented-genre.

Only Visiting: Remembering David Bowie

In a way, David Bowie was the leading actor in a generation of Renaissance men and women. He was among the company of brilliant cotemporaries like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, who were also his partners traversing the golden years of rock ‘n’ roll, glam, punk and many genres that defined future generations of artists.

No Front Teeth

Fifteen years ago No Front Teeth Records started as a way to score free records, but today they remain one of London’s most well known small labels. Marco NFT started No Front Teeth [NFT] Records with John Clay in 2000. When they started Marco was looking for a way to get his bands’ music out. The ability to get free records was an added bonus. In 2015 the two-man label celebrated their 15-year-anniversary with a massive contest—one lucky fan got every 7-inch they group has ever released, and 15 winners won test pressing packs. The grand prizewinner got a total of 101 records.

Rest In Power: Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister

The passing of Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister on December 28, 2015 is a loss that is felt particularly hard. Kilmister had suffered from poor health for some time, but his decline became particularly noticeable during the latter months of 2015, during which Motörhead was forced to cancel or cut short several North American gigs; however, there seemed room for optimism as Kilmister kept playing shows. The last of which was on December 11, 2015 in Berlin, Germany.

BOYS – PNKSLM Swedish affair

Punk Slime Recordings (PNKSLM) has put out some topnotch stuff in recent years and BOYS is just a pick of the pop from the punk slime crop that caught my eye.

Acid Mothers Temple

Acid Mothers Temple, who formed in 1995, work as more of a collective than as a traditional band. Its core member, guitarist Makoto Kawabata, had a chat with Heatwave, ahead of their Autumn London show to give us the low down – in very psychedelic terms – of their working process as a band and what to expect from the latest tour.

Peace And Love Barbershop Muhammad Ali (PALBMA)

Manchester was and still is the home to some amazing bands. Some bands you’ve never heard of yet and some that probably calmed down your teenage hate. The bands that come from this city have something about them that others may lack. This observation is no insult to other places, but anything from the North is always going to be a little tougher and have more grit behind it. Would The Smiths sound like they did if they were from London? Probably not.

 Reinventing the Sounds of the 60s: the Skeptics

In 2010 the fully formed Skeptics hit the ground running—De Vraantijk moved to Brussels and struck up a band. The band started playing shows around Brussels in 2011, before moving back to De Vraantijk’s home in La Rochelle. After the band’s base shifted back to France the Skeptics carried on with a different string of drummers.
Highly influenced by the sounds of the 1960s, De Vraantijk’s band took nods from the tunes of the Seeds, the Troggs, the Pebbles, the Back from the Grave compilation, Psychedelic Unknown, Acid Visions and the 1980s Garage Rock revival.

Rock n Roll Is: Remembering Lester Bangs

Lester Bangs’ moniker, “America’s Greatest Rock Critic” is a title well deserved. His dissection of albums was a remarkable, if not a brutally honest representation of his philosophy. He did not suffer fools and above anything else, he valued originality from artists.

Kim Fowley’s Lasting Cherry Bomb

Kim Vincent Fowley was a record producer, musician and manager, best known for his work with the Runaways. I confess that my first introduction to Fowley was not through his work, but through the biopic film, the Runaways. The film characterized Fowley as ruthlessly ambitious and creatively provocative, while being quite the bastard. It’s been said that some of that description isn’t far from the truth.