- Listening to a new band that is actually a step above the rest is always exciting. The fact that Trust Punks are from New Zealand only sours this feeling slightly. Inter-Tasman rivalries aside, Trust Punks are a relatively new band who are on track to put out their third album ‘Double Bind’ on the 22nd of July. Their new album is to be released on Spunk and will spearhead a tour over the weekend of a few Australian venues. Double Bind is a practised and seething post-punk record filled with magnetic bass lines and more than enough post-ironic vitriol to call themselves Trust Punks in the first place.

Borrowing heavily from British and American post-punk/hardcore concepts and adding an injection of youthful vigour and antipodean flavour, Trust Punks have developed into what could be arguably one of the handful of better international post-punk revival acts. Seemingly crucial to all post-punk bands, the content of the lyrics is often obscured by waves of eerie synths and layers of vocal effects and this often blunts the kiwi-twinged yelling: barely audible behind crisp bass and rhythm guitars. So perhaps it's fitting that Trust Punks do not shy away from long and often mostly instrumental tracks: the final track Bank of God almost lasts nine minutes and the album's title track Double Bind is entirely without vocals. The clamouring guitar opening to Leaving Room for The Lord has Archers of Loaf written all over it, and the influences of the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, and Big Black can be heard echoed throughout various finger-picked riffs, bass and percussion lines on Double Bind.

No doubt Trust Punks have been compared to contemporaries like Viet Cong, Iceage, Protomartyr and Cloud Nothings as well, but the connection with the older variety of post-punk seems more directly evident. Paradise, is the most cogent political statement on the album, and also a fair go at most convincing head-shredding banger, which is why it is the pick of the litter this week. Keep an eye for their album launch tour coming to venues in Australian capitals cities almost everywhere.

- Matt Hall.