Genki Genki Panic stands at an unlikely intersection between Mike Patton, Cave In, John Carpenter, Danny Elfman, surf music, and nerddom. Their own description of this album is that it was supposed to be an epic noise/surf concept album, and it seems it languished and they were like "eh, it's the apocalpyse right now, let's just push it out." Oddly enough, I think it settles into something that feels just about right for this band.

The fourth LP from Coffin Daggers is perhaps a bigger turn than having a google-eyed bongo-playing demon on the cover: it's a cover record! Of eleki tunes! For those unacquainted, Eleki is a Japanese instrumental rock & roll music, highly Ventures influenced, typically with very sharp, staccato guitar tones. Admittedly, Eleki is a bit of a weak point in my instro knowledge -- I always kind of hoped I'd go to Japan and blindly buy anything that vaguely fit the bill and learn from there -- but generally good starting points are Takeshi Terauchi and Yuzo Kayama.

You know what they say about the eventual fate of good things, and in this case it's cool skulls on The Apaches album covers. It does not appear that this was their secret ingredient, however as this is my favorite record yet from them.

Surf-a-Tomica made their debut earlier this year with a flashy 7-song release full of great guitar lines and a great, punchy beat. Did they know they were going to release another 7 songs within the same year? While a full album would have suited them well, they took a good formula and made it great here.

The initial few EPs from Les Robots were immediately exciting: they were bar-none the best modern Joe Meek sound-alike that I'd heard. Thankfully, they didn't keep us waiting for long to hear a full-length, and I think it delivers on the promise of those EPs.

Let's Fly to Mars is a high-profile, long-term, cross-continental collaboration between Jeremy DeHart known primarily from The Aqualads, El Firetone from El Ray, Dr. Boris  from Messer Chups, and Dane Carter from The Madeira. Jeremy lays out the story in detail in this post at SurfGuitar101 that I would highly recommend reading.

The Sharawaji Records roster has been growing steadily and adding more high-profile releases. They recently grabbed some attention for the upcoming Chewbacca’s record, but meanwhile this little gem snuck under the radar. Black Valley Moon features the guitarist from Epitaph punk band Down By Law, but they do a great job of carving out a unique surf that feels accomplished and comfortable within the genre.

3 releases in less than a year, perhaps Amphibian Man is getting back to his previous furious pace. Though Metal Goes Surf went back to slapping some reverb on that guitar, these 7 songs are about as dry and punk-sounding as they've ever been, to the point where I'd consider this instro-punk instead of instro-surf.

Cat Sith (or Catsith, they never seem to settle on that) have released 3 EPs and 2 LPs since April of 2018, and every subsequent release gets a little more poisoned.

Despite hearing their first EP, something about this led me to believe that it would be fast-n-nasty metal-tinged surf, but Mare Incognitum actually adopts a pretty normal modern surf sound at a normal pace, just dwelling a bit more on the darker side. That's no complaint though, each of these is punchy and fun, almost always danceable, and with a good sense of when to go big, when to sound a little nastier, and generally how to stay interesting and fun.