Among Melbourne’s rich and exhilarating underground music community, one band has been establishing themselves with a reputation for spewin’ the most debauched, raucous, and savagely hilarious punk attacks across Victoria state. Since 2017, high-energy quintet Sandy Dish has been unleashing a steady string of independent releases fizzing with raw, urgent garage hatchets to rock pretentiousness, patriarchal puss, and anything that stands in the way of unabashed, pleasure-seeking sexuality. Further honing their craft and sharpening their sardonic wit since last year’s Album, latest The Whore That Broke The Camel’s Back is another slice of unwashed, unkempt party punk for every millennial just wanting a good time in the contemporary miasma.

Each track across The Whore… is lined-up like a row of hapless target practices for their cutting acerbity. Your mother spouting QAnon and chemtrails from too much Facebook, contempt for your friend’s mediocre boyfriend, and incel poison are some of the subject matter singer-songwriter Brook Storti takes sardonic pot shots at. Album opener ‘Conspiracy Mum’ is as signature a Dish tune can be; Tiffany Fowler’s deeply hooky bass rattles amid furious riffage and surf twangs from guitarists Andy O’Connor and Lachlan Meager turning Storti’s anxieties regarding her nearest and dearest lost to the corrosive black hole of internet conspiracy submersion electric as it is touching. ‘Dump Him’ too captures everything trademark about Sandy Dish’s garage strut and femme punk defiance, an anthem to every girl’s intuitive askance scrutiny of a mate’s middling squeeze. Dish has never sounded so confident than on the furiously accelerated ‘Boy Break’ that ends the album, hardcore pummels with electrifying propulsion scoring the need to hit pause on dating and “masturbate and watch a doco or two” that reach the energetic heights of Descendant’s finest.

An expanded scope of genres and textures is what sets The Whore… apart from previous efforts. Slinky lounge splashes on ‘PhD’ saunter with hissing percussion and soft piano drafts enveloping cynical invectives of withering incel loathing and their mortal fear of sexual agency. An even more intriguing detour is the two-part ‘Space is Fake’, a double trip into the cosmos with cartoonish, Star Trek electronic burbles and phasers, before a processed and caustic guitar judders and squeals in a cavernous soup of synthesizers engulfing Storti’s curious lyrics stating the universe’s fraudulent nature (inspired by Mum’s conspiracies perhaps?). Not only are the new sonic peripheries evidence of growing musical dexterity but also provides further avenues to illustrate their sense of humour.

The Whore… shows that the perpetual house party known as Sandy Dish show’s no sign of abating, with the Aussie punk rabble delivering another garage punk burst that outpaces their prior releases in rock ‘n roll fury, takes a leap forward in new and exciting territory, and takes a stab at the targets of their derision with even greater astute savagery.