There’s a skewed, upside-down take on weird Americana that hovers subtly throughout Onyon‘s sticky post-punk jangle. While hailing from Leipzig, half-digested country twangs and the soak of Akron, Ohio’s synth-slicked garage heritage permeated intriguingly with their wiry minimal punk on last year’s self-titled EP, evoking dusky, Midwestern prairie expanse as exemplified on the eerie bluegrass of ‘Shining River Utah’. Back with a debut LP via Trouble In Mind Records, Last Days on Earth sees Onyon tread further into the recesses of disquieting indie, taking their gift for rootsy, unpretentious punk hooks and disorientating layers of keyboard squall that imbue their surreal vignettes with a strange, undefinable ‘familiarity’ in each of the album’s twelve songs.

Each of Last Days on Earth‘s tracks feels fed through some aural mangle, warping and twisting their garage lo-fi into misshapen, atonal oddities that inhabit the same sonic weirdness as Snõõper or Prison Affair. Maria Untheim’s keys drench the record in sinuous mania, aptly spiking the irksome ‘O.U.T.’ with whiney, irritable synths that buzz itself around Ilka Kellner’s gangly guitar licks scoring the song’s long list of pet hates with acute vexation. Panicked synth lines sound off like a warning on ‘Two Faces’, a rolling seethe given jarring pricks of electronic trills like an urgent warning against toxic users, while the nervy ‘Alien, Alien’ writhes and wriggles from Kellner’s wilted riffs that add a ratty invasion of cowpunk and eats it from the inside out.

Onyon has a fantastic knack for wringing electric tension out of simple, pared-down compositions. ‘Talking Worms’ uncluttered garage chug captures Pixies style hook with dual vocal interplay made ever more infectious by Florian Schmidt’s jerky bass, and an exhilarating burst of drama is conjured on the organ ripper ‘Goldie’, borrowing Devo’s ‘Gut Feeling’ acceleration with a crackling energy that’s begging to be played live. Yearning hope sits at the album’s centre on the thrilling ‘Blue Lagoon’, an earnest reach into the fantastical with washes of Wipers surf that displays the wide berth of creative flavours their skeletal minimalism frees them to, while also further exploring their Saxon-American idiosyncracies.

Still existing in a strange intersection of lanky, German garage and upside-down country punk, Onyon has expertly expanded on their sinewy post-punk chops with a debut album that’s effortlessly surreal and marries disjointed rhythms with earworm catchiness. Fried and wired, Last Days on Earth manages to find God-given hooks in the strangest places.