Well, past EP covers had aliens urinating on planet Earth, sawing a hapless human in half, sucking brains with a straw, and playing Cupid with penis arrows. Now dining on a severed head served on a platter, The Gobs‘ smirking, extra-terrestrial sadists seem to outdo themselves on cartoon gore and snotty irreverence with every release.

Dreamed up by Olympia WA’s ‘J.J. Gobbington’, the violent visitors that adorn The Gobs’ string of demos and EPs signalled a dizzying combustion of synth-slimed punk and turbo garage that thrust The Spits’ fuzzy street-punk into further depths of lo-fi murk. Heading to the new wave of weird’s ‘ground zero’ in Sydney, J.J. immersed himself in the city’s freakbeat community, hanging with kindred miscreants Research Reactor Corp., Set-Top Box, Gee Tee, and lending his trademark guitar attack to Warttmann Inc. side-project 3D & The Holograms. 

The Gobs, the second eponymous release after 2021’s self-titled effort, is another blistering assault of speed-garage DIY soaked in alien detritus and sonic brain bleed. ‘(I’m Gonna) Throttle Ya’ is signature Gob; raucous, buzzing snark that rips at electric speed with static-ridden acceleration. Primitive keyboards add a flourish of atonal psych on ‘My Baby is a UFO’ while the sheer frenzy of ‘Killdozer’ feels like a sequel of sorts to 2021’s ‘2083 AD’ with its dense, juggernaut collision of manic hardcore and whining synth-strings that perversely recalls Phil Spector’s ‘Wall of Sound’ technique.

J.J.’s synthpunk onslaught doesn’t just rely on brute force. Gee Tee’s Kel Mason’s production chops on ’13 Tall Boys’ help twist The Gobs’ acrid garage into a buoyantly hooky strut and push J.J.’s vocals to the fore of discernable clarity, while a descent into garbled, discoloured sewer swagger guided by Satanic Togas’ Ishka Edmeads’ knack for tripped-out punk collages congeals on ‘Laffin at Ya’s’ sonic fetor. The Gobs‘ most frenetic track, ‘Megadrive’, is its simplest: a caustic and crunchy electro-blast fed through a 16-bit crusher fuelled with drum-machine pummel and digital kick (and Europe’s Mega Drive always sounded cooler than the US’ Genesis).

A year away has done nothing to dim the alien charge that powers The Gobs, and J.J.’s embrace of collaboration points to intriguing sonic paths while still maintaining the synth-garage furore. The Gobs is another electric dose of scrambled lo-fi punk which scores further delinquency for the bloodthirsty aliens among us.