Sub Pop seems to have a thing for abrasive noise-rock bands with misleading names. Metz are anything but punchless and error-prone, and new signings His Electro Blue Voice, a band that does little to soothe or calm. On "Sea Bug," the first single from their brazenly-titled debut Ruthless Sperm, the Italian band honors nearly every genre that spent the 1980s and '90s living in the red: there are touches of industrial grind, post-Stooges guitar squall, no-fi synth attack, all of it within three minutes. But above all, it maintains the immersive wholeness of shoegaze, as His Electro Blue Voice sounds less like a jumble of influences or even a rock band than a unified front, hurtling forward.

[from Ruthless Sperm; out 08/20/13 via Sub Pop]