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Before releasing their first full-length last year, Whatever Brains had marked their evolution from flash-bang scuzz-punk into warped and weird post-punk pranksters across a series of singles and limited releases. So when that first long-player was finally released, barely more than eight months ago, there was an already-deep well of experience from which to draw. And so it did. Snotty punk reminiscent of the band's early days, knotty, Fall-informed post-punk and keyboard-fueled visions of melted new-wave all had their say. The Brains threw all their ideas on the platter, and somehow most of it stuck.

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• Second self-titled album

The band's second self-titled album, due out next month, doesn't stray so far from its center. Shorter than its predecessor by four tracks and five minutes, No. 2 is a more concentrated effort sonically as well, focusing on the tightly wound and twisted guitar riffs of Rich Ivey and Will Evans. It could be a pragmatic decision as much as an aesthetic one, as keyboardist Hank Shore left for college in Chicago shortly after recording this album's basic tracks. But it's Shore's keys that give vital depth and color to standout tracks like the anxious Spits-gone-psych "Marquee Warfare" and the frantic "Drink the Salt." Where Shore features less prominently (or not at all), the Brains have gathered some of their strongest and most intoxicating riffs to date. "I'm Going Martin" offers a particularly striking example, its mutant surf riff twisting around Ivey's snotty slur while drummer Evan Williams and bassist Matt Watson keep the rhythm locked into an insistent, driving pulse.

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• Record Store Day bonus 7-inch

With the LP so focused, though, Whatever Brains risk losing the sense of daring offered by some of the first LP's more dramatic detours. That's never the case on the band's new 7-inch EP, prepared as a Record Store Day bonus for local fans only. The A-side finds the band covering hardcore heroes Double Negative ("Looking at the Rats") and new-wave weirdos Wall of Voodoo ("Can't Make Love"), each performed reverently without sacrificing the Brains' own character. On the flip, a noisy demo version of the LP1 rager "Shelves" is countered by Waumiss' slowed-down and spaced-out remix of the same album's "You're Melting."

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After the flood of releases that preceded it, Horseback's 10-month lull has been a dramatic pause. But Half Blood, the long-awaited follow-up to 2009's The Invisible Mountain, has finally been announced, "set for a Spring 2012 release via Relapse Records." No specific date has been set, but at least it's something.

In the meantime, the Chapel Hill outfit helmed by Jenks Miller has assembled two new tracks for a limited edition 7-inch, which is streaming now [see below], thanks to the heavy-centric blog OMG Vinyl.

The A-side, "On the Eclipse," features Miller's now-signature guitar meanders and scorched shriek, suggesting something descended from The Invisible Mountain, and a possible hint of Half Blood. But the song also incorporates a Crazy Horse boogie in its dominant riff, bolstered by organ swells and acoustic-guitar twang.

The B-side, "Broken Orb," is a more abstract offering. Long slabs of guitar-and-organ drone aren't new tricks for Horseback, but the bright electronics and playful drumming that cuts through the fog certainly are.

Individually, these tracks offer two distinct takes on Horseback's ever-evolving sound. But taken together, the tracks' collision of organ-driven prog-rock and charred-black metal draws a clear line to 2010's excellent split 10-inch with Voltigeurs.

"On the Eclipse" b/w "Broken Orb" will be released next month in a one-time pressing of 500 copies—150 on "black shadow" and 350 on "white mist"—via Brutal Panda Records. It's available for pre-order here.

Last Friday at Raleigh's Berkeley Cafe, five mostly new local hardcore bands took to the stage to raise money to help LA grindcore musician Sergio Amalfitano cover his daughter's medical expenses. The altruism was a warm touch, but with Greensboro's Torch Runner serving as the most veteran band on the bill, the gig was representative of a surge of new bands that formed nigh simultaneously—and in part because Raleigh scene titans Stripmines kinda-maybe-almost broke up. Of the bill's five bands, three featured members of Stripmines.

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Earlier this month the band released its excellent LP debut, Crimes of Dispassion, and plans are materializing for a summer tour, but still, Stripmines' future is uncertain.

Stripmines formed around drummer Ira Rogers and guitarist Jeff Young. Rogers knew Matt LaVallee as the drummer of Cross Laws, then Devour. At first, LaVallee planned to play bass in Stripmines, but picked up the microphone when Alex Taylor joined the band.

A year after its first gig in November 2009, the band released the five-song EP Sympathy Rations. By then, Stripmines had established its blunt-force aesthetic. Musically, the band favored sudden but deliberate shifts in rhythm, while Young's guitar skewered open spaces with unexpected barbs. It made for a volatile mix, and LaVallee's vocal invective, delivered with a dry, throaty bellow, was the finishing touch.

The EP's reception was appropriately rabid. Maximum Rocknroll, punk rock's rag of record, named Sympathy Rations its "Record of the Week" in May 2011.

But while Sympathy Rations demonstrated the band's power, the EP's dry production didn't capture the bigger, more explosive sound the band wanted for the LP. Stripmines began recording Crimes of Dispassion in May at Music Mania Recording Studio in Snow Camp, N.C. "We spent a lot of time leading up, preparing for the record," Young says.

The band continued to tighten its playing, writing increasingly more volatile and complex songs. Meanwhile, LaVallee channeled a series of obstacles in his personal life into his lyrics.

"It's like, 'Holy shit. How am I going to incorporate my lyrics into that song and match that level of intensity?'" LaVallee asks, rhetorically. "I think I did, but it meant, like, 'I'm gonna match that level of intensity, but I'm going to have to sit down and think about this and try to write lyrics that are as intense as the music they wrote.' And after a while, if you're not in a good place, that is going to wear on you. And it kind of did."

By the time the recording wrapped in October 2011, LaVallee had had enough. Art was imitating life. "You really have to write from the heart," he says. "And from the heart, in my case, at that point in time, was not a good place to be in."

Without formally announcing it, Stripmines played what was supposed to be LaVallee's last show in October, then entered an unofficial hiatus to look for a new singer.

Sorry State Records, the Carrboro-based label that released Sympathy Rations and had agreed to release Crimes, was supportive of the band's decision. "Obviously it's a lot better if a band is active and playing shows," label owner Daniel Lupton says. "Despite all the internet promotion and everything, the best way for people to hear a band is from them playing shows."

But, he adds, "I care about them more as people than as a band."

Replacing LaVallee, though, proved difficult. "No one was really biting," Taylor admits. "On some message boards where I'd blindly posted 'Hey, we need a new singer,' I heard a couple answers from some people that it's not so much that people don't want to do it, it's just that it's really big shoes to fill. I never thought about it until I heard it from several people."

And if Sympathy Rations was intimidating, Crimes is outright terrifying.

As soon as "Hate Crime" tears through its opening cloud of feedback, the album builds momentum from precise playing and unexpected shifts in direction, and offers little reprieve from its assault. Musically, the band is at its tightest and most bold. And at the front of the maelstrom, LaVallee steers political and personal, without drawing a clear line between the two.

Without LaVallee, Stripmines' remaining trio found new outlets. Taylor joined Old Painless, Abuse. and Lung Matter; Young plays with Taylor in Lung Matter as well as nascent bands Last Words and Violent Outbursts; Rogers started promoting hardcore shows in Raleigh and recently joined the powerviolence trio Mad Dog. The hiatus was a productive period for the band's members, and for the local scene, but with Crimes of Dispassion's release looming, the uncertainty was frustrating.

Eventually, LaVallee agreed to rejoin the band for a handful of spring gigs and the summer tour in support of Crimes, including this Sunday's album release show at Kings. For Stripmines, though, it's just delaying the inevitable. They've opened talks with Jordan Noe, whose vocals already lead Greensboro grinders Priapus, but nothing's official. One way or another, though, Stripmines will continue. Of this, its members are confident. "The three of us still want to be an active band," Taylor says. "Records, shows, tours, that's our main objective."

Young agrees: "That's what we want. We want blisters."

The new Raleigh punk band Infección runs the risk of an overcrowded résumé: Its four members can count Double Negative, Whatever Brains, Brain F≠, Devour, Logic Problem, Grids, Street Sharks, Cross Laws and Crossed Eyes as relevant experience.

But with only one show and a raw three-song practice space video to its name, the quartet of guitarist Daniel Lupton, bassist Rich Ivey, drummer Bobby Michaud and singer David Mirabedini already has differentiated itself from its members’ other activities.

“While there's still a lot of hardcore in the mix, it's much more garagey and catchy,” Lupton told me via e-mail. “We also do a sweet Kinks cover.”

Indeed, the band’s ringing, low-distortion riffs and jittery rhythms offer a crisp post-punk edge, in line with bands like England’s Shitty Limits, Denmark’s Cola Freaks and especially Spain’s Sudor.
The band’s European leanings and sharp, mostly midtempo songs stand out in a local scene facing no shortage of crushingly heavy and blindingly fast hardcore. But even among its European contemporaries, Infección is a stand-out.

Mirabedini, who writes and sings en Español, has a keen ear for rhythm, and springboards easily into hooks — most notably on the band’s best (recorded) song, “Mentiras.” Meanwhile, Lupton’s guitar clangs like Joy Division’s Bernard Sumner’s with none of the chilly gauze, and Ivey cuts cunning countermelodies that poke through the guitar’s treble din. Michaud is left with plenty of space to muscle the band forward with a precise backbeat, offering bold cymbal splashes for emphasis.

You can catch Infección at two upcoming shows: March 13 at All Day Records, with Charlotte bruisers Nö Pöwer, and April 9 at Kings alongside Chicago’s Raw Nerve and Divine Right, and fellow locals Double Negative and Pure Scum.