These days, some things are always certain to be brought along with the change of seasons. A disappointing polling result, freakish and ominous weather or a new project from absurdly prolific, DIY garage rocker Ty Segall. Having already brought out the best album he’s ever made at the beginning of the year – and fully unlocking the potential of his inner weirdo – seemingly isn’t enough for Ty in 2016, so he’s back with another band. Joining Ty in Gøggs is Ex-Cult member Chris Shaw (that’s a member of Memphis-based hardcore punk act Ex-Cult, not an ex-member of The Cult) and Charles Moothart, who also collaborated with Segall on their joint project Fuzz.

It would seem Segalls’ influence has been somewhat usurped. There is still the lingering scent of his trademark fuzzed up garage rock, but it’s Shaw’s band the Ex-Cult that asserts its dominance on Gøggs’ sound. While Fuzz is the Segall side-project in ode to the heavy rock and proto-metal of the early 70s, Gøggs pulls on the hardcore punk scene of the 80s and the rota of bands on labels such as SST and Dischord as its main inspiration. On tracks such as ‘Shotgun Shooter’ and ‘She Got Harder’ you’ll largely get what you came into the album expecting: nasty punk rock with almighty riffs and chewed up, lo-fi production. Anything with more nuance or shades of grey is pretty much absent. The self-titled track is a highlight, opening with some ominous-as-fuck bar chords while the bass line tiptoes up a scale like a cartoon character sneaking up some stairs.

Shaw takes on the roll of lead vocalist, adopting the hyper-macho bark of early hardcore a la Henry Rollins. Even behind the drum kit in Fuzz, Segall wasn’t willing to step away from his role as frontman. Here, his distinctive yelp is demoted to the position of offering spectral and almost androgynous backing vocals, looming over Shaw’s shoulder like some pervy ghost.

But as an album, this is nowhere near as strict in its parameters as, say, Fuzz is. Overall, Gøggs does a good job at avoiding becoming a total pastiche piece. The hardcore that Gøggs is influenced by began to die when it stopped championing creative freedom and started enforcing a strict dogma about what it had to sound like. It’s a history Gøggs is no doubt fully aware of and the band consciously tries to avoid such trappings. ‘Final Notice’ is probably the album’s most unconventional moment. Opening with Shaw letting out a hoarse scream of pain while de-tuned synths zap and bleep. The drums sound like they’re being played midway through falling down a flight of stairs. Guitars are virtually absent, but that doesn’t stop the song from easily going toe-to-toe with the rest of the album in terms of heaviness. In fact it would probably end up beating a lot of other tracks here.

Particularly in Brighton, Ty is an almost inescapable influence. So much so to the point of copying him has become something of a cliché, even within such a small DIY scene. While many of his imitators reduce his sound down to some reductive signifiers, he isn’t as interested in staying in one place for so long himself.

Of course, there is one thing that acts as a through line connecting Segall’s psyche-garage-rock and Shaw’s hardcore punk and that’s Los Angeles, the location of both Segall’s home-grown scene and the place bands such as Black Flag, which Shaw’s day job is so enamoured with, first started up. The city is the great equaliser in deciding whose sound gets to dominate the album is fully realised both sonically and thematically on the closing track ‘Glendale Junkyard’, an ode to a particularly large pile of trash found in LA. The song uses razor-wire guitar lines and heal-digging tempo changes means your blood is still pumping long after the album has self-destructed in a wall of feedback.

“This is not a side project, it is a necessity”, Shaw insisted on a statement about the band’s first release at the tail end of 2015, whiffing somewhat of insecurity. But overall this is a minor addition to the Segall canon, albeit one that is totally at ease with its status as such. In terms of what albums push or progress his sound and which exist merely as an interesting or entertaining footnote to the main story, this feels like a choice Ty has total control over.
Louis Ormesher