Bombstrap's Big Enemy: Rotterdam Squat-Punk with No Career Path

Rotterdam squat-punks Bombstrap released their debut album, Big Enemy, via the label Tartarus, and they play Le Guess Who festival next. The Guardian's Richard Foster calls them "one of the last cries of homegrown, communal, anarcho hippy-punkdom." That's the pitch. There is no career path in sight, and they seem fine with it.

The band are based at Het Poortgebouw, one of Rotterdam's most famous squatted centres, and they draw succour from it. Foster frames them as "a noisy counterblast to the increasing and overwhelmingly witless 'circuses-and-bread' gentrification of Rotterdam." Recommended listening, per the paper, if you like Gnod, Discharge or Gwar.

Who fronts the racket?

Visual artist and singer Eva Kah, described by Foster as "a living artwork and phenomenal live performer." Her in-your-face act, he writes, illuminates "those grey areas between righteous anger, nihilistic energy and teeth-grating bad taste." Her vocals, in the review's most committed image, ape "the warning screams and ululations a crone would make over the grave of Achilles." A natural extension of the look.

The uncompromising attitudes on Big Enemy also reveal links to Manchester's punk and squat scenes — former members of the extended Gnod family have played with them. The sound itself stays shifting and amorphous: a gravelly mix of chopped-up rhythms and raw, high-decibel punk guitars that could hark back, Foster suggests, to prog-punk gonzoids such as the Pink Fairies.

What are this week's best new tracks?

Ben Beaumont-Thomas's rolling Add to Playlist picks:

• Clementine Douglas – So Precious. Self-penned and gorgeously self-produced, with a ribbon of synth melody pirouetting from the bottom of the mix; deep, dramatic vocal house from the British singer usually heard belting alongside Calvin Harris and Dom Dolla.
• DJ Heartstring – 3am/4am (ft Monk, 3ndles5 & Crazymike). The German dance duo's breakbeat euphoria gets a flow from countryman Monk, while 3ndles5's spoken English verse carries shades of Real Lies' nocturnal social realism.
• Josh Johnson – Jazz Chord Possession. The jazz saxophonist — sideman to Jeff Parker, producer to Meshell Ndegeocello and Flea — sets two sweetly swaying melodic motifs against each other, with analogue synth burbling out back.
• Isaac Kniveton – Love Groove. British producer's Kompakt-style techno-pop, "like a colourful plastic playground with its edges melting in the sun" — peppy and woozy at once.
• Anamanaguchi – Sucker Punch. The New Yorkers pair crunching, muscular chords with delicate electronic detailing, building a dense shoegaze bank lit from within by neon.
• Metoronori – Lights of the Bay. From the Japanese singer-producer's new album, Forgot Reef Number: otherworldly beauty, wrongfooting shifts, music-box prettiness.
• Waterbaby – Creek. The Stockholm singer-songwriter follows her earlier-2025 album Memory Be a Blade with a waltzing lullaby of wounded emotion and stoic endurance.

The Guardian's Spotify playlist carries the full rolling selection, transferable to Apple, Tidal or other services. Bombstrap, meanwhile, take the whole operation to Le Guess Who — the festival that has made a habit of booking exactly this kind of glorious dead end.