Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! It’s been a busy week here at SSR. It’s one of those moments where I feel like I’m drowning in boxes of records. I’ll need to spend some time next week cleaning up, because there are sick records littered all over the shop and the warehouse. Feel free to buy some of this stuff and make my life a little easier! We just got in a killer new compilation of Totalitär recordings, the ripping new Krigshoder tape, and enough fan club titles to sink the Titanic. The Record of the Week and Featured Releases this week are also on point, so don’t miss those. So, let’s get down to your weekly tour of our wares…

Fatal: 6 Songs 7” (Bunker Punks Discs and Tapes) Fatal is a new band featuring Kevin Mertens, Out Cold’s original singer (who also returned to the band to sing on their final two albums), Jeff and Usman from Scarecrow on guitar/bass and drums, respectively, and some songwriting help from Eric from Government Warning and White Stains (since moving back to North Carolina, Eric has joined the band on bass). Fatal’s sound is explosive US hardcore, with no time for breakdowns, rock and roll posturing, or any other fiddly business. Every time I listen to this record, I take a deep breath before I drop the needle because I’m not going to get much more air before the side ends… the tracks are just too furious, the riffs coming at you with a speed and intensity that’s almost overwhelming (in that respect they remind me of another of Eric’s old bands, Blood Pressure). It’s like Fatal took a killer US hardcore record and pressurized its contents, or like a nuclear reactor that is meticulously controlled, but always on the edge of erupting into chaos and devastation. The packaging is great too, featuring a classic minimalistic punk layout with the band and label names hand-stamped on every sleeve. Forget the flavor of the week. This record is pure, undiluted hardcore punk.

Paranoid vinyl reissues coming soon; free items still going out with orders

October 12 is creeping up on us,, which is the release date for the series of Paranoid vinyl reissues on the band’s own Paranoid Northern Discs (with US distribution by Sorry State). Look for a preorder announcement soon, and hopefully we can have these in your hands around the time of the actual release date. Maybe. (Cross your fingers.) In the meantime, enjoy the free Paranoid posters and sampler CDs that we’re putting into orders from the Sorry State website!

Foreseen’s new LP, Untamed Force, out tomorrow on Quality Control HQ!

That’s right, the new LP from Helsinki, Finland’s Foreseen, Untamed Force, is out tomorrow! We’ll have the regular version for sale on the Sorry State website, but there’s also a limited yellow vinyl version you can get from the Quality Control HQ USA site, which Sorry State administers (if you ask nicely, we can combine your QCHQ order with your SSR order too).

Also, this is a vague as fuck teaser, but we’ll be announcing a new Sorry State release featuring members from the Foreseen camp soon, so be on the lookout for that!

Shaved Ape demo now on streaming services

For all you streamers out there, just a quick note that Shaved Ape’s demo cassette it now available on streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. Add it to your libraries and help us rack up those fractions of cents! Also, note the cassette is currently sold out on our website. I think we might have a few more copies to put up in the webstore after we take inventory, and in a few weeks we should have a small repress too.

Savageheads / Anti-Machine West Coast Tour This December

My pick from Sorry State’s Discogs listings this week is this copy of Forward’s 2014 album Against Their Insanity. Have I written about Forward as a Discogs pick before? Many of their records are used bin staples, and you can get this one for just a hair over five bucks, which is insane to me. If you’re smart, you buy every Forward record you can get your hands on, because they all rule. That’s particularly true of this period, when every new Forward record seemed to get harder, faster, and meaner than the previous one.

Remember, you can always combine your order from Sorry State’s Discogs site with your order from our webstore and save on shipping!

We’re back in Sweden for this week’s edition of Hardcore Knockouts. This week Usman is on some real nerd shit, with two deep cut obscurities. I think I agree with the crowd here… the Protes Bengt record is kind of ridiculous. Ripping, but ridiculous.

Cast your vote in the next edition of Hardcore Knockouts on our Instagram stories next Tuesday!

1. Savageheads: Service to Your Country 12” (Social Napalm Records)
2. Poison Idea: Kings of Punk: Portland Edition 12” (TKO Records)
3. Long Knife: Curb Stomp Earth 12” (Beach Impediment Records)
4. Yambag: Strength in Nightmares 7” (11PM Records)
5. Ignorantes:  Parece Que Tuvimos Demasiados Hijitos 12” (Under the Gun Records)
6. Fatal: 6 Songs 7” (Bunker Punks Discs & Tapes)
7. Shaved Ape: demo cassette (Sorry State Records)
8. Gefyr: S/T 12” (Flyktsoda Records)
9. Primer Regimen: 1983 7” (Discos Enfermos)
10. Personal Damage: Violent Ritual cassette (Test Subject Records)

Here’s our weekly run-down of the top selling releases at Sorry State! Congrats on buying such excellent records, everyone!

Some quick stock updates: Savageheads LPs are nearly sold out, and it looks like the repress will take around 6 months. The Portland edition of Kings of Punk is back in stock now, along with a small restock of Long Knife’s Curb Stomp Earth! We also have a restock of Yambag on the way and a repress of Shaved Ape should be here in a few weeks, too.

999: S/T LP (1978, United Artists Records)

For the past few weeks, I’ve been spending time visiting parts of my record collection I haven’t touched in years. What’s been getting me into these nooks and cranniesis something I like to think of as “playing records,” sort of the way little kids play with toys. This is something I used to be weirdly ashamed of, which would complicated the joy I get from it. However, I remember reading this book by Questlove of the Roots called Creative Quest a few years ago, and it advocated for something like this. I don’t know much about Questlove’s music, but something about Creative Quest caught my eye and made me want to read it… perhaps it was my inference that the book combined popular psychology (a semi-guilty pleasure of mine) with music, which is pretty much exactly what it did. In the book, Questlove advocated spending time just fiddling around with things—reorganizing his iTunes library, editing tags in his music files, rearranging his vinyl and CDs, etc.—without pressuring yourself to create or to get anything from the process except the intrinsic joy. There’s some invisible voice inside my head that says “it should be all about the music, MAN!” and that this sort of administrative work is, at best, a chore, and at worst something that distracts you from engaging with the music itself. However, with Questlove’s permission I’ve allowed myself to “play records” with no pressure to even listen to music. I’ve really enjoyed it, and it’s led me into interesting and under-appreciated parts of my collection.

A big project I’ve been engaged with for the past several months is reorganizing my vinyl. People often ask me how many records I have. I can’t tell you an exact number, but it’s around 4,000. While that’s a huge number for your average person, I think it’s a pretty slim and tidy collection by record store owner / music fanatic standards. I know plenty of people who have a lot more records than I do. Despite the relative tidiness of my collection, it long ago outgrew the shelving I have in my living room, which is where I like to keep my LPs. Once the shelves in the living room filled up, I put a couple of shelves I acquired with a collection in another room, and over the past few years I’ve filled those as well. The records in my living room are alphabetized and entered into my Discogs collection, but the records in the other room are not on Discogs and are alphabetized among themselves, sort of like a whole second record collection in the other room. The big project is to fold those records into my main collection and get them entered into Discogs, shelved, and alphabetized. It’s a big job, particularly when my day job often entails doing very similar tasks at work all day.

Another part of that reorganization project is re-sleeving all of my LPs. This is some nerdy ass shit. Previously, my LPs were in whatever polybag (or not) they came with, which seemed fine for a long time. Then a few years ago I bought a collection where everything was in these crazy nice 5mil crystal clear polypropylene sleeves from Sleeve City, what they call the “ultimate outer 5.0.” There was an extra bag of these sleeves in the collection, so I took them home and put a few of my most valuable and/or treasured records in them, and I was blown away. They made the records look beautiful. After I saw that, I took the sleeves off all the records in that collection and took them home. I decided I wanted to put all of my LPs in these sleeves, but when I ordered a batch from Sleeve City, my order sat unfulfilled for a couple of months until they finally canceled it. I checked the Sleeve City website every couple of weeks, but they were always on back-order. Of course, today, as I go to grab a link for this piece, they’re back in stock. However, I’ve moved on.

Giving up the Ultimate Outer 5.0 ghost, I searched other vendors for something similar. I knew I wanted the crystal clear polypropylene sleeves (rather than the slightly cloudier polyethylene sleeves we use at the shop), but no one sold them any thicker than 2 mil, and all the ones I tried at that weight had problems with seams splitting, particularly with gatefold or oversized LPs. Eventually I found a 2mil polypropylene sleeve I could live with from a company called Clear Bags, and I’m about 3/4 of the way through the re-sleeving process. Even though they’re not precisely what I wanted, they still look fantastic. Having my LPs in uniform plastic sleeves makes them look tidy on my shelves, and with these super clear polypropylene sleeves I can actually read the records’ spines. And when you pull the record off the shelf, it looks nearly as good as it does in the Ultimate Outer 5.0.

Re-sleeving my records has reminded me about a lot of records I’ve had for years but haven’t listened to in ages. It’s also brought to my attention several embarrassing gaps in my collection that I’ve been working to fill. How did I not have Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables on vinyl? Or Generic Flipper? Or Millions of Dead Cops? I’ve plugged those holes, but there are a lot of other common records I’m still after. Hit me up if you want to sell me copies of the first two UK Subs LPs, Zen Arcade, Black Flag’s In My Head… I could go on. I’ve also been having an intense internal struggle over whether I should splurge on a copy of Frankenchrist with the poster, or whether I should settle for a copy without one. It’s not like I’m going to hang that thing up.

Another thing I’ve been doing when I decide to “play records” is work on my digital music library. I have a shitload of music on my phone, but my digital music collection is totally separate from my physical music collection. I think this is because I use my phone to explore new music, while I reserve physical copies for records I want to go back to. Usually when I’m walking or driving and listening to music on my phone, I want to hear something new, but sometimes you just want to blast a classic on a long drive, and my digital music collection didn’t have many of my favorite records in it. So, I started the long process of getting a digital copy of everything in my physical collection into my digital library. It took an afternoon to get through all the numbers and A’s, but getting these titles on my phone has gotten me to listen to things I haven’t heard in ages. The first Acid Reflux EP rules! Absolut’s Hell’s Highest Power melted my fucking brain the other day. I also put on 999’s first album for the first time in many years.

I love 999, and I have a lot of their records. However, at some point I decided that High Energy Plan was my favorite, and that’s the one I always threw on when I wanted to hear 999. High Energy Plan is one of those mongrel records they used to make for overseas markets, compiling some (but not all) of the tracks from the band’s second album, Separates, with a couple of tracks from non-album singles. Usually these mongrel albums pale in comparison to the originals, but High Energy Plan is a back-to-front ripper, and it’s nice that it pops up often in the US, typically for $10-$15. Whenever I find a cheap copy in another store, I always buy it to re-sell at Sorry State to someone who likes the Buzzcocks or the Undertones.

Back to 999, though. It’s really good! There isn’t a dud on the record, and the hits are plenty. “Emergency” is a fucking belter that No Love used to experiment with covering, though we never performed it at a gig. “No Pity” is a high-energy rave-up a la the Damned’s first era, and “Me and My Desire” has a coy, sultry vibe that you don’t hear on too many punk records. I always got the impression that 999 had a pre-punk past, and I hear a lot of David Bowie and other glam / art rock in a track like “Me and My Desire.”

I remember picking up this LP at Amoeba on Haight Street in the early 2000s. I was on a cross-country trip with my ex-wife, and she was patient enough to let me visit a lot of record stores. I remember we were listening to lots of 999 on the long drives, and I had a premonition that I would find this album somewhere on that trip. That was a long shot since 999 has never been pressed in the US, but there it was waiting for me at Amoeba. I had a similar thing happen with Naked Raygun. I had every Naked Raygun LP except Basement Screams, and I was convinced I would find a copy in Chicago. Indeed, it was sitting there waiting for me at Reckless. I remember the $50 price tag stung a bit, but I rationalized it was OK to pay extra for a copy with local provenance. Looking at the Discogs prices now, I guess it turned out to be an OK deal.

OK, that’s enough for this week. What a long, rambling staff pick! Hopefully you gleaned something useful, and if nothing else, don’t feel guilty playing with your records!

What’s up Sorry Staters?

At first, I thought I might write about that new Krigshoder tape this week. Goddeyum that shit rips!! But instead, I decided to go a different route. Last weekend, me, Usman and our buddy Eric hit the road to go meet up with our good homies the Hardy Boys. Also, we had the first ever Fatal band practice. It was a blast for sure.

The usual scenario hangin’ out over at the Hardy’s crib is to pound beers and blast record after record. At some point, someone threw on this new Black Flag live record. Live At “The On Broadway” 23 July 1982 is such a killer moment captured in Black Flag’s history as a band. Not unlike the My War ’82 demos, this gig in 1982 is a rare snapshot of the brief period that Chuck Biscuits was playing in Black Flag. Henry even has a corny moment where he introduces Biscuits, saying something like, “You remember him from a little band called DOA!?” or something like that haha. As far as I can remember, I’ve never heard the opening song of the setlist “No Martyrs” before. It’s definitely a faster-pace hardcore song in the scheme of the Black Flag catalog. It’s killer. But even when they break into Black Flag classics like “Depression” or “Jealous Again”, the band is just playing with this insane power and ferocity. They maybe never sounded tighter. Henry is also doing some improvisations on the vocals that are super cool. But then when they play early versions of songs from My War, they just sound so fucked up and pissed. His banter in between songs is hilarious, like when he complains about the audience untying his shoes. Then when they go into an early version of “Scream,” Henry goes, “You wanna know what happened to me? Listen to this song.” And then he’s just making the most demented sounding screams of agony you’ve ever heard. They’re just on fire, dude. I’m like, damn are they okay? Clearly not. So yeah, needless to say, I absolutely had to bring a copy of this live record home. And now, Sorry State has copies for all ya filthy animals out there!

Anyway, that’s all I’ve gotta this week. What a killer moment in the Black Flag chronology. I wish this lineup had recorded a proper record, but it’s rad there’s a document to look back on. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff

Hi, and thanks for reading. I was out of town last week, but I am back today to talk about nothing in particular, really. I guess I do have a bit of a focus that comes later, hence the photos of my RATTUS records. But to start, I have to describe how I even got there to begin with. I don’t think I ever mentioned anything about SCARECROW’s tour in Europe that we returned from in August. I miss being there still. It was life changing for so many reasons. Anyway, I was really happy to meet a few pen-pals (or my European boyfriends, as my partner calls them, haha.). That may have been the greatest part. One of these pen-pals was Mattis from Skrammel Records. He actually got in the van with us in Uppsala and rode with us for a handful of shows all the way to Hamburg, Germany. It was sooo much fucking fun. It was great to hang out, drink pretty much all day, and exchange stories. Most of the storytelling came from him though, as he has far more interesting stories than me. One of these was the “No speed, no punk” story. That story was about SKITSYSTEM playing Poland 2007. He was pretty surprised I didn’t ever hear about it, especially cos it was caught on video. I think we were talking about speed or something before he brought this up. I finally got around to looking this video up last night, and I lost my mind. Part of me feels bad for enjoying it so much but fuck it. I saw in the suggested videos that the same user uploaded the entire set in two separate videos. I was surprised they played for so long leading up to the point that I linked above, haha wow.

Alright, so the YouTube suggested videos gets me closer to what I am writing about I guess. Another suggestion was a video of a guy doing a SKITSYSTEM drum cover. I recognized the channel, so I clicked on it. The channel is called D-beat Dad. Maybe you’ve heard of it? It’s a video of a guy playing covers from mostly D-beat bands. I remember when I first saw this channel, I clicked on it expecting the guy to suck like most of the drummers with D-beat videos on YouTube. But regardless of his electronic drum set, the dude knows what he is doing. On his channel I see cover songs of a bunch of bands I don’t care for at all, alongside some other well-known bands who rule like GBH, ANTI-CIMEX, DISCLOSE, etc. After watching a few covers of shit songs, I threw on his DISCLOSE cover to “cleanse my palate.” I was surprised to see the dude wearing a RATTUS t-shirt, which unfortunately is judgmental of me... Regardless I instantly I searched for RATTUS on his channel. I definitely want to see this guy play some RATTUS. Not only did I find a few covers, but I found a recent interview with the drummer of RATTUS, Veli-Pekka! Aside from being a bit awkward at times, I thought the interview was really cool. He explains some early history of the band and essentially how DISCHARGE changed their entire musical direction. Previous to DISCHARGE, he said they were mostly influenced by SEX PISTOLS, THE DAMNED, and THE STRANGLERS. I guess that’s not the first time I’ve heard that about an early punk/HC band, though. Anyway, yeah, I’m sorry to not be writing about anything cooler today or a hot new release. I’m not sure if this interview is very popular, so I thought it could be worth mentioning. Alright, thanks for reading everyone and thanks for the support!

Hey Sorry State readers! I hope you’re doing well. I don’t get out much, but I just read that we’re supposed to get some tropical cyclone type shit here in Raleigh? I hope I’m wrong because it sounds a bit dramatic to me. Time will tell.

On to the music. I’m doing something different this week. When I was listing albums on our Discogs site, I was sifting through some boxes of records and I came across Tegan and Sara’s Hey I’m Just Like You. Side note: this album is available to buy from our Discogs site. It’s a damn fine looking and sounding copy with the printed lyric sleeve, just saying. Moving on…

Anyway, I can’t say I know a ton from Tegan and Sara, but I like a few albums, and this is one of them. It’s their NINTH studio album. With this one, I think the sister duo made a really smart and timely move by re-recording demos of songs they had written back when they were teenagers and admittedly had a Kurt Cobain shrine. I have a Kurt Cobain shrine too. I call it “my record collection” and it’s one expensive fucking shrine.

So on this album, you can certainly hear their teenage hearts starting to realize that life can be kind of shit, but they aren’t quite at the point where they know life can be really shit. It’s cool to hear these coming of age songs re-recorded through the lens of experience and wisdom the band has acquired over a couple decades. I imagine it’s like going back and reading your teenage diary and making it sound less cringe. The thing about Tegan and Sara is that I always longed for a much more angsty sound, but angsty doesn’t always have to sound angry. That’s something that took me a long time to realize.

It’s interesting to listen now to the music they made as teens, knowing that they were holding in so much about their sexuality and how they felt about it. On songs like Don’t Believe the Things They Tell You (They Lie), they figure out that the cliche things your parents tell you when you’re young to make you feel better may not actually apply to you. Sara wrote that particular song in the late 90s when she was 15 and going through a period of self-hatred. If that wasn’t a theme of adolescence in the 90s, I don’t know what was. But, good news, I guess revisiting that period of time captured in those songs (while re-recording these demos) was actually really healing for Sara. I don’t know anything about writing music, but when I forced myself to read my high school diaries, it was not therapeutic whatsoever. It was more like “holy shit, you’re the same person, but just… older.”

Please Help Me is a favorite track on this album. Call me crazy or call me 100% correct, but I’d be very surprised if Taylor Swift didn’t listen to a lot of Tegan and Sara as she was doing the indie girl transition. Hold My Breath Until I Die is another good one. It has an unexpected, yet subtle, Stevie Nicks/Fleetwood Mac feel to it. It may be the most mature sounding track on the record.

Yes, the music sounds like teenagers wrote it, because teenagers wrote it. Even if it’s been re-recorded. I think it’s a pretty brave thing to do to go back 20 years and work with that music again, because they weren’t just making their old music sound better. They were also revisiting the pain and confusion embedded in that music. Hot damn, is this a case study or a staff pick? Told you I was going down a different road today. It’s called Existential Crisis Avenue.

All in all, it’s a pretty cohesive poppy record with some nice synthy choruses. It’s a pleasant listen, and oddly nostalgic. Which makes no sense because this wasn’t my vibe growing up. If my mom didn’t bust into my room with a worried look on her face before telling me to “turn that crap down,” it wasn’t on my playlist. However, one nice thing about getting older is going back to music you discarded or overlooked, and discovering you kinda like it now.

But really, someone should buy it on our Discogs. It’s looks and plays great. It’s aesthetically pleasing (which is what drew me in in the first place) with its high contrast black and white art work, and matte textured jacket. I will also write you a special note when I fill your order.

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

-Angela

What’s up Sorry State readers, I hope everyone has had a good week. On Tuesdays when I come into work, I like to flip through the 7” section and see what catches my eye. This week a copy of Vatican Commandos’ Just A Frisbee caught my attention when I noticed on the hype sticker it referred to the band as “Darien, Connecticut hardcore punk legends.” This piqued my interest cause Darien is the town I was born in and where I spent the first couple years of my life, so I decided to check it out. To give a little back history, Vatican Commandos were formed in Darien and were active from ’82-’85 (until a reunion show 25 years later in 2010). Just A Frisbee is the second EP released by the band and even features cover art from a then eighteen-year-old Rob Zombie. I threw it on the record player and was almost immediately hooked. The first song, (We’re) Tipping Cows, is self-explanatory. It’s a song about sneaking up on sleeping cows and tipping them over and it’s fucking awesome. This album features some pretty sweet drums and really catchy basslines and riffs. It’s just a lot of fun to listen to, and knowing it was made by a group of dudes from where I grew up makes it even more enjoyable. Snag a copy of this first reissue of the EP in almost 40 years.

As Jeff mentioned in his staff pick, we have the new Krigshoder tape in stock! Copies are flying out the door, so I wouldn’t hesitate to grip that now if you want one. Also from the Lie Detector shop folks, we have a zine full of flyers from the fertile East 7th scene in Los Angeles, plus Dig Your Own Grave, a zine featuring reprints of interviews from vintage punk zines as well a mix tape featuring a track from every band featured.

Just as I was finishing putting together this week’s newsletter copies of the new Totalitär compilation, 1998-2002, arrived at the shop! Get ‘em while they’re hot!

Speaking of Totalitär, Phobia Records brings us the debut recording by Verdict, a new Swedish käng / d-beat band with some names and faces you might recognize if you’re into shit like the above record. Hot tip: this thing fuckin’ smokes!

We also got in the latest release on Roach Leg Records, the Immagini Postume cassette from New York’s Mirage.

Just today we got in this mysterious demo tape from Final Agony. I don’t know much about this one, except the fact that Aaron Melnick from Integrity does the guitar solos. More on this one next week, I’m sure.

Last week’s Record of the Week, Long Knife’s Curb Stomp Earth, is back in stock after a brief hiatus! We only have a handful more, so grab this one now if you want to own one of the best records of the year.

Speaking of key restocks, Poison Idea’s Kings of Punk: Portland Edition is back in stock! I believe these are the last copies we’ll be able to get, so you know what to do.

We got a few more copies of the latest issue of Artcore, which features a 7” from 80s California punk band Stukas Over Bedrock.

We just restocked the first five Discharge 7”s as well as Why? and Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing. These are records every punk should own, so fill those gaps people!

We just got in a few copies of this book compiling content from the 80s punk zine Raising Hell out of Leeds, England. This thing is about two inches thick and packed with the vintage punk content we all crave.

We have a few official reissues from the crustier end of the spectrum this week: Deviated Instinct’s demo tape Terminal Filth Stench-Core has been pressed on vinyl, as has the obscure split cassette between Asocial and Bedrovlers, both from Sweden. Radiation brings us I O U Nothing from the almighty Broken Bones, and Agipunk brings us a new vinyl pressing of Hellbastard’s demo tape, Ripper Crust.

World Burns to Death’s 00s punk masterpiece The Sucking of the Missile Cock is back in print courtesy of Sonarize Records!

This week we restocked a couple of releases on Phobia Records, including both Phane 12”s and the epic Demons Inside Us compilation.

Finally, if you check the Hot New Releases or All New Arrivals sections of the website, you’ll see that we just got in a giant pile of fanclub titles. Some of my favorites are pictured above, but there are a lot more where that came from. As usual with this kind of thing, stock on these titles is very limited!

Aunt Sally: 1979 12” (Mesh Key Records) Mesh Key Records brings us a beautifully done reissue of this stone-cold classic Japanese post-punk LP. I wrote about the lone LP by Aunt Sally as my staff pick earlier this year, so consult that if you want more detail. The capsule version, though, is that Aunt Sally’s vocalist was so entranced by the Sex Pistols that she flew from Japan to London in 1977 to see them live. She returned to her home country inspired but, like so many of the first-generation post-punk bands in the UK, she didn’t want to imitate what the Pistols had done but make something of her own. Interestingly, 1979 resembles what a lot of early UK post-punk bands were doing. As with groups like Joy Division, Gang of Four, the Slits, and the Fall, bass is at the center of Aunt Sally’s sound. However, besides the powerful rhythm section (which sounds huge thanks to this record’s warm and clear production), I hear traditional Japanese music’s delicacy in Aunt Sally’s sound, particularly the feather-light guitar lines and the odd but deliberate approach to the vocals. This is, simply, a stunning album, and I’m sure that anyone with a taste for the best post-punk and/or Japanese punk and underground music will flip for it. I couldn’t be more excited about having this in stock and to being able to introduce people to it.

Systema: Muerte 7” (Symphony of Destruction Records) It seems like nary a week goes by without me writing about a killer Colombian punk record for the newsletter, and fortunately this week is no different! We last heard from Bogota’s Systema in the summer of 2021, when Symphony of Destruction released their killer first 12”, Ultima Guerra. Muerte picks up right where that one left off, with an intense and snarling sound centered on breakneck rhythms and nimble riffing. As I noted when I wrote about Ultima Guerra, Systema’s style reminds me of classic Finnish hardcore, particularly Kaaos. Perhaps it’s the way Systema channels Discharge’s brutality in their overall approach, but still find plenty of space in their songs for memorable, well-crafted musical moments. The track “Muerte 2021” is a perfect example, and I’ve hummed its catchy main riff (which sounds a bit like Genetic Control to me) ever since I heard it. 5 songs packed with the trademark intensity that’s caused so many of us to fill our collections with records from Colombia over the past few years. Oh yeah, and sick artwork on this one, too.

Zanjeer: Parcham Buland Ast 7” (Symphony of Destruction Records) Symphony of Destruction brings us the debut record from Zanjeer, a band based in Bremen, Germany, but featuring members from Colombia, Pakistan, England, and Germany singing lyrics in Urdu, Punjabi and Farsi. There’s been a lot of (long overdue) interest in the punk scene in hearing from marginalized voices, and Zanjeer seeks to provide, as the label’s description notes, “a necessary window into the lives of people from the global south.” I’ll let you read the lyrics yourself so you can hear what the band has to say about that rather than this white person’s summary, so I’ll keep my focus on the music, which rips! Zanjeer’s sound is pure hardcore without sounding like it’s too grounded in any specific sound… as with the members’ backgrounds, there’s a melting pot approach. “Nakhair” is built around a crushing mid-paced part that wouldn’t be out of place on a Warthog record, but moments like the off-time punches in “Ijtimayi Bemaari” or the lunging beat in “Na Un Moghe, Na Hala” sound unique and distinctive to me. It’s tough to make a record in this day and age that sounds fresh without compromising on the intensity and rippingness, but Zanjeer has done it. And its eye-catching screen printed packaging ensures you’ll want to pull it out and play it every time you flip past it.

R.M.F.C.: Access 7” (Anti Fade Records) Australia’s R.M.F.C. has been kicking around for several years now, putting out tapes and singles on cool underground punk labels. They started out as a dyed-in-the-wool egg punk band, but they’ve matured into something… well, something more mature. Their last single, Reader (also on Anti Fade Records), caught my attention, but Access is even better, a stunning record with two great sides that differ totally from one another. “Access” is built around some hooky guitar work… the main two riffs are the kind of thing you want to hear over and over, and I would have sworn the song was barely a minute long (it’s two minutes and twelve seconds) because every time it ends, I think to myself that it’s way too short and I need to hear it again. The b-side, “Air Conditioning,” is a cover of an obscure tune from 1981 by a UK band called the Lillettes (I haven’t heard the original), and while “Access” is all about the guitar hooks, “Air Conditioning” proves that R.M.F.C. can build a song around the vocals just as successfully. A real standout single.

The Uglies: Planet Uglies 12” (UGL Media) We carried the first full-length from Australia’s the Uglies way back in 2017, and now they’re back with their follow-up, Planet Uglies. If you’ve forgotten what the Uglies sound like (I forgive you… it’s been a long time!), their music lies somewhere in the nether regions between early 80s snotty and sarcastic punk (think Adrenalin OD, Dayglo Abortions, maybe even early Screeching Weasel) and Australia’s long tradition of beefy, high-energy rock and roll. The latter comes out in the excellent guitar work, which is as hyperactive as you want it to be without losing the Malcom Young lurking way in the background… imagine Cosmic Psychos jacked up on speed and a battered copy of Jealous Again. The production is big and bright without being slick, bringing in high-minded accoutrements like background vocals, but using that resource mainly to sound bigger and meaner than they might have otherwise. The lyrics are irreverent as hell, with titles like “Make Me Dumb” and “Big Turd International” giving you a good idea of where the Uglies are coming from. While the Uglies sound a little more pro than a band like Personal Damage, they’d happily blow their nose into the same snot-soaked rag.

Forget: Once the Nightmare Started cassette (Disarmy Records) Forget is one of those international collaborative projects, this one spanning Germany and Sweden, and it comes to us from Disarmy Records, a new label from Krow of the Minneapolis band Hellish View. If any of those names I just threw out ring any bells, it won’t surprise you to find out that Forget sounds a lot like Disclose. Like a lot. Their buzzsaw assault is based on the template Disclose set up on their 90s records (the pre-Disbones stuff), but (as usual with these kinds of records) there are interesting wrinkles for those of us who listen more closely. In particular, I like Forget’s rhythm section, who give these tracks a battering ram-style heft and intensity. It’s not groove metal or anything, but it’s the kind of thing you notice when you ask yourself, “what separates Forget from the legions of other Disclose worshippers?” If you like appreciating the subtleties of unsubtle music, then you’ll like Once the Nightmare Started too, but if you just want something loud and crazy blaring in your ears while you slam beers and hate the world, it works pretty well for that purpose too.

RIP Osamu Sueyoshi