Featured Releases

Rat Cage: Not Asking for Much 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus) Sheffield’s mighty Rat Cage returns with their third full-length, and if you thought now was the time to fall off the Rat Cage bandwagon… well, you’re dead wrong. Rat Cage has had a good idea of who they are since day one, and the influences you hear on Not Asking for Much are largely the same as on previous records: ripping Swedish mangel, hooky punk like the UK Subs, and a big helping of US hardcore, thrown in a blender with venomous vocals and lyrics that offer astute critiques of the current world order. While the style hasn’t changed much, Rat Cage has continued to evolve and refine what they’re doing, and some fourteen releases into their discography, they’re basically unmatched in their skill at writing a punk/hardcore song. The first time you listen to Not Asking For Much, there are heaps of big moments that immediately stand out: the infectious melodic lead riff in “Cracks They Show;” the call-and-response chorus of “Spiders in a Jar;” the album closing singalong, “leave me alone / I’m not asking for much.” While these moments are powerful in and of themselves, where Rat Cage really distinguishes themselves is how they contextualize these moments and deploy them for maximum impact. Bry (who writes and records all of Rat Cage’s music) is a master of building tension by teasing a song’s climax and withholding the cathartic release until precisely the right moment. For instance, “Grass Is Greener” teases its singalong ending by playing the same melody in a bunch of different ways throughout the song—guitar and bass together, bass and drums, acoustic(!) guitar—and if you’ve heard the song before, you’re just waiting for that moment when the gang vocals come in and everyone sings “la la la” together. “Dragged Through the Dirt” does something similar. The song’s chorus is super catchy in its own right, but if you’ve listened to the record already, you no doubt remember the bridge section when the song breaks down to just drums and vocals. The chorus starts the same way, with Bry screaming “dragged through the dirt,” but then instead of the little descending riff that comes after, gang vocals come in with the same melody and everyone in the room is chanting “dragged through the dirt… aaahhh ah ah ah.” Absolutely brilliant. The result of all this songwriting subtlety is an album that gets better every time you play it. You like all those big moments the first time you hear them, but the way each song builds toward those moments makes them hit even harder when you know they’re coming and you’re anticipating them. Undoubtedly one of the best hardcore records 2026 has given us thus far.

Baby Killer: S/T cassette (General Speech) This self-titled tape is the first release from New York’s Baby Killer, a new band featuring some familiar faces who know their way around writing and recording a hardcore record. That this band is comprised of scene veterans is clear from the moment you hit play, as the performance is mega-tight, the songwriting is lean and powerful, and the recording is dialed to perfection. Style-wise, Baby Killer sits at the intersection of UK82-style punk and 80s-style US hardcore. “Baby Killer” (from the cassette Baby Killer by the band Baby Killer) is a dead ringer for Abrasive Wheels, while “Deadly Mistake” channels Negative Approach’s tough, oi!-ish grooves, and the closing “Let’s Gape” adapts the dramatic change-ups of a song like “Ready to Fight.” Vocalist Matty barks the lyrics in a drill sergeant style that bears a passing resemblance to Choke; it sounds powerful and I love how clearly enunciated the lyrics are. While Baby Killer knows exactly what they’re doing, a few unexpected moments inject some personality into the proceedings, like the kind of silly lyrics to “Baby Killer” (the song is not about someone who kills babies, but a baby who kills) and the very unexpected cover of Love’s “7 and 7 Is.” This would have been a great 7” EP, but according to General Speech’s description, the band needed this out quickly, so tape it is. The format is immaterial, though… they could have distributed this recording on Edison cylinder and it would still rip.

Dream World / Subversas: split cassette (self-released) These two Richmond bands team up for one of the most well-matched splits I’ve heard in some time. While Dream World and Subversas sound very different, both make music grounded in the anarcho-punk tradition, but their music doesn’t sound like cosplay. Dream World you know, of course, from their recent debut LP we released on Sorry State, and their four tracks pick up right where the LP left off. The recording is rawer this time with Brendan from Cicada and Hologram (among many others) behind the controls. While the texture of the recording is different than the LP and the vocals are mixed noticeably lower, Dream World still sounds like Dream World: riffy, hythmically dynamic and strangely ethereal. Like their split-mates, Dream World’s lyrics address contemporary social issues like how consumer culture has reshaped our world (“Warehouse”) and the many ways in which social media rots our brains (“Entertainment”), approaching these topics in a way that feels perfectly suited for their powerful, slightly dreamy music. As for Subversas, I missed their earlier tape and haven’t caught them live yet, so this is the first time I’m hearing them. Subversas have a hookier, more traditionally punky take on the anarcho sound with simple, bright-sounding major key riffs and high-pitched shouted vocals that remind me of Naked Aggression or Blatz. The rhythm section keeps things lively with very loose drumming and bass blown out to incomprehensibility. As with a lot of anarcho-punk bands, the lyrics are central. The lyric sheet is worth a read as tracks like “Liberal White Gaze” and “Psychic Death Feed” nail the confrontational tone I want from my political lyrics, while “Disaffected Consent” is more inward-looking, addressing the difficult-to-maintain balance between remaining politically engaged and taking care of yourself. Recommended If you’re looking for contemporary punk that’s honest, vital, and rooted in the genre’s traditions without being beholden to them.

Intensive Care Unit: Waste, Fraud, and Abuse 7” (Active-8 Records) Brand new EP from this Boston hardcore band with an all-star lineup including Ban from Boston Strangler on vocals. What you can expect here is total Boston-style hardcore with hockey-themed artwork, oi!-tinged vocals that owe more than a little to Choke, blistering polka beats, and a whopping fourteen tracks crammed onto this 7”. While Waste, Fraud, and Abuse is tailor-made to please anyone who loves it short, fast, and loud, Intensive Care Unit’s music drips with so much personality that they’ll appeal to more than just die-hard thrashers. While I got really sick of these super-fast polka beats during the Y2K thrash era, in 2026 basing your band around this type of groove feels really fresh, particularly since ICU never settles into that groove long enough for it to get monotonous, constantly switching things up with tempo changes, punches, hard stops, and other expert applications of rhythmic spice. It helps that while the songs are all very short, they’re not all built on the same template, so rather than feeling like you heard the same song fourteen times in a row, you feel more like you’ve been through a From the Cradle to the Grave-style hardcore song suite. ICU’s other big strength is Ban’s vocals, which you’re no doubt familiar with if you’ve spent any time with Boston Strangler or his more recent group Public Trust. Ban takes big swings as a vocalist, clearly enunciating his lyrics on the catchy choruses and even doing a little actual singing on tracks like “Todays Story.” You really have to put yourself out there to hit notes and write singalong parts, and you always run the risk of sounding contrived or goofy, but Ban has the magic touch. Even when he veers into the silly (like the “ooooh yeaaaaah” that ends the record), it just works. This one also boasts an excellent all analog recording and a classic looking layout… it’s the total package, so if you like hardcore, you know what to do.

Ferocious X: Med Vilken Ratt 7” (Distort Reality) Noisy Osaka punkers Ferocious X recently toured the US west coast and, to coincide with the tour, Distort Reality Records released this one-sided 7” featuring four short blasts of their chaotic raw punk. While Ferocious X reps Sweden so hard they actually sing in Swedish, these four tracks feel closer in vibe to Kyushu noise-punk like Confuse and Gai. A big part of that is the totally fried tones, with the lower frequencies blown out with a warm, analog-ish distortion and a biting high end that you feel in your teeth when you crank it loud. Honestly, the recording is pretty bad by most people’s standards, but it’s clear Ferocious X wants it that way. While some raw punk bands focus on heaviness, some on riffs, and others on the music’s central pulse or groove, Ferocious X seems to be about summoning chaos… the loose drumming and the way the instruments bleed into one another in the mix keeps you from ever feeling like you’re standing on solid ground. Even for someone like me who spends a lot of time with music like this, listening to this EP feels like being attacked by a swarm of bees. Capturing this feeling of chaos on tape is much easier said than done (that’s why people pay big money for the Wretched / Indigesti split), so if you’re looking to add a little wildness to your life, Med Vilken Ratt has just what you need.

Guiding Light: Fear on My Own Time 12” (Post Present Medium) I wrote about the demo tape from Texas’s Guiding Light back in 2024, noting that it was perfect for “someone like me who loves the Raincoats and Mecht Mensch in equal measure.” Now Guiding Light is back with their vinyl debut (unless you count the vinyl pressing of the tape) and they continue to make some of the freshest, most exciting punk music around. Fear on My Own Time starts with a total banger, “Shackled by Lust,” which has the catchiest chorus Guiding Light has penned thus far; there’s no way you won’t be singing “you wanna lie and lie and lie and lie and lie” by the end of your first listen (and for every listen thereafter). While that big chorus on “Shackled by Lust” pulls things in the direction of 80s UK indie-pop, the rest of the record is full of the spiky, off-kilter punk we remember from that first cassette. Guiding Light features the same guitarist as Mujeres Podridas, and if that band didn’t already convince you of his virtuosity, this LP should seal the deal. Most songs are built around these complex, serpentine guitar lines that sound like Johnny Marr if he did acid with the Meat Puppets and baked in the southwestern sun for a couple of weeks. The rhythm section keeps everything upbeat and energetic, and while the tempos are fast, Guiding Light seems unconcerned with the kind of heaviness we usually expect from punk rock. And then the vocals (which, as with the tape, alternate between English and German) mostly shout lines dense with words, but occasionally slip into a crystalline melody. Other than the four-minute closing track, “Liebe Im Kapitalistischen Reich,” song lengths mostly hover around the two-minute mark, meaning this 8-song album zips by before you know what hit you. An excellent and singular album that I expect to see on many “Best of 2026” lists when the time comes.

Nu-Viles: A Taste of… the New Wave 7” (Vinyl Dog Records) Vinyl Dog Records—the label started in 1993 by Mike, singer for the Stitches—returns to the fold after a long hiatus, and their first release back is a ripper. The Nu-Viles are the perfect band for Vinyl Dog to return with because they pick up a few threads from the label’s heyday—the 77-influenced neo-beach punk of the Smogtown and the Stitches and the keyboard-damaged squall of Le Shok—and bring them together with the new wave of No Way Records-style hardcore which has been popping up worldwide, but particularly in California. For someone like me who loves all that stuff, this is a perfect recipe for blazing, memorable punk rock. It’s hardly de rigueur for hardcore bands to release proper singles with just one track on the a-side, but “Lead & Speed” is a great song that deserves to be highlighted as such. Lyrically, the song leans on the age-old analogy between speed the drug and speed as in going fast, while musically the song embodies the rush you get from both. It’s catchy as hell, but it’s not really poppy. In fact, there aren’t even any words in the chorus. Each verse ends with the words “lead and speed,” but as they hit what you expect to be the “chorus” part, the vocals and guitar both drop out and the bassist takes center stage for a crazy little run. Maybe it’s because I play bass, but writing a song with no words in the chorus and a bass riff as the hook is just awesome to me. The two songs on the b-side are a little more standard in their structure (i.e. they have proper choruses built around vocal hooks), but they’re just as fast and exciting. This may be a deep-cut reference, but the Nu-Viles remind me a lot of Rabies, one of the first bands Sorry State put out. Maybe it’s the singers’ similar SoCal accents, but they have other things in common too, particularly the busy bass lines. If you liked Rabies you’ll love Nu-Viles, but the Nu-Viles are even faster, nearly hitting Gang Green-type tempos, and the Screamers-esque keyboards lurking toward the back of the mix give it even more density and an extra unsettling edge. Throw in a classic-looking sleeve and you have one hot punk single.

Man&Error: 2025 cassette (self-released) 5-song cassette EP from this project from Berlin, Germany. It can be tough to get small-run cassettes like this from overseas for a decent price, so shout-out to Iffi at Static Age Musik for the assist on these. Man&Error’s Bandcamp calls this “3 songs in 3 weeks by 3 friends in summer 2025” (the fourth song is a cover, and the fifth song is a alternate mix of the cover song), and while it’d be a shame if it’s all we ever hear from Man&Error, I love how these songs have the feeling of a fun summer project, light and airy and definitely not overthought. The instrumental parts are very simple, with the three originals built around simple drumbeats and just a few notes, though there’s still space within this framework for originality and dynamics, like how the main riff in “Away with the Faeries” is mostly just a slide down the guitar neck or the slightly dissonant harmony toward the end of “Bargain Bin.” But while the music has a naiveté about it, the vocals are accomplished and expressive, properly sung with a bluesy tinge that makes me think of PJ Harvey. For points of comparison, I’d put this somewhere between the Young Marble Giants / Raincoats school of minimalist post-punk and early indie-pop like the Shop Assistants and Dolly Mixture. Alongside the three originals, Man&Error cover the Petticoats, a relatively obscure post-punk/indie-pop band who only released one single, but you might also remember their contribution to the (also rather obscure) Scaling Triangles compilation, which got bootlegged in the recent past (and we sold a good number of copies of that at SSR). It’s one of those comp songs that Man&Error covers, so if you feel a twinge of recognition when you hear their version, that might be what you’re remembering. At any rate, if the above references pique your interest, you’ll no doubt find this EP charming and enjoyable.

XUI: Mai Chét (Die Tomorrow) 7" (self-released) We first heard from Oakland, California’s XUI when they released their demo tape in 2022, and since then they’ve released a steady drip of EPs, incrementally refining their fast-and-ugly hardcore attack. XUI sings in a combination of English and Vietnamese (the back cover of Mai Chét says “XUI is Vietnamese for ‘Bad Luck’” across the top), which gives their anti-war, anti-authoritarian lyrics extra weight. The inside cover relates contains some shocking statistics about the US war against Vietnam, presenting them in Discharge-esque, flat reportage-style alongside the slogan, “the fighting ends / the suffering continues.” Heavy stuff. Musically, Mai Chét is a bit different from XUI’s last EP, Realities. That record had a frantic sound with a lot of unexpected rhythmic shifts, looser playing (particularly on the fast parts), and a more blown-out recording, but Mai Chét has groovier, more in-the-pocket playing and a clearer, more balanced mix based around a fuzzy, vintage-y guitar tone. The music rides the line between early USHC and mid-80s Scandi-beat, but the vocals (which are still pretty blown out) have that post-EP Brannon / YDI-type hiss to them, which has a whiff of black metal about it, giving off an evil (rather than tough or confrontational) vibe. All this adds up to a record that feels authentically old-school, but doesn’t sound precisely like anything else I can think of. In fact, I keep listening to Mai Chét over and over, trying to figure out a precise point of comparison and coming up empty. To get in the ballpark, let’s say Crucifix and DC Youth Brigade might be halfway decent reference points, but with several years as a band and numerous releases under their belt, XUI has reached the point where they sound like no one but themselves.

Plastic Tones: Can You Keep a Secret? 12” (Kick Rock Records) France’s Kick Rock Records (Befa from Deletär’s label) and Japan’s Vox Populi Records team up to bring us the third album from this Finnish power-pop band. We’ve carried Plastic Tones records in the shop before, but only in small quantities and they always disappeared before I got a chance to spend much time with them, so I won’t be able to tell you how Can You Keep a Secret? stacks up against the rest of their discography. I can, however, tell you that it’s a killer power-pop record. The bulk of its nine songs mine a vein of sun-bleached, shimmery pop with a hard rock edge. While there are keyboards and polished production, riffy electric guitars are at the center of the arrangements; consequently, this brings to mind the more “rock” end of early 80s new wave like Kim Wilde or Pat Benetar. Sheer Mag works in a similar space (and I can hear touches of peak-era Fleetwood Mac in both Plastic Tones and Sheer Mag), but Plastic Tones feel even more pop, particularly when their sugar-rush choruses hit with their soaring melodies and stacked vocal harmonies. The middle part of the record (tracks 2-8) is just hit after hit, every song building to a hugely climactic chorus. While there’s enough grit that Can You Keep a Secret? fits on a label known mostly for d-beat, I could see fans of a modern indie rock band like Alvvays loving Plastic Tones too. Interestingly, the album is bookended with two tracks that stand out from the others. The leadoff song, “We’re All in This Together,” has a different lead vocalist than the other songs on the album, and while it’s not that much different than the others structurally, the melody is subtler than in the other songs and its impact isn’t as immediate. As for the last track, “You Can Do Whatever You Wanna Do,” that’s also not a huge departure, but it’s at a much faster tempo than the other songs on the album, giving this song a punkier edge that I love (think Nasty Facts) and ending the album on a high note. While Can You Keep a Secret?’s polish may be too much for some of the Sorry State crowd, if you have a pop sweet tooth and a soft spot for early 80s new wave, this record is like a one-way ticket to your happy place.

Subversive Intent: S/T 12” (Rebirth Records) Rebirth Records brings us the debut LP from San Diego’s Subversive Intent. If you listen to the hardcore punk podcast 185 Miles South, you probably know about Subversive Intent already because that podcast’s host Zack plays guitar in the band. That’s relevant info because Subversive Intent pulls together a lot of threads that get talked about on 185, where it’s even money whether they’ll be repping Anti-Cimex, Madball, or Negative Approach at any given moment. Compositionally, Subversive Intent’s songs are grounded in the early 80s hardcore classics, with primarily fast rhythms, lots of d-beats, and riffs steeped in Discharge. The label’s description references Battalion of Saints, and I hear that influence in a lot of Subversive Intent’s riffing… just check out the opening part of the song “Subversive Intent,” which besides that killer opening riff has the album’s hookiest chorus. But while this record takes a lot from early 80s hardcore and d-beat, I also hear things that remind me of late 80s and early 90s hardcore: a couple of big breakdowns, the singer’s youth crew-ish shouted vocals, and some metallic lead guitar flourishes. The production is also tighter and more contained than a lot of modern d-beat. It sounds great (mixed and mastered by Ricky Olson, who did the Ultimate Disaster LP whose sound everyone, including me, raved about), but Subversive Intent doesn’t get into the fizzy, fried tones of, say, Destruct or Public Acid. With 10 tracks in about 12 minutes, this one flies by with the speed and energy of the classic 45rpm 12”s from the 80s we all know and love. Totally ripping.

Sin Offering: Guilty 12” (Beach Impediment Records) Three of hardcore’s best current record labels—Beach Impediment, Sound Grotesca, and Side Two—team up to bring us the debut vinyl from Sin Offering. I’m tempted to start by calling Sin Offering a “death rock” band and noting how much they remind me of Christian Death, but (despite the fact that I just did it) I feel like leading with that sells Sin Offering short. There’s a lot of unoriginal, super budget-sounding death rock / post-punk out there, but Sin Offering doesn’t feel like it’s coming from the same place as those bands. One big way they separate themselves from the pack is by infusing big doses of metal and hard rock into their sound. Take the main riff to “Ingenue,” which wouldn’t be out of place on a Dokken record. While that riff is the most rocked-out moment on Guilty, much of the record is chunky and metallic, somewhere between Amebix and Samhain in its balance of heaviness, rocking propulsion, and gloomy atmospherics. Alongside that focus on atmospherics, most of the album lumbers forward in this zombie walk tempo that keeps everything tense and menacing. The vocals definitely recall Christian Death (the official blurb uses the phrase “girl Rozz Williams”), creepily moaned as if they’re the singer’s last words, and while you won’t walk away from your first listen humming the vocal melodies, they contribute a lot to the haunted vibes. The lyrics are great too. I also love Guilty’s packaging, which expands on the music’s hauntological themes with creepy Victorian imagery and fonts, layouts, and paper/printing choices that feel like wedding invitations from a dark mirror world. While Sin Offering’s music might not be as immediate as face-ripping hardcore or sugar-rush pop, they’re great at building an immersive world and using their music to take you somewhere new and exciting.