Featured Releases

Face-Off: S/T 7” (Donor Records) The UK’s Donor Records continues their hot streak (having recently released scorchers from Mother Nature and Tormented Imp) with this debut 7” from Yorkshire’s Face-Off. While Mother Nature and Tormented Imp both had an arty bent, Face-Off is undiluted hardcore punk. The a-side starts with two rippers, “Lethal Dose” and “State Surveillance,” and while they’re both pitched straight down the middle for lovers of classic USHC, the energy level is off the charts… they really captured lightning in a bottle with this recording. The b-side mixes up the tempo, but even though the tempos decrease slightly over the course of the record, the EP gets more intense as it goes on rather than less. Style-wise, Face-Off reminds me of the full-bore assault of Jerry’s Kids, but with touches of Tear It Up’s desperation and enough groove to give it a slight west coast US feel, but none of this feels belabored… the focus is squarely on the explosive energy. The packaging is great too, with classic stippled punk illustrations on the sleeve and a cool lyric insert that uses a bunch of different fonts and graphic elements to visually underscore the themes of paranoia and information overload in the lyrics. All in all, a brilliantly executed, highly addictive hardcore punk EP.

The Carp: Tangled Up with the Two Tailed Rat 12” (Total Punk Records)The Carp follows up their 2024 debut on Total Punk (which we named Record of the Week when it came out) with their second album. As you’re probably aware, the Carp is part of the Cruelster cinematic universe, the band having started on a whim when Cruelster’s bassist couldn’t make it to one of their practices. While there are a lot of similarities between these related bands, each project has its own identity, and the Carp is (nominally at least) the oi! band, with a simpler, punkier musical approach and a lyrical focus on themes of work and class; the insert for this record has the slogan “working class rock music” emblazoned across the top. “Working class rock music” isn’t a slogan that speaks to me particularly (there are way too many fucking terrible oi! bands out there), but the key thing to understand is that this whole oi! / working class thing is heavily filtered through guitarist / vocalist / lyricist Nathan Ward’s extremely unique perspective and artistic voice. I am a total Nathan Stan, and one of the highlights of my sad little life is when one of Nathan’s bands releases a new record and I get to sit down with the lyric sheet and try to decipher Nathan’s trademark scrawl in order to find out what’s going on in that beautiful brain of his. Tangled Up with the Two Tailed Ratscratches that itch, with Nathan’s trademark potpourri of surrealistic imagery, conspiracy talk, keen political / social insight, and LOL-evoking one-liners. While the lyrics are the highlight for me, the Carp’s music hits hard too, with its skewed take on classic street punk and a few tracks (“I Crave the City” and “Fuck Alex Karp,” for instance) whose hooks land with even more impact than usual. If you loved the first album, you’ll love this one. If you haven’t yet found your foothold in this little world, this is as good a place as any to dive in and get acquainted with one of the coolest and most unique things happening in the contemporary punk world.

Ardenti Crucis: Deeper the Thoughts, Darker the Fear 12” (Asilo Oniron) If you’ve been reading my staff picks for the past year or so, you know I’ve been educating myself on Greek punk, so when this debut record from Thessaoloniki, Greece’s Ardenti Crucis crossed my desk, it piqued my interest. While Ardenti Crucis’s music doesn’t have much to do with the 80s Greek punk that’s been a main focus of my off-the-clock record listening, I think the Sorry State faithful will dig this hard, so I imported a small stack of copies. It’s hard to sum up the sound of Deeper the Thoughts, Dark the Fear with just a few words because it tramples all over the established boundaries between genres. The album starts with a synth-based intro that sounds a lot like Visage’s synth-pop classic “Fade to Grey,” but that instrumental intro gives little indication of what’s to come. Once the proper songs kick in, they’re generally fast and punky, with an oi!-ish vocalist who has a slightly tuneful shout, but the instrumentation is dense and unique. Ardenti Crucis’s rhythm section is fantastic, and there’s so much going on with those parts of the songs that at first it’s tough to focus on anything else. The bassist and drummer are both busy players, but they make it work with strong hooks and melodies rather than aimless wanking. The drumming is particularly strong, keeping a constant, upbeat and punky pulse while filling the songs with interesting rhythmic ideas. There’s this one thing the drummer does that I really love where they’ll switch back and forth between that kind of standard post-punk two-handed hi-hat beat (something I really don’t like when it’s deployed generically) and a more conventional rock beat, sometimes moving between these from bar to bar, always in a way that complements what the guitarist and bassist are doing. The guitarist is similarly versatile, moving back and forth between chords and notes, and the synth provides yet another layer, ripping away with their own complementary melodies and rhythms. While the music isn’t similar at all (aside from a general sense of dark melody), the overall effect is similar to something like Leatherface, where there’s so much going on that it can be tough to parse, yet somehow there’s a central core that comes through the maze of details and makes the songs immediate and powerful. Since there’s so much going on, I could see Ardenti Crucis having some trouble finding an audience. Folks who like the recent wave of “cold oi!” informed by post-punk will find a lot to like here, but there’s so much other stuff on Deeper the Thoughts that it doesn’t rest comfortably in that lane. However, those of us who crave novelty in our punk rock will find this a dense but gratifying album.

Active Ingredients: Discography 2x12” (Street Rats Records) Kentucky punk label Street Rats Records brings us a double-LP discography from 80s Lexington, Kentucky hardcore punk band Active Ingredients. Active Ingredients first came on my radar sometime in the early 2000s. This was in the dark days before every punk record ever had been ripped and posted on youtube, and one of my most listened-to records was a bootleg 12” featuring four killer under-the-radar 80s US hardcore EPs in their entirety: Mecht Mensch’s Acceptance, Clitboys’ We Don’t Play the Game, the Catatonics’ Hunted Down, and Active Ingredients’ Bringing Down the Big Boys. That record (alongside a similar bootleg with EPs by the Abused, Antidote, Urban Waste, and the Mob) was huge for me, and was a big part of cementing my love for / obsession with 80s US hardcore. Active Ingredients had a sneering and sarcastic take on 80s hardcore, reminding me of bands like Dead Kennedys, Adrenalin OD, and the Angry Samoans both in the snotty vocal and lyrical approach and the hooky, punky music (as opposed to the harder, more Discharge-informed end of the spectrum). Eventually I found an original copy of Bringing Down the Big Boys, but for some reason I never investigated Active Ingredients further, and it turns out they released a lot more music during their original run. I didn’t even realize Bringing Down the Big Boys is their second EP—they also released a self-titled 7” in 1984—and there was also a cassette-only full-length called Fly Again in 1987. All this is collected on this double-LP discography alongside an entire LP side of totally unreleased demo tracks. Hearing all this new-to-me Active Ingredients music is pretty exciting. After a handful of listens to the discography, I think Bringing Down the Big Boys is the moment where everything really came together for the band, but all the other material is well worth hearing. The packaging doesn’t make it clear when the demos were recorded (maybe that information is lost to the sands of time), but it sounds like some of them pre-date the first EP given their more 70s-punk-informed sound. These songs have a similar air of sarcastic menace to the well-known material, and I imagine there are some 70s punk heads who will think this is Active Ingredients’ best stuff. The 1984 self-titled EP is also new to me, and that basically sounds like a prototype version of the second EP (the two records even start with the same song, “Service with a Smile”). The recording isn’t quite as good as the second EP and the band isn’t as tight, but the songs are just as strong. If you already have the EPs, the real gem of this discography is the 1987 cassette-only full-length Fly Again, presented here on vinyl for the first time. While Fly Again isn’t (for the most part) as fast as the EPs, it still sounds like Active Ingredients, but with a slightly riffier, maybe even sludgier sound. Fly Again sounds a lot like Fang to me, particularly given the tone of sardonic menace that runs through all of Active Ingredients’ recordings. Of course you get the requisite ephemera and flyers (Active Ingredients must have played with every national punk/hardcore band that came through Lexington) on the insert and inner gatefold, plus a second insert written by Dan from Street Rats detailing his personal history with the band and how the discography project came together (fun fact: this was originally supposed to come out on General Speech). Active Ingredients fans will be stoked to own great-sounding versions of all this material, but even if you don’t know the band, any 80s US hardcore deep head will get plenty of play out of this collection.

Twit: Spurts 7” (Plastic Roundie Discs) This debut (as far as I can tell) 6-song EP from British Columbia’s Twit is the second release on the immaculately named Plastic Roundie Discs. The label’s description mentioned Suburban Lawns and X-Ray Spex as points of comparison, and while I can see what they mean, when I threw on Spurts it sounded way different than I would have expected. The biggest thing the description leaves out is how 60s garage-informed these tracks are. All the songs are built on big, clanging riffs that remind me of the early Kinks catalog… you know, the same stuff that inspired thousands of American teens to start garage bands in the 60s. The accents of organ and saxophone add to the 60s feel, but the performances are super high-energy and punk. I’m not sure how much people think about them these days, but the vibe reminds me of the early Shitty Limits singles that made me fall in love with the band, while the vocals remind me of Judy & the Jerks, particularly given all the mundane (and food-related) things from contemporary life that get shouted out in these songs. All six tracks are killer and they fly by in what feels like two minutes. The record has great packaging too, including a glow in the dark cover and an insert that’s printed with glow in the the dark ink on white paper, so you have to look at it in the dark in order to see it. I fully condone this type of obnoxiousness… if you’re going to make a physical thing, why not go to the trouble of making it something interesting or unique to engage with? The only issue is that they only made 200 copies. We’re almost sold out and there is no restock forthcoming, so if you see this in time, pick up a copy and be the envy of all your friends.

Vital Stress: S/T 7” (self-released) 5-song debut self-released 7” from this Cleveland band who is on the Sorry State family tree: Jayson from Knowso plays drums and Richard from Yambag (who we haven’t released a record by, but love) plays bass. “Cleveland punk” can evoke a range of different sounds, but Vital Stress reaches way back to the beginning for inspiration, drawing from bands like the Dead Boys and the Pagans. The first track, “Poison Seeds,” is the best example of this, a Dead Boys-style rager that tacks James Williamson-inspired hot guitar licks onto a song that’s driving and menacing, yet has this subtle undercurrent of melancholy melody. Vital Stress has two singers who alternate songs, and their vocal styles bring very different vibes to their respective songs. Jake’s songs have that desperate, hoarse, Stiv Bators kind of thing that you might expect given what Vital Stress’s music sounds like, while Mickey’s songs are seasoned with a touch of sass. The songwriting here is fantastic, with killer rocked-out riffs, dramatic changes that pull you through the songs and keep them exciting, and lead guitar parts that are ripping but also have a strong melodies rather than aimless flurries of notes. I feel like a ton of bands go for this tough 70s punk sound (who wouldn’t want to sound like the Dead Boys and the Pagans?), but few land on something as compelling as these five tracks. Totally killer.

Exclaim: Fusillade 12” (General Speech Records) General Speech Records brings us a compilation of two cassettes by this obscure 80s Japanese hardcore band from Akita City, Japan. Aside from those cassettes, Exclaim’s only release during the 80s was a track on the Shodoku Gig compilation LP, and (much like previous General Speech reissue subjects Deef) until this reissue, only the deepest Japanese hardcore heads would have known them (I certainly did not). God bless General Speech, though, because this is cool as hell! The lore GS gives in their description is that Dogma Records (G.I.S.M., the Comes, Gastunk) advertised an upcoming LP from Exclaim that never came to fruition, and the tracks from Fusillade show they would have been a perfect fit for the label. Maybe Exclaim isn’t quite as good as the Dogma releases by G.I.S.M., the Comes, or Gastunk (what is?), but they certainly would have been of a piece with the label’s early output in nearly every other respect. Exclaim just has that sound you fell in love with if you’re a huge fan of the aforementioned bands: the driving, Motorhead-ish rhythms, metallic yet haunting lead guitar, vocals that alternate between gruff growls and spooky melodies, and atmosphere for days. The nine tracks from the original Fusillade cassette (which comprise the bulk of this LP) are the primo stuff, with a powerful recording that rivals any of the genre’s classics, while the final four tracks on Fusillade, originally released on a cassette called Final, have a thinner sound and are more musically complex and ambitious (Exclaim seems to have been following a similar trajectory to early Gastunk). I’m glad to have them together in one package, though, especially since General Speech always keeps its releases at the nice price. A little bit of useful context (a band photo where they look cool as hell, reproductions of the original lyric sheets and cassette j-cards, and a brief interview with Exclaim’s drummer Susumu) rounds out the package. Essential listening for anyone who has binged on the 80s Japanese punk classics and remains thirsty for more.

Gimic: New Traditions 12” (Drunken Sailor Records) I was a big fan of this Bristol, UK punk band’s first two 7” EPs, but as much as I liked those records, I had a feeling Gimic would really blossom on a full-length. New Traditions proves my intuition correct. Gimic’s sound is both wide and dense, and the LP’s longer runtime gives the band an opportunity to spread out and allows the listener to soak more deeply into Gimic’s world. And it’s a very unique world! Gimic’s music encompasses all these adjectives that typically don’t go together: raging, earnest, frantic, intricate, melodic, frightening, sublime, delicate… I could keep going, but you probably get the point. The interplay between guitar and bass is a defining aspect of their sound, the two sets of strings winding around one another into these beautifully tangled knots, occasionally locking together to pummel you like a true old-school hardcore band for a couple of bars before careening off in their own directions again. The drummer somehow finds their way through this maze, striking a great balance between giving the songs a strong rhythmic backbone while also letting the string players’ unique dynamic shine. And then there are the vocals, which take enigmatic, impressionistic lyrics and force them through a hardcore sieve, coming out the other end as an unholy scream that you feel in the depths of your gut. If you want to jump in at the deep end of Gimic’s pool, give the track “Disintegrate” a listen. The guitar riff is something else, and particularly when you lay it on top of a nearly-as-complex bass line, the effect is enough to make you dizzy. But then they get to the chorus, Harry finds one of the album’s most memorable vocal melodies, and for a moment Gimic summons the bulldozer anthems of Leatherface’s almighty Mush. While the density and complexity is thrilling, so far my favorite moments on New Traditions are when Gimic backs off the gas just a little on tracks like “Dark, Darker” and “New Traditions,” the latter of which evokes Slint’s sinuosity… but maybe I just like those songs because they give my smooth brain a little more time to process everything Gimic throws at it. God knows Gimic’s music is challenging, and a lot of listeners won’t be up for it, but if you want something that will knock you on your ass with both its technical density and its emotional intensity, New Traditions fits the bill like few other records.

Third World Chaos: New Move for Error 12” (Merciless Records) I’ve really been enjoying the punk and metal reissues that have been coming out on Germany’s Merciless Records lately. We wrote about the excellent crossover LP from Deceased they reissued a while back, and we also covered their reissues of the seminal Pinoy band Dead Ends when they came out (by the way, all these releases are back in stock if you still need them!). Merciless’s latest reissue is a cornerstone of Filipino punk: Third World Chaos’s 1984 full-length New Move for Error. Third World Chaos (who were also known, at various points, as Chaos and Ex-Communicate) was the only Filipino punk band to release vinyl, putting out an ultra-rare single on the major label RCA Victor in 1984 (copies of that sell for around a thousand bucks nowadays!) and New Move for Error on the independent Tower Records that same year (which is also a highly sought-after collectible). Alongside playing in Third World Chaos, guitarist Tommy Tanchanco was also a key figure in the Pinoy punk scene thanks to his cassette label Twisted Red Cross, which documented the Philippines’ punk scene more extensively than any other label (they did the original versions of the Deceased and Dead Ends records Merciless also reissued, for instance). I knew virtually nothing about this scene before Merciless started doing these reissues, and one thing that surprised me when I heard these Filipino bands was how much they sound like Southern California punk bands from the late 70s and early 80s. That’s the case with New Move for Error too, which sounds like it could have come out on Posh Boy Records circa 1980 alongside bands like the Simpletones and the Crowd. A lot of that is probably the singer’s accent, which bears some resemblance to a SoCal surfer drawl, but the music fits too, with that laid-back vibe that evokes the beach at sunset. I am a sucker for that sound, but I also hear a lot of Sex Pistols in Third World Chaos, which is always something I love. The Pistols’ music is a sturdy foundation to build upon, and I like feeling that connection to punk’s prime movers. If you love OG 70s punk and also get a kick out of exploring the worldwide underground, you’ll love New Move for Error, particularly given its clear but bare-bones recording (another way Third World Chaos reminds me of those early SoCal bands). Merciless’s reissue reproduces the record’s original layout and sounds great, and there’s also a ton of paper stuffed inside the jacket reproducing the handful of surviving artifacts from the scene. Some of it isn’t scanned super well, but it’s hard to nitpick when it feels like a privilege to see this stuff at all. My fellow amateur punk historians will be sure to get a ton of mileage out of this one.

Destruct / Absolut: Deafen & Disarm 7” (Acute Noise Manufacture) Two of contemporary d-beat’s heavyweights team up for a new 6-song split 7” that, besides providing a welcome new dose from each band, also displays the range of aesthetic possibilities within this narrowly prescribed sub-genre. Destruct delivers three new tracks, and while they’ve labeled their last few releases as belonging to their “Noise Room era” (since the legendary Tokyo-based recording studio has had a big hand in shaping the sound), they’re not a huge departure from the Bastard-via-Disclose style Destruct has been honing since they started. I will say, though, that the pummeling, virtuosic drumming and brilliantly fried guitar and bass tones here are totally dialed in, and Destruct’s side of the split is one of the best-sounding records I’ve heard in some time, a monstrous assault that’ll make your turntable’s stylus beg for mercy. Absolut wisely decides not to compete with Destruct in sounding bigger and heavier on their three songs. If Destruct’s songs are like one of Dario Argento’s vintage 70s giallos, rendered in high-key color and cringe-inducing detail, Absolut’s tracks are like the 1922 Nosferatu film: smudged, distorted, and covered in a thick blanket of atmosphere. While it can be difficult to grasp the particulars of Absolut’s metal-punk sound through the din, the fits of lead guitar that bubble to the surface periodically are fascinating, labyrinthine eruptions of notes that give the most out-there technical thrash bands of the 80s (Watchtower? Forbidden?) a run for their money. While some will prefer Destruct’s traditionalism and others will lean toward Absolut’s progressivism, any true d-beat maniac will love both sides of this raging slab.

Democracy: Party’s Over 12” (Unlawful Assembly) Unlawful Assembly released a demo tape from Democracy back in 2021, and five years later the band is back with their debut vinyl. In their label blurb, Democracy foregrounds their philosophical stance to the point where they give almost no information about who they are or what they sound like. I’m still not sure where they are from (I’ve seen conflicting reports of Milwaukee and Seattle), but I can tell you for sure they are against democracy and money and are pro-getting high. As for the sound, it’s a grim, evil-sounding take on hardcore that fits in perfectly alongside other Unlawful Assembly groups like Brainwash Victims, Necron 9, and Cicada. The relentless drumming reminds me of Gai and Confuse, while the vocals are higher-pitched and almost squealed, sort of like an angry insect. The recording is totally fried and often coalesces into a roaring blur, punctuated by moments of wild lead guitar and/or the occasional mid-paced part (and, of course, the standout instrumental track “Healing II,” which adapts Robo’s drumbeat from Black Flag’s “Damaged I”). While Democracy is very far from a “worship” band, folks who appreciate the noise-punk aesthetic of bands like Gai and Confuse are bound to appreciate Party’s Over as it walks a similar line between being wild and raging and having a kind of avant-garde strangeness about it. And it’s a beautifully packaged record too, featuring a jacket screened by the Casa Rat Trap collective in Bogotá, Colombia. A very cool pickup for anyone into the weirder side of raw hardcore.

Love Canal: Warheads on Foreheads 7” (11PM Records) 11PM continues two of their missions—carrying forward the tradition of the hardcore punk 7” EP and documenting the fertile north Florida hardcore scene—with this debut EP from Jacksonville, Florida’s Love Canal. Like a lot of the other bands I’ve heard from this region, Love Canal has a nihilistic sound. This makes sense, because from what I’ve seen of northern Florida, it’s a grim place where the political climate is as brutal as the relentless heat and humidity; I’m guessing the opening track, “Land of Hate,” says as much. The thing is, though, like many of the supreme nihilists of 80s punk such as Flipper and No Trend, Love Canal’s music is alive with texture and nuance. “Land of Hate” is a perfect example, featuring a bunch of tempo changes and some cool and catchy guitar work underneath the vocalist’s violent gestalt. Even when Love Canal references common hardcore tropes like the dive bombs and mosh parts in “Canadian Bacon” the weirdness of the bass tone, the slight jankiness of the dive bombs, and the punk-as-fuck sloppiness of the band’s performance means it sounds anything but generic. Love Canal also has a vocalist who really sells it, imbuing every song with a sense of genuine menace. Warheads on Foreheads is a really outstanding record, angry enough to appeal to the hardcore purists while remaining interesting and innovative enough to grab the intention of those of us who have heard hundreds, if not thousands, of competent run-throughs of the formula.