News

Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! Sorry we’re a day late this week. It’s been a busy one… Record Store Day orders were due yesterday, and we also had a massive batch of preorders to set up on the site (more on that below). The staff actually got their staff picks on time to me yesterday, but when it came time to write my bit the tank was just empty. But I’m back, baby!

Lots to tell you about this week. We have two hot new preorders from one of the best labels going, New York’s Roachleg Records (I can’t wait to hear that Pura Manía LP!), and as I mentioned there are a TON of other upcoming releases in the pre-order section. I’m particularly stoked to have Fipper’s Generic LP back on the shelves soon. In the “shipping now” department, we have a couple of very cool reissues on Spain’s B-Core, a live LP from Laughing Hyenas, and a new dispatch from Leeds’ Brainrotter Records, who have their finger on the pulse of what’s new and exciting in hardcore punk right now. And speaking of exciting labels, Sex Fiend Abomination brings us our Record of the Week, a 3-song demo from Charlotte, North Carolina’s System Maintains that I have listened to about 400 times since it came out.

There’s lots more to cover, plus some great staff picks this week (you’re a fool if you don’t take up Jeff on his Eppu Normaali recommendation!), so let’s get to it.

Read the full newsletter here

Good news! The vinyl for Belgrado’s latest 12”, El Encuentro, has arrived, as has Institute’s new self-titled Australian tour 7”! I believe all of the Belgrado pre-orders have shipped already, while Institute 7”s should start shipping today (Thursday). Expecting a shipping confirmation email soon if you haven’t received one already. And if you order either of these from here on out, expect your order to ship right away!

We just made a TON of new pre-orders live on the pre-orders section of the site. Like a lot… we currently have almost 300 pre-orders going at the moment! Too much, I know, but feel free to scroll through anyway. But first I thought I’d hit you with some highlights.

At the top of the list for me has gotta be the first reissue of Flipper’s first album Generic Flipper in quite some time (at least 15 years by my count). Poison Ruin has a new one coming soon and we have both the chainmail and swamp green vinyl variants available. This is an all-time favorite for me, and it’s on Superior Viaduct Records so you know they’ll do a great job. From Talking Heads we have a wider release of the collection of very early demo and live material that they released previously on Record Store Day. Two Alkaline Trio titles—Good Mourning and Crimson—are coming back into print in reasonably-priced standard versions. Wharf Cat Records is releasing a collection of material by the great, super underrated Boston-area 70s punk band La Peste, and one of NOFX’s most well-regarded records, the single-song opus The Decline, is coming back into print. The latest RSD Essentials release is a 35th anniversary pressing of the Smashing Pumpkins’ debut Gish, with the original cover art rather than the metallic version we have been stocking for the past few years.

We have a few Rhino Hi-Fi reissues coming in if you need to hear some of your favorites in the highest fidelity possible, including Devo’s debut as well as T Rex’s Electric Warrior and Alice Cooper’s Love It to Death. Florida death metal band Massacre’s debut is getting a new pressing on Earache, while John Dwyer’s synth-drenched product Damaged Bug has a new album available (we have both the pink and standard black pressings available).

A few other quick highlights that might be interesting. Jazz group Irreversible Entanglements has a new album out soon. Raleigh legends Corrosion of Conformity will muddy their legacy once again this spring, but maybe you’re into it? We had some Sacrilege in the last update, but we have some more for you with Radiation Records compiling the band’s excellent early demo material. Morbid Angel re-releases a rare 90s EP that features some remixes by the industrial group Laibach. Dog Faced Hermans are reissuing Everyday Timebomb, which is very cool… I hope there’s more to come, because I don’t know if you’ve checked, but Dog Faced Hermans records have gotten VERY expensive on the used market. Black metal / war metal vets Revenge have a new one on Season of Mist. Napalm Death and Melvins have a collaborative album that got a limited release for their tour, but is now becoming more widely available.

Those are some of the highights, but there’s a LOT more in the pre-orders section, including some very cool stuff I didn’t have time or space to mention here. So head over and have a browse!

Roachleg Records has two new LPs up for pre-order now! Up first of the debut 12" from New York's Cross, which features members of Mercy and Mirage playing similarly dark hardcore. The second is a new 12" from Pura Manía, one of our favorite bands here at Sorry State... a thrilling intersection of '77-style punk, hardcore, glam, post-punk, and plenty of other sounds but coming out completely original. Listen to a track from Pura Manía and two from Cross and pre-order your copies from us below! These are expected to ship in early March.

Also, Sorry State is handling worldwide distribution for these and all other Roachleg titles, so if you need copies for your shop or distro please get in touch!

Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! How y’all living? I’m OK, I guess. Actually, I’ve been experiencing a lot of anger lately. I’ve been really frustrated with the forces of enshittification constantly getting in the way of what I want to do and accomplish, and I’m really annoyed with a lot of large corporations at the moment for being bad at what they’re supposed to do. I’m sick of phone trees and AI customer service agents and other bullshit that pretends to be helpful but actually just gets in the fucking way. The world seems to have officially moved on without me. I hereby pronounce myself old and bitter.

Thankfully, there’s still music, and the flesh-and-blood humans at Sorry State are working our behinds off to bring that to you. We missed last week’s newsletter, and as usual when we miss a week, the first week back features a monstrously large stockpile of new stuff to tell you about. Extremely hot pre-orders, plenty of things in stock and shipping now, new groups, reissues of both lost and acknowledged classics… find it all here and more. And make sure to scroll to the staff picks section to read what some honest-to-god human beings are thinking about. At least until AI clones our voices and does a better job of it than we do (yeah right!).

Sorry for all the negativity, but it’s been a tough week around here. So let’s put that aside and get back to the shit we love: punk fucking rock.

Read the whole newsleter here!

We are very stoked to announce that Mecht Mensch's Anthology LP is back in stock! Even bettter, No Coast hooked up Sorry State with our own exclusive pressing on transparent blue vinyl. And even better than THAT, this second pressing is a little cheaper than the first pressing (due to slightly scaled-back packaging). Order your copy below, but be quick... once they're gone, they're gone! Mecht Mensch are one of the best and most underrated US 80s hardcore punk bands, and their Anthology LP should be in any self-respecting 80s USHC aficionado's collection.

Good news! The Youth Avoiders (Destructure Records) and Draümar (Static Shock Records) titles we were running pre-orders for are now in stock! All pre-orders have shipped (unless your order includes another pre-order item that isn't in yet), and any new orders will ship right away. Draümar is still listed as a pre-order on the site, but that's only because its street date isn't until February 27.

Check these records out and order copies below if you haven't already!

We just put up a pre-order for the latest reissue on Sealed Records: a reissue of the two long-lost demos by obscure 80s UK anarcho-punk group Bikini Mutants! Read the description, listen to a couple tracks, and order your copy below! This is officially out on March 20 and vinyl should ship around that time.

It’s taken Sealed records more than five years to put this release together but finally it’s here. The one and only Bikini Mutants. The Bikini Mutants were from Yeovil, Somerset and part of the All the Madmen world. In their short life as a band they recorded two demos at Monitor Studios, Milborne Port in Somerset in 1982. Let's Mutate collects these two demos on one LP, along with a 20 page booklet featuring photos, lyrics, reviews, interviews and much more. The band played mostly in Yeovil and the West Country along with the Mob and the Review, and even though they were part of the West Country anarcho scene, the sound was a mix of scratchy post punk and indie pop. Members of the band went on to be in My Bloody Valentine and the Chesterfields. The songs are intricate, delicate and engaging with the drums and bass locked in, the fuzzed out guitar weaving on top and Criss Cole’s angelic voice taking each song to pop heaven. Think a mix of Girls at our Best, Au Pairs and the Marine Girls.

Sorry State is excited to partner with Arcane Dynamics to offer Powerplant's upcoming album Bridge of Sacrifice for sale in the US! The album is out on March 13 and we have several versions available: blue and white vinyl variants (each of them available with or without a large, 20" poster of the cover artwork), cassette (again, in blue and white variants) and CD. We expect to have these on or around the release date, and we'll ship your order as soon as it's in-house.

Alongside Bridge of Sacrifice, we also have pre-orders for a few other Powerplant items available that have been very hard to find in the US thus far: namely their recent singles Crashing Cars b/w Never Smile and Heat. We also have CD and cassette versions of Powerplant's first album People in the Sun, which has been unavailable for some time. All these items are up for pre-order now and will ship at the same time as Bridge of Sacrifice. If your Powerplant collection is anything less than complete, now is a great time to rectify that!

If you run a shop or distro, we also have these titles available for wholesale. Get in touch if you want to talk about that.

Listen to the title track from Bridge of Sacrifice below.

We just reduced prices on several hundred used items on our webstore! The discounts start on page 36 of the used section of the website and continue on from there... click here to check it out. Lots of great records to choose from, and if you saw something a while back and the price wasn't right, maybe it is now? And as you get deeper in the catalog there are some VERY cheap items that have been discounted multiple times. Deals galore!

Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! We kinda have two things going on this week. First, this is our Best of 2025 edition, so most of our Staff Picks this week are looking back on 2025. I imagine you’ll discover a bunch of intriguing releases you might have missed the first time around, so I’ve tried to be even more diligent than usual about including links to the webstore when we still have stock of the release in question. I’m also working on restocking a few key items that we hope to have back in soon, so if you still need the Ayucaba, Nisemono, or Haram albums (among several others), keep an eye on the Recently Restocked section of the website, as we expect them back in soon.

Even though we’re looking back in 2025, punk still keeps moving, so there are already a bunch of new 2026 releases to tell you about. Our Record of the Week is a ripping demo cassette from New Jersey’s Direct Order ’82; and speaking of restocks, I see we’re down to our last few copies on the webstore, but should have a restock landing any day now. We also have quite a lot of news about pre-orders this week, including new releases from Belgrado on La Vida Es Un Mus and Draümar on Static Shock Records, plus long-awaited official reissues of Danzig’s first two albums as part of the RSD Essentials program. I know lots of you have been waiting on those for some time. And since we’re talking pre-orders, I’ll give a quick plug to the new Pre-Orders section on the Sorry State website. I’m sure you’ve noticed we’ve been doing more and more with preorders lately, and since that trend seems destined to continue, we’re going all-in.

Finally, sorry this newsletter is a day late! We try to send it out on Wednesday, but I’ve been sick as hell and out of the office since last Friday. Thanks so much to SSR’s amazing staff for keeping the whole operation plugging along while I send countless annoying, steroid-and-antibiotic-fueled Slack messages.

Alright, this is a monster newsletter, so pour yourself a drink and dig in…

read the rest of the newsletter here!

We just launched a pre-order for another new release on Static Shock Records: the self-titled debut LP from Oslo, Norway's Draümar! I don't think Draümar's debut 7" from a few years got much distribution stateside, but now's as a great a time as any to learn about them. Raging hardcore punk with some classic Norwegian flavor is the order of the day, and they even cover Bannlyst and get Bannlyst's singer to do a guest spot? Sick! You can listen to a track on the Static Shock Bandcamp now. Give it a listen, read Josh Nickel's excellent description below, pre-order your copy from Sorry State and it'll be on its way to you as soon as it's in stock. Easy peasy.

"Static Shock out here still pushing the finest in international punk and hardcore. This time with a smoking debut from Oslo’s Draümar. Their influences are from the same city block with groundwork laid by groups like So Much Hate and Svart Framtid. Unfortunately, the songs are blasting away at the same monumental enemies albeit with different faces. The never-ending nuclear question, societal unease, genocide, and a steadfast approach to not turn away from the constant horror of today’s world make up the tapestry of this 12”.

The intro and outro track nod and update John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 setting the stage for a flurry of cold, desperate Norwegian punk - instantly identifiable and as potent as ever. Indeed, they’ve scraped the blood, sweat and victory off the floors of Blitz and distilled it into a Molotov aimed directly at a world in constant crisis. These are chords and context against a rising fascist world where screaming is not a limp response but also tactic, celebration and affirmation. Aside from the fury contained in the original tracks you get a bonus treat in the dual vocal attack on the Bannlyst song ‘Herrene’ which features original Bannlyst vocalist Finn Erik Tangen - instantly identifiable and still just as pissed."
(Josh Nickel)