Featured Releases: April 1, 2024

Cruelster: Lost Inside My Mind In Another State of Mind - The Singles Collection 12” (Drunken Sailor Records) This LP collects all the non-album tracks from the Cleveland band Cruelster. Cruelster is a band that beckons you down their rabbit hole, and this singles collection, particularly its mythology decoding / perpetuating insert, sends you way the fuck down. Does the idea of a casual Cruelster fan make sense? Certainly, if you’re not down for the whole trip with these folks, you’re missing a lot. If that casual fan does exist, though, they’d likely dismiss the first half of this collection as juvenilia. But around halfway in, Cruelster’s strangeness and brilliance surfaces and the band just takes off. As I said, though, to really appreciate it, you need to take the whole trip. Speaking of which, the insert for this record is like the secret decoder ring that explains the heretofore murky story of Cruelster and its adjacent projects, primarily Perverts Again, but also including Sorry State’s Knowso, among others. The insert is amazing… it’s like 10,000 words, but printed as one giant block of text in tiny type with long lines and no paragraph breaks, a complete affront to the notion of readability. I had to break out a ruler to follow it, but—and this seems analogous to my entire experience as a fan of these groups—the effort was totally worth it. It’s a great story, covering the group’s origins as young (poser?) skinheads through myriad challenges, obstacles, small triumphs, and too many hilarious asides to count… I’m reminded of the tag line for Wayne’s World: “You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll hurl!” All that being said, if you’re not up for an album experience that requires extra hardware, you might as well skip this record. Cruelster is always going to make you pay to partake in their brilliance. But if you’re on the trip with these folks, this is another can’t miss episode. And like any great episodic series, it ends with a cliffhanger, hinting at an upcoming, as-yet-unrecorded new Cruelster album. I look forward to listening to that, enjoying it thoroughly, and writing yet another description that amounts, essentially, to “for fans only.”

Paprika: Let’s Kill Punk 12” (Iron Lung Records) We’ve carried two tapes by this New Orleans hardcore punk band at Sorry State, now they’re back with their debut 12” on Iron Lung Records. When I listen to Let’s Kill Punk, I’m struck by its maximalism. Everything feels larger than life here: the big, booming sounds, the chunky, moshable riffs, even the singer’s charismatic snarl. It’s so imposing that, as a listener, I was leveled on my first few listens, failing to appreciate much of the subtlety while I was processing the music’s blunt force. It took several plays before I could appreciate, for instance, the great riff at the center of the opening track, “Peace Talks,” which has a subtle, Wipers-y gloom coloring its attack. Let’s Kill Punk is short, most of its 10 tracks hovering around a minute in length, and Paprika doesn’t linger at all, going straight for the kill and making a quick getaway before you know what hit you. It’s only with multiple listens that you really appreciate how deftly Paprika annihilates you.

Grisaille: Entre Deux Averses... 7” (Black Water Records) Debut two-song single from this two-piece group from Brest, France, featuring two members of Syndrome 81. While these two songs aren’t miles away from Syndrome 81’s gloomy, melodic punk, as the label’s description notes, there’s a good deal of 2000s Copenhagen in the mix too, with the atmosphere here recalling the more melodic bands from that scene like No Hope for the Kids and Gorilla Angreb. If Entre Deux Averses... had come out in the 2000s, I guarantee everyone would have compared them to the Wipers, which was the de rigueur reference for bands playing this kind of upbeat but sombre-sounding punk. We’ve heard a lot of music from this camp lately, and while the different projects (Syndrome 81, Mentalité 81, etc.) are cloaked in slightly different aesthetics, strong songwriting and meticulous production runs through all of them, and Grisaille is no different. Add these tracks to your “gloomy spring morning” playlist and play them while staring vacantly out the window, waiting for these folks to whip up their next batch of hits.

Hexx Head: Seabeds Cough cassette (self-released) Debut release from this electronic duo from Boston. I’m only a dabbler in electronic music, but it’s been cropping up in the newsletter more and more lately, as there are quite a few releases in this vein that I’ve been connecting with. I’m not sure if Boston’s Hexx Head comes from a punk/hardcore background or if they’ve just noticed us stocking bands similar to theirs, but when they hit me up about carrying their tape, I really liked what I heard. Like Boy Harsher, Die Letzten Ecken, and Mandy, Indiana, Hexx Head’s music sits at the intersection of noise, dance music, synth-pop, and punk. From punk and hardcore, they take the consistently high energy levels and viscerality—there’s a reason people call this “electronic body music”—and combine it with noise music’s dense textures and dance music’s beat-forward sounds and structures, topping it off with a touch of synth-pop’s instrumental hooks. While Hexx Head forces your body to move, they’re often challenging you with off-kilter rhythms, like the stuttering “No Fair.” I love the steady pulse of Seabeds Cough, but Hexx Head never zones out, their songs inviting your attention rather than testing it. Like I said, I’m far from an expert on this stuff, but I really like what I hear here.

En La Muerte: Silencio 7” (Extinction Burst Records) The label’s description of this 7” from LA’s En La Muerte caught my eye with its Deadline and Wasted Youth (LA) references, and I’m glad I checked out Silencio, because it’s killer. Those references are spot-on, particularly for the ripping fast parts that characterize 80% or so of Silencio. It’s slightly sinister-sounding US-style hardcore that also reminds me of G.U.N.; En La Muerte’s vocalist even sounds like Nico from G.U.N. While hardcore rippers comprise most of En La Muerte’s music, things get a little weirder on their mid-paced parts, like the Big Black-ish intro to “Bleed” or the Ginn-esque guitar lead over the early NYHC-ish breakdown in “Killdozer.” I also love the freakout part at the end of the last song, “Damned,” which reminds me of the way Hüsker Dü would end their records by unspooling into chaos. While Silencio will appeal to fans of retro USHC (a key Sorry State demographic), I love that they’re not following the rulebook so closely they suck the life out of the music.

Perp Walk: Permacrisis 7” (Crew Cuts Records) Second EP from this Bristol, UK hardcore band, like its predecessor arriving on the Crew Cuts Records imprint. Judging by the number of copies we’ve seen heading out the door at Sorry State, plenty of Americans are hip to Perp Walk, and it’s easy to see why they’ve generated interest abroad. Perp Walk reminds me of Bib because their songs primarily revolve around huge-sounding, mid-paced riffs that strike a balance between “inciting violence” and “left of center.” The riffs are simple-sounding but never dumb; “Penitent Man” even reminds me of the pop dirges on Nirvana’s Bleach. “The Gavel” starts with a more metallic sound that might make you think of the Cro-Mags, but the song’s rhythm won’t quite let you skank your way to that glorious guitar lead at the end. Perp Walk’s music is heavy, hooky, and smart, and while it’s steeped in hardcore’s history, it doesn’t sound bound by it. Excellent stuff.