Featured Release Roundup for September 26, 2017 b/w All Things to All People Vol. 22

Well, our “Turned Out a Punk” series on the Sorry State blogs were a big success, so we’re going to attempt to keep the ball rolling with another set of posts on a unified topic. This time around we’ll be talking about game-changing records… records that might have changed the way that you think about a scene or a genre and opened up new vistas in your listening habits. I’m actually going to talk about two different records that played this kind of role at two different points in my life.

The first record I want to talk about is the Koro 7”. Now, it probably seems obvious that this is a record I really like since Sorry State reissued it as one of our earliest releases, but more than just a good record it was really a catalyst for me getting into hardcore on a deeper level.

As I wrote about in my previous post, I spent my teen years in the mid- and late 90s testing out different tribal affiliations within the punk scene. While I listened almost exclusively to music that came out of the punk scene, it seemed like punk’s umbrella was much wider in those days, and around 1999 when I first heard Koro I was checking out everything from Converge and Cave In to youth crew revival to tougher bands like Right Brigade to melodic bands like Saves the Day, and I was also heavily interested in the nascent screamo scene with bands like Pg. 99 and City of Caterpillar. And parallel to all of this I was starting to get really into researching older bands and learning about music from the 70s and 80s. This was pre-social media, so I did most of my research with actual books. I remember John Savage’s book England’s Dreaming introduced me to a lot of stuff. I actually brought a copy with me the first time I went to England. I distinctly remember reading it on the plane, boning up on all of the ’77-era punk bands so that I would know what to look out for as I scoured the used bins. I believe that trip was in 1999, so vinyl was cheap and the 99p bins were overflowing with ’77-era punk singles. When I got back home and started going through them all—some I’d learned about from England’s Dreaming and other sources, and some I just bought because they looked cool—I started to get a sense of the depth of the ’77 punk scene and how many bands there were to check out once you scratched below the surface. I’m guessing that I probably heard my first Killed by Death compilation around this time as well, which made me realize that this wasn’t a phenomenon limited to the UK.

Around this time was when I first discovered the Kill from the Heart web site, which showed me that the depth I’d found in ’77-era punk extended well into the hardcore era (and, of course, I’ve since discovered that just about every music scene is full of similarly-sized rabbit holes). I’m not sure how the conversation got started, but eventually I started emailing with Chris, the main guy behind KFTH. He sent me a mix tape full of great early 80s hardcore, but the band that really stuck out for me was Koro, whose entire 7” was on the tape.

I wrote before about how Minor Threat was such a special band for me, and despite the fact that I’d heard plenty of other early 80s hardcore bands by that point no one quite did it for me like Minor Threat did. That is, until I heard Koro. It was even faster than Minor Threat, and if it wasn’t quite as tight then it was certainly close. These were songs that were performed at the speed with which my brain worked, and consequently filled me with a strange sense of comfort. While I recognized that the music was amazing pretty much right off the bat, once I delved deeper into the record I was only intrigued even more. The band was from Knoxville, Tennessee, which was not only in the south, but it was an even smaller city than Richmond, where I was living at the time, and the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area where I grew up. The lyrics had little of Minor Threat’s earnestness, instead dealing with kind of frivolous teenage topics (“Blap!”) or very dated political topics (“700 Club”). While one would think that these dated political topics would keep me from connecting with the record, truth be told they only intrigued me more. I grew up in the land of Pat Robertson (whose organization was headquartered in Virginia Beach) and The 700 Club was a show that I flipped past a million times when channel-surfing as a kid. Knowing that such a great piece of music grew out of a context that felt so incredibly familiar was a real rush.

After hearing Koro, it was pretty much on. The Koro EP was proof positive that there was gold in the boxes and boxes of used 7”s that littered pretty much every used record store that still existed, and I set about panning, using Kill from the Heart, print sources like old issues of Maximumrocknroll and the Flex guidebooks, illegal file sharing networks, and ebay as essential tools in my arsenal. For the next several years—honestly, for the next decade or more—it was all about diving as deep as possible and seeing what I could come up with. I would hear lots of gems over the next several years, but I can’t think of any record as perfect as that EP.

The second record I want to talk about is a more recent discovery, Amon Düül II’s Yeti LP, which I also wrote about in a previous edition of All Things to All People. In that post I struggled to articulate precisely what intrigued me so much about all of the Krautrock stuff that I was discovering, and when my friend Danny read that column he put it more succinctly and eloquently than I could: I was transitioning toward music that had a kind of cinematic scope. In other words, in retrospect I realize that the way I approached listening to music was very much grounded in the traditions of folk and pop music. In other words, I listened to music in order to sing along, and “digesting” records essentially meant memorizing them closely enough that I could sing along (or play air guitar or drums or whatever) and take a kind of participatory pleasure in experiencing the music. I still listen to plenty of music in that mode, but what Yeti in particular showed me is that there are other ways. It’s possible to surrender yourself to music, to let it take you wherever it wants to go. That pop listening mold is predicated on a kind of mastery… you have to learn the song—to tame it in a way—in order to listen to it in that way. However, listening to a record like Yeti is like just floating in a river or the ocean and letting the current take you wherever it may. The pleasure here is not in taming something outside of you, but of releasing what is inside of you, letting go of your ego so that you can experience what the musicians want you to experience.

While Yeti was the record that made me really crave this mode of listening, I think that getting really into Can prepped me for the experience of Yeti. Can’s music is strange in that it has the circularity of pop music and the linearity of this more “cinematic” music in equal measure. People often remark upon the “gradually evolving repetition” motif in their classic work, and I think that the repetition provided me a kind of safety net to fall back on as I became increasingly interested in that wider scope.

Anyway, once Yeti clicked with me I was all about finding this sensation in as much music as possible. It was like I had developed a new muscle that allowed me to do things I didn’t know were possible… listening to and appreciating music really are skills, and I had just upped my level. Entire categories of music were newly accessible to me, like jazz (70s Miles Davis has been a particular favorite, including both funkier stuff like On the Corner and more atmospheric things like Bitches Brew), soundtracks (including the Japanese artist J.A. Ceasar, one of my favorite recent discoveries), and prog (which, for all of its Krautrock-y tendencies, is ultimately the category that I would place Yeti into). I even came back to some records I already loved with fresh ears, like the psychedelic concept albums of the 60s. Previously I listened to records like Sgt Pepper’s or Arthur as collections of pop songs, but nowadays I appreciate the over-arching, album-level dynamics more. And when it comes to albums like the Pretty Things’ S.F. Sorrow or Pink Floyd’s early stuff where those album-level dynamics are even more important, I’m listening to and loving those records more than I ever have before.

Interestingly, this new way of listening has also pushed me toward a different attitudes toward discovering music. There was a kind of neuroticism to the way that I searched for 80s hardcore in the years after hearing Koro… the drive to hear everything created a nice little feedback loop with my naturally high anxiety level. That neuroticism has served me well in a lot of ways… honestly, a lot of Sorry State’s success has grown out of my insatiable desire to hear everything. By contrast, I’m not so worried about hearing every single Krautrock or jazz record. I know those are deep, deep rabbit holes, but I’m pretty much content just to enjoy whatever crosses my path. In order to pursue hardcore so single-mindedly I had to close myself off to a ton of great music, and nowadays I just want to be open and enjoy whatever the universe offers up to me.

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Is anyone out there on Apple Music? Obviously Sorry State is vinyl-centric and sitting in front of my stereo with a vinyl record is still my preferred way of listening to music, but I listen to a lot of digital music as well. I’ve long preferred Apple Music over Spotify because it allows me to upload songs from my own library and fold them in with the songs on Apple’s service… I couldn’t rely solely on Spotify and not have access to all of the stuff that’s on my computer but not on that service. Anyway, enough shilling for Apple… they have enough of everyone’s money.

I bring up this topic because if anyone out there uses Apple Music and has upgraded to iOS 11, feel free to follow my profile @sorrystate and eavesdrop on what I’m listening to. Even better, let me follow you back! I’ve long been jealous of Spotify’s social features, so I’m eager to make some contacts on Apple Music and have some people introduce me to cool stuff I wouldn’t have heard otherwise.

In other Daniel news, I have a new band! We’re called Scarecrow. I play bass, Jeff from Skemäta plays guitar, Usman from Skemäta plays drums, and our friend Red (who hasn’t been in a band before) sings. Our first show is October 7 at the Bunker in Raleigh (Facebook event here). If you’re in the area you should try to make it… Haircut is killer and Bunker shows are always a good time.

The day after that I’ll be at the VG- Record Fair at Hardywood Brewery in Richmond slinging that hot wax. I’ll probably be very sleepy. Hopefully I can get someone to come with me so that we can trade off making coffee runs, and so that they can watch the table while I browse the other sellers’ wares!

No Love also has a few shows coming up. We’ll be playing with the Cowboys (which I’m very stoked about!) at the Pinhook in Durham on October 15 (Facebook event here). It sounds like we’ll also be getting to play with both C.H.E.W. and Trash Knife this fall as well, and I’m super stoked about both of those shows too. It’s shaping up to be a very punk-filled fall here in North Carolina.

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C.H.E.W. / Rash: Split 7” (Slugsalt) Well, this is quite a corker… two of the best current bands from Chicago teaming up for a split 7”! C.H.E.W.’s material so far has pretty much blown me away, and these three songs do very little to change my mind about how great they are. This time around I’m not hearing the Rudimentary Peni-isms quite as much… the production is a little heavier and the playing is a little tighter and more straightforwardly hardcore, but there are plenty of little quirks for those of you who like it weird. The second track, “Submission,” in particular has some really cool, wild vocals that fly off the edges of the song’s rhythm and some wonky whiplash tempo changes that make my face erupt in a grin every time I hear them. As for Rash’s contribution, they give us two tracks that pretty much pick up where their recent releases left off. They’ve always played in the fertile area between hardcore and AmRep-style noise rock, but these two tracks are definitely a bit more on the hardcore end of the spectrum, albeit with the dense and rich textures of the best noise rock kept fully intact. You don’t see too many split 7”s in hardcore these days, but this one makes a great argument for the format. Highly recommended!

Major Conflict: S/T 7” (Antitodo) Reissue of this 1983 NYHC 7” which is probably most famous for being “the post-Urban Waste band.” If you’re coming to Major Conflict looking for Urban Waste you’ll be a bit disappointed as this simply isn’t nearly as raw or as feral as that record (but then again, how many records are?), but it’s a nice little vintage slice of NYHC nonetheless. The three tracks here are quite different from one another. It begins with an instrumental called “How Do Ya Feel” that’s built around a cool little metallic riff that reminds me quite a lot of the Abused, then segues into a mid-paced street punk song called “Outgroup,” which seems to me to betray the influence of punkier bands like Kraut and the Stimulators, or perhaps even Subliminal Seduction-era Heart Attack. On the b-side you get a lengthier song that seems more Bad Brains-influenced, particularly the epic, “Right Brigade”-esque mosh part. While it’s kind of weird that the three tracks are so different from one another, this 7” really works, and even if it doesn’t quite make that top tier of NYHC alongside Antidote, the Abused, Urban Waste, et al, it’s solidly in the second tier alongside bands like Crucial T, the Mob, and the Nihilistics, and if you’re familiar with those records (all of them rippers) you know that’s no slight. And of course Antitodo has already established a reputation for doing great quality repro editions, so you shouldn’t worry yourself on that front.

Flesh World: Into the Shroud 12” (Dark Entries) Well, the new Flesh World album is finally here. They’ve shifted labels for this one, moving from the world of small DIY hardcore labels (their previous releases were on La Vida Es Un Mus and Iron Lung) to Dark Entries, who are honestly probably a better fit for their sound. When there’s a change in labels there’s usually some corresponding changes in the music, and that’s the case to an extent here. Flesh World are still writing brilliant pop songs, and structurally the songs on Into the Shroud are very much of a piece with the band’s earlier work, though honestly I think the melodies are more memorable and the arrangements much more dynamic and interesting. The main difference is that they’ve scaled back radically on the noise. While Into the Shroud is probably still a fairly noisy record by indie rock standards, if you loved their previous releases you’ll immediately notice how much cleaner this record is, which is hardly a bad thing, just a noticeable difference. Flesh World have always reminded me a bit of Lush, and the transition from The Wild Animals in My Life to Into the Shroud is not unlike Lush’s transition from their earlier, more chaotic stuff to the more streamlined pop of Lovelife. I love both periods of Lush, and I’m fully on board with this new phase of Flesh World. If you enjoyed this band’s earlier stuff I strongly recommend this new one as well.

Spray Paint & Ben Mackie: Friendly Moving Man 7” (12XU) Not a split release, but a collaborative 7” between these two artists. I’ve heard Ben Mackie’s group Cuntz (even seen them live once), but I’m not sure if his reverb-drenched vocals are going to be enough of a selling point for the legions of Cuntz fans out there. It’s unclear if he did more than sing on this 7”, but I do feel like there could be a little bit of Cuntz’s noise rock injected into Spray Paint’s sound for this release… it’s hard to say for sure. However, if you’re coming at this release from the Spray Paint end of things I dare say you’ll be very pleased. Spray Paint are one of the most unique-sounding bands out there… it’s hard to say precisely what it is that sets them apart, but they have such a unique voice as a band that you can hear just a couple of notes and immediately know that it’s them. The a-side in particular is extremely quirky, and it’s the kind of song that it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Spray Paint managing to capture on tape. The only bad thing I can say about the record is that it feels like it’s over before it starts, but if you’re interested in this odds are you have a stack of Total Punk 7”s in your collection that you could say the same thing about, so no biggie.

Performing Ferret Band: S/T 12” (Beat Generation) Reissue of this UKDIY LP from 1980, and it’s a real gem. I don’t claim to be the most knowledgeable about this particular scene, but it’s crazy to me that something as good as this could fly under my radar for so long. Sonically, this is just about as on the nose as the UKDIY sound gets… take some bits from the early Fall catalog, add in some of the vibe from genre classics like Desperate Bicycles or the Homosexuals and you should be pretty much in the ballpark as to what this sounds like. It also bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the Total Punk band Suburban Homes in places… I’m not sure if they’re a conscious influence on Suburban Homes or not, but I think it’s pretty much guaranteed that if you like one band’s records you’ll really like the other’s as well (unless, of course, you strictly avoid either new or old bands). For me, a lot of the pleasure of UKDIY music is in the way that they balance their poppier impulses with their more experimental ones, and Performing Ferret Band have pretty much the perfect mix for me. So, if this style if up your alley you know what to do…

Reptoides: Nueva Especie 7” (World Gone Mad) 2nd 7” from this Mexican band, not to be confused with Andy Human & the Reptoids from California, who are an entirely different group. If you liked what they did the first time around I’m pretty sure you’ll be on board with this as well, as it continues in a similar vein. As before (and as with their labelmates in Haldol) there’s a distinct Rudimentary Peni influence here, which manifests itself in the claustrophobic, chorus-y guitar tone and the general sense of dread, but like Peni they also manage to pull hook after hook out of this rather imposing shell. I can see fans of Blazing Eye being super into this as well, but it also reminds me of some of the more out-there Japanese punk and hardcore sounds by bands like G.I.S.M. or Mobs. I haven’t seen Reptoides getting a ton of hype in the US, but maybe it’s about time that changed because this—like their last EP—is totally killer.

Beyond Peace: S/T 7” (Hard Art) Debut 7” from this band out of Iowa. We had their demo a while back, but they really made an impression when I saw them live a few weeks ago. Like a lot of bands from off-the-beaten-path locales, Beyond Peace don’t sound totally in sync with the hottest trends in the underground today, but as someone who is naturally attracted to bands that fall between the cracks I think that’s an asset rather than a drawback. The foundation here is definitely straightforward 80s USHC, and it’s fast, raw, and gruff in all the right ways. The vibe is somewhat earnest and political in a way that reminds me both of 90s bands like Crudos or Born Against and 80s bands like Articles of Faith or Everything Falls Apart / Metal Circus-era Husker Du. And like all of those bands, Beyond Peace are musically adventurous as well; while they can write a mid-paced part worthy of any NYHC band (“Wearing Thin”) they can also dish out some jaggedly beautiful lead lines that could have come from Articles of Faith’s Give Thanks LP (“Big Man”). If the above references intrigue you I would highly encourage you to check this out, as Beyond Peace pretty much precisely fit my definition of real hardcore.

UVTV: Go Away 7” (Emotional Response) Latest 4-song EP from this Florida band who have quietly been maturing into one of the most distinctive punk bands out there. To me, UVTV’s music sounds like a hardcore-informed take on C86 pop like the Shop Assistants… in other words, while they have the sprightliness and heft of a band like Brain F≠, but their dreamy vocals, pop songwriting chops, and distinct Ramones influence seem to come from the mid-80s UK (which they kind of confirm here with a cover tune by the Primitives). Punk with dreamy vocals is a pretty untapped well—the only bands I can think of that do it as well as UVTV are Flesh World and Earth Girls, both of whom who have a very different overall vibe—which serves to UVTV’s advantage because they sound so totally fresh. I’m not sure why the hype machine hasn’t latched onto this band yet, but maybe someone should take some initiative and get that started. Or just pick this up and enjoy your own little secret.

ISS: Endless Pussyfooting 12” (Erste Theke Tontraeger) So, I wrote a description of this back when it was a tape and then the label actually used it as the generic marketing description for the vinyl release, so obviously I like this a lot. However, I thought I’d write something again since this record has only grown in my esteem since the tape version came out. I wrote before (and other people like Vincent have also mentioned) that the sampling-based technique that ISS uses is totally awesome, but I feel like the focus on their technique—which admittedly, is pretty exciting—detracts attention away from how absolutely brilliant these songs are. Sure, it’s fun to unpack all of the references and try to identify all of the samples, but these songs would be great no matter what instruments were used to create them. There’s such a mastery of songwriting, lyric-writing, arrangement, and production on display here that it honestly makes a lot of the other music that I listen to look bad by comparison. However, even if you don’t come to this as some kind of grand artistic achievement (and believe me, I think that’s the last thing ISS wants anyway), these are just great, fun pop songs that you can sing along to with the windows down on a warm summer day… indeed, the fact that they function so well as pop songs is exactly what makes them so great. So, at the risk of continuing to not make any sense, I’m going to wrap this up and say that it’s one of my favorite things in the world right now and that you should probably check it out if you haven’t already.

B.D.: Over 30 Singles 12” (Emotional Response) 30(!!!)-track compilation from this long-running California punk band. I’m not sure if we’ve carried every single B.D. / Bad Daddies record, but I’ve checked in with them often over the years and this band is always doing something surprising. That eclecticism is very much on display here, as songs waver between hardcore, 90s-style noise-rock and straight up pop-punk. I suppose that if I had to draw a common thread to all of the music collected here, it’s that there’s a very 90s sensibility at work, both in that a lot of the genres that B.D. dabble in sound kind of retro and in the eclecticism itself, which is jarring within the context of the current scene, where bands seem very hesitant to step outside a narrow range of influences. While there is a metric ton of awesome music here, I think my favorite thing about Over 30 Singles might be the zine booklet, which is super thick and features detailed contextualizations of every track here (and, crazily enough, many others that aren’t compiled here!) and interviews with each individual member of the band. Everything about this package is really overwhelming, but in kind of a neat way. I think one of the reasons that a lot of modern punk feels so disposable is because the audience has so little time to make room for more / richer media content in our lives. However, Over 30 Singles is a throwback to when records were one of your key media resources and not only did bands try to convey as much information as possible, but also the audience also spent a lot of time digesting all of that information. So, while it’ll definitely take some work to make time for this given the lifestyles we live nowadays, there are corresponding rewards for your expenditure of time.

All New Arrivals
Chris Bell: I Am the Cosmos 12" (Omnivore)
Mogwai: Every Country's Son 12" (Temporary Residence)
Twin Peaks: Music from the Limited Event Series OST 12" (Rhino)
METZ: Strange Peace 12" (Rhino)
Various: Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares 12" (Numero Group)
The Afghan Whigs: Up with It 12" (Sub Pop)
The Afghan Whigs: Congregation 12" (Sub Pop)
The Afghan Whigs: Uptown Avondale 12" (Sub Pop)
Satyricon: Deep Calleth Upon Deep 12" (Napalm)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Luciferian Towers 12" (Constellation)
Tortür: No Surrender, No Survivors 7" flexi (self-released)
Amgdala: Population Control 12" (Dead Tank)
Meatwound: Trash Apparatus 7" (Dead Tank)
Vacancy: Empty Head cassette (Dead Tank)
Lunglust: War at Home 7" (Dead Tank)
Lunglust: War at Home cassette (Dead Tank)
Mrtex / Kelut: Split LP 12" (Dead Tank)
DS-13: Umea Hardcore Forever 12" (Havoc)
Kaaos: Riistinnaulittu Kaaos 12" (Havoc)
Major Conflict: S/T 7" (Antitodo)
Flesh World: Into the Shroud 12" (Dark Entries)
Mr. Wrong: Babes in Boyland 12" (Water Wing)
Pikacyu-Makoto: Galaxilympics 12" (Upset the Rhythm)
Chain & the Gang; Experimental Music 12" (Radical Elite)
Neon: Neon / Nazi Schatzi 7" (Water Wing)
Wolves in the Throne Room: Thrice Woven 12" (Artemesia)
Dorothy Ashby: Hip Harp / On a Minor Groove 12" (Doxy)
Flower Travellin Band: Satori 12" (Phoenix)
Flower Travellin Band: Anywhere 12" (Phoenix)
Harald Grosskopf: Synthesist 12" (Bureau B)
Performing Ferret Band: S/T 12" (Beat Generation)
Genius / GZA: Liquid Swords 12" (Universal)
Chaos UK: One Hundred Percent Two Fingers in the Air Punk Rock 12" (Harbinger Sound)
Nachthexen: S/T 10" (Harbinger Sound)
Voigt/465: Slights Still Unspoken 12" (Mental Experience)
Atelier du Mal: Noblesse Oblige 12" (Mannequin)
Silverhead: S/T 12" (Vinilissimo)
Osiris: S/T 12" (Pharaway)
Aragorn: Night Is Burning 12" (Sommor)
Bruno Spoerri & Reto Weber: The Sound of UFOs 12" (We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want)
Bruno Spoerri: Voice of Taurus 12" (We Release Whatever the Fuck We Want)
Pretty Things: Parachute 12" (Madfish)
Pretty Things: SF Sorrow 12" (Madfish)
C.H.E.W. / Rash: Split 7" (Slugsalt)
Spray Paint & Ben Mackie: Friendly Moving Man b/w Dumpster Buddies 7" (12XU)
USA/Mexico: Laredo 12" (12XU)

Restocks
Broken Bones: A Single Decade 12" (Havoc)
Final Conflict: Keep It in the Family 7" (Havoc)
Sacrilege: Time to Face the Reaper 12" (Havoc)
Willful Neglect: S/T + Justice for No One 12" (Havoc)
Blitz: Voice of a Generation 12" (Radiation)
Blitz: All Out Attack 7" (Ugly Pop)
Newtown Neurotics: Beggars Can Be Choosers 12" (Nada Nada Discos)
Partisans: S/T 12" (Havoc)
Wretched: Libero E Selvaggio 12" (Agipunk)
Against Me: Reinventing Axl Rose 12" (No Idea)
John Coltrane & Alice Coltrane: Cosmic Music 12" (Superior Viaduct)
Dicks: Kill from the Heart 12" (Alternative Tentacles)
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: Flying Microtonal Banana 12" (Flightless)
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: I'm Your Mind Fuzz 12" (Castleface)
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: Quarters 12" (Castleface)
Thee Oh Sees: Mutilator Defeated at Last 12" (Castleface)
Radioactivity: S/T 12" (Dirtnap)
Radioactivity: Silent Kill 12" (Dirtnap)
Rubella Ballet: Ballet Bag 12" (Dark Entries)
Sonic Youth: Evol 12" (Goofin')
Spits: 19 Million AC 12" (Slovenly)
Spits: First Self-titled 12" (Slovenly)
Spits: S/T 12" (Slovenly)
Spits: Third Album 12" (Slovenly)
The Fall: Slates 10" (Superior Viaduct)
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: Nonagon Infinity 12" (ATO)
Wicked Lady: The Axeman Cometh 12" (Guersson)
Wicked Lady: Psychotic Overkill 12" (Guersson)
Bad Brains: S/T 12" (ROIR)
Brand New: Deja Entendu 12" (Triple Crown)
Brand New: I Am a Nightmare 12" (Triple Crown)
Electric Wizard: Dopethrone 12" (Rise Above)
Hatebreed: Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire 12" (Victory)
Joey Bada$$: All Amerikkkan Bada$$ 12" (Cinematic)
Parquet Courts: Light Up Gold 12" (What's Your Rupture?)
Power Trip: Manifest Decimation 12" (Southern Lord)
Run the Jewels: S/T 12" (Mass Appeal)
Run the Jewels: RTJ 3 12" (Mass Appeal)
Slayer: Show No Mercy 12" (Metal Blade)
Swans: Filth 12" (Young God)
C.H.E.W. / Penetrode: Split cassette (Slugsalt)