News

Longtime newsletter readers will remember a section called “Featured Releases” that used to appear at the bottom of the newsletter. Each week in this section I wrote about several new releases in addition to the Record of the Week. I really miss doing that, and I hope I can bring that section back one day, but lately things have been so busy here that the newsletter has become something I bang out in half a day. I can just about get a staff pick and a Record of the Week description done in that time, but adding descriptions of 6 more new releases on top of that is way too much for one person to accomplish every week without going insane. Maybe one day I can hire enough staff that I can spend two entire days on the newsletter each week. Until then, maybe I’ll turn my staff pick over to contemporary releases from time to time rather than only writing about old records. To kick things off, here are four recent punk/hardcore releases that are in stock at Sorry State right now, that are flying under the radar, and that I think are excellent. I’ve included links to listen and buy should you find yourself intrigued.

Fuerza Bruta: Ecos De Chicago 10” (Warthog Speak Records)

Bandcamp / Buy it from Sorry State

Chicago’s Fuerza Bruta has been around a while now, and some of their previous records have been popular at Sorry State, but I have heard little chatter about this new 4-song 10” on Warthog Speak Records. I associate Fuerza Bruta with the skinhead / oi! world, but when you actually listen to their music, it really doesn’t lean too hard on any conventions of oi! music, except for the gang vocals in the choruses. The dance / electronic record they released a few years ago shows their willingness to color outside the lines, and they’ve always reminded me of early Leatherface in that you can tell it’s steeped in traditional punk (particularly 70s and 80s UK punk), but unbound by that scene’s dictates and willing to go wherever the music takes them. Nowhere is the Leatherface comparison more apt than on the closing track here, “Lado a Lado,” which is built around some very Frankie / Dickie two-guitar dynamics. Another winner from this now-veteran band.

Ignorantes: Las Promesas Que Te Hacemos Te Las Puedes Meter Por El Culo 7’’ (General Speech Records)

Bandcamp / Buy it from Sorry State

Ignorantes is another band whose previous releases have been buzzy, but whose newest record appears to be flying under the radar. Perhaps that makes sense here, as this single differs from Ignorantes’ previous material. While most of their previous (many) records were tupa-tupa-style pogo punk, these two songs go in a more blatantly melodic direction. The vocals, while still charmingly off-key and punk as hell, are almost sing-songy melodic, and there’s the addition of some rather sunny-sounding keys playing melodies that wouldn’t be out of place on a Screeching Weasel record. While that might make it seem like Ignorantes has gone soft, the recording and performance are still of the punkest, lo-fi, sub-KBD variety. I love the packaging here too… they printed the covers on the thinnest possible newsprint stock, mocking the very idea of “mint” condition. This is down-in-the-gutter music, dirty and flawed, but by adding a dollop of sugary pop sweetness, Ignorantes has created something unique, fresh, and exciting here.

Psychic Vampire: Sophomaniac 12” (self-released)

Bandcamp / Buy it from Sorry State

While Fuerza Bruta and Ignorantes are well-known bands, I understand not being hip to this killer 12” from Minneapolis’s Psychic Vampire. While the band had a few extremely limited previous releases, this self-released 12” is the first time I’ve heard them, and that they only pressed 100 copies tells me they’re not planning on appealing to the masses. They also promote their record with a Maximumrocknroll review that consists almost entirely of incomprehensible inside jokes. Still, that fucking killer Drügface artwork should have clued you in that something interesting was happening here. Psychic Vampire shares a member with Citric Dummies, and while Psychic Vampire is more straightforwardly hardcore than Citric Dummies, I hear a similar sort of quirkiness here (particularly during the not-infrequent interruptions of hooky lead guitar). Ultimately, Psychic Vampire lies in the space between punk and hardcore where so many interesting and under-appreciated bands live. Their drummer beats the fuck out of the kit, they’re fast as hell, and their singer’s raspy shout would have the pop-punkers cowering the corner, but their incorporation of melody and their blithe dismissal of hardcore’s musical conventions are apt to alienate that scene too. If this clicks with you, though, I imagine it’ll hit hard.

Amerol: demo cassette (Helta Skelta Records)

Bandcamp / Buy it from Sorry State

Here’s my quick pitch for this Amerol demo: imagine Eve Libertine moved to the US in 1982 and joined up with a ripping young hardcore band. Amerol is from the isolated city of Perth on the west coast of Australia, and their demo comes to us via Helta Skelta Records, who have been documenting that city’s fertile punk scene for many years. There are a lot of different sub-styles of punk represented on the label, but (as if the always-killer Keith Caves artwork didn’t already clue you in), this one is for the US hardcore heads. The label’s description mentions No Thanks and Sin 34 and those are fine comparisons, but maybe undersells it a little. Amerol doesn’t really step outside hardcore’s conventions, but their music is full of little twists that make it clear they’re not content to copy from the rule book… see the strange timing on the intro to “Desperate Living” or the dissonant lead guitar stuff happening at the end of “Crossfire.” And then there are the vocals, which totally elevate the whole enterprise, the singer’s heavy accent oozing style and charisma, barking out rapid-fire venom when the songs call for it and weaving in those Crass-esque melodic lines that beg you to sing along. Wrap it all up in beautifully warm 4-track-style production and you have something really special.

7 Seconds: Alt.Music.Hardcore LP (Cargo / Headhunter Records, 1995)

The other day I was rocking this collection of early 7 Seconds material while packing your orders, and it really took me back. Like many people probably, 7 Seconds was one of the first hardcore punk bands I heard. I remember this hippie girl in one of my classes in high school gave me a dubbed tape of Walk Together, Rock Together. I guess she could see that I was getting into punk and as she was going the hippie route, 7 Seconds wasn’t really for her, so she hooked me up. Of course I loved it, and Walk Together slid right into a listening diet whose backbones were Screeching Weasel, Bad Religion, and incessant playing of the Minor Threat discography CD. When I first got on eBay in 1997, one of the first things I did was search for 7 Seconds. The internet in 1997 was not the nearly unlimited font of information it is today, and I didn’t even know 7 Seconds had records besides Walk Together. I quickly found a CD of The Crew, and it totally blew my mind when it showed up. It was even better than Rock Together! The production was heavier and grittier, the songs faster… it was exactly what I wanted to hear. Then I found Alt.Music.Hardcore, which my then-girlfriend had a CD of. It blew my mind once again because I liked Alt.Music.Hardcore even better than The Crew! The songs were even shorter, rawer, and meaner… yeah, The Crew reminded me of Minor Threat, but the songs on Alt.Music.Hardcore particularly reminded me of Minor Threat’s first 7”, when the band was at their most direct and aggressive. I was smitten.

Alt.Music.Hardcore compiles 7 Seconds’ first three 7” EPs: 1982’s Skins, Brains & Guts (originally released on Alternative Tentacles), 1983’s Committed for Life (originally on Squirtdown Records), and 1985’s Blasts from the Past E.P., which (if I’m remembering correctly) was itself compiled from a scrapped recording session that was meant to be 7 Seconds’ debut album, United We Stand (it was eventually re-recorded and re-titled The Crew). There are 7 Seconds recordings from before this (demo tapes like 3 Chord Politics and Socially Fucked Up), but for me this 1982/3 era of 7 Seconds is a real sweet spot. Kevin seems to be a naturally great vocalist, but as he learned to control his instrument, I think he got a bit too smooth, especially for rough hardcore like this. On these 7”s, it feels like he intuitively understands what makes for a great vocal, but his delivery is looser, even chaotic at times. For me, that’s a best of both worlds scenario, integrating the charisma and personality of a great vocalist with the rawness and immediacy of someone who is figuring things out on the fly. And while 7 Seconds always seemed to struggle with keeping a consistent lineup, they sound great on these recordings. I’m not sure if that’s because the songs were so simple or because the band was really locked in at this stage, but everyone at least sounds like they’re on the same page, which isn’t the case with later records like New Wind, where it sounds like parts of the band are pulling in different directions.

While The Crew, Rock Together, and even New Wind have received deluxe reissues on Trust Records in the past several years, sadly these early 7 Seconds EPs have been out of print for quite some time. They were last issued In 2013, when Chicago’s Lifeline Records re-released each of the 3 7”s compiled on Alt.Music.Hardcore. Those versions seem to be relatively available on the used market for cheap-ish prices, but digital versions never made it to streaming. It would be great if the youth of today could dial these up (either individually or as a compilation) and hear these tracks easily, because it’s my favorite 7 Seconds material. In fact, the whole 7 Seconds digital discography could really use a redo. Thankfully, the Trust Records expanded editions of those first three albums are available, but aside from that, things are scattershot. There nothing pre-The Crew (besides the 7”s compiled on Alt.Music.Hardcore and the aforementioned demo tapes, there’s also the full United We Stand session that Cargo / Headhunter released in 1991 as Old School), and arguably the better records from the post-New Wind era are also missing. I always had a soft spot for Praise (which I think is the strongest of their melodic / U2 era), and the grungy Out the Shizzy is good too if you can let go of any expectations you might have for a 7 Seconds record. And I’d probably stream Live! One Plus One from time to time too, if it were available. I know all this music originally came out on a plethora of different labels and the rights issues are probably a fucking nightmare, but it would be nice if the band’s profile on streaming services reflected the general arc of their career rather than a few scattered points.

While we’re talking about 7 Seconds releases on streaming services, I might as well share my thoughts on Change in My Head, which is Ian Mackaye’s remix / re-imagining of the New Wind album. When I read that this was happening, I was super excited to hear it, so I’m glad Trust threw it up on streaming rather than making me buy another (expensive) copy of New Wind to hear it. Ian’s remix basically makes 7 Seconds sound like they were from DC… Change in My Head has a similar vibe to DC bands from that time like Marginal Man and Rites of Spring. This is a good thing in my book, and I think Change In My Head is much stronger than New Wind as it originally came out. But it’s still an album that finds the band in a messy transitional stage where they didn’t quite know who they were. Ian’s remix makes the band sound more consistent, but the title tracks (both “Change In My Head” and “New Wind”) and “Still Believe” still sound like a different band compared to the more melodic tracks. Ian’s mix helps those melodic songs a lot… I really love “Tied Up in Rhythm,” for instance, which never stuck out to me on New Wind. Some will still say Change in My Head is an exercise in turd-polishing, but I kinda like it and have returned to it a few times.

Those of you who have been punk record nerds for at least a decade might remember when Ugly Pop Records reissued two records by Sweden’s P.F. Commando in the mid-2010’s: 1979’s album Manipulerade Mongon and their 1980 single Nu Ska Vi Ha Kul!. According to Ugly Pop, some people consider Manipulerade Mongon the first Swedish punk album, but that’s a conversation for someone with a deep knowledge of 1970s Swedish record release dates, and I am not that person. What I can tell you is that P.F. Commando rips, and I’ve continued to revisit those two records since Ugly Pop reissued them. Manipulerade Mongon is as definitive a first-wave European punk album as you’ll find. It always reminded me of the Dead Boys’ Young, Loud, and Snotty. The records are similar in that you feel you’re hearing punk rock being invented in real time. I’m sure P.F. Commando and the Dead Boys were working from a similar set of high-energy rock and roll influences, and both bands seemed to think to themselves, “what if we twist the anger and aggression knobs until they break?” Both records are snarling, menacing, and malignant. They also both bear an audible debt to the Stooges’ Raw Power with their hard-charging rhythms, piercing guitar sounds, and dramatically clashing chord changes. It’s the good shit.

The Ugly Pop reissues are where my knowledge of P.F. Commando began and ended until this summer, when I came across a copy of P.F. Commando’s second album while I was in Sweden:

P.F. Commando: Jag En Duva LP (Mamma, 1980)

This was a total blind buy for me… I did not know P.F. Commando had other records or whether they were any good. The copyright date on Jag En Duva is 1980 and the cover art is interesting (minimal and punk-looking, just like Manipulerade Mongon, though the back cover looks kind of like a vintage wedding invitation), so I figured that, unless the band took a major stylistic left turn, I’d probably hear at least something I like.

It turns out that I needn’t have worried… Jag En Duva totally rules! That being said, it’s a very different record than Manipulerade Mongon. That sense of menace is largely gone, and the band has grown tighter and more confident. The songs are still high-energy and rooted in the same rock and roll tradition as, say, the Raw Records bands in the UK, but there’s more of a sheen on it this time, with chiming guitars bringing a lot to the table, adding another layer of depth and textural richness to the songs. Jag En Duva reminds me of the early records by the Boys, high-energy and rocking, but embracing melody and letting go of some of punk’s default toughness. Maybe some hardcore folks will think they’re watering things down, but I think they gain more than they lose here.

Interestingly, while the band has expanded its horizons, the singer really hasn’t. There isn’t as much grit and rasp in his vocals on Jag En Duva, but they’re still mostly shouted and mostly out of tune. I wonder what the band thought about that at the time? They were clearly working toward something more composed and approachable, yet the singer still seems hell-bent on just howling. I actually think it really works, though, even if the contrast is striking at some points. There’s annoyingly out of tune and charmingly out of tune, and this falls decidedly in the latter camp for me. Unlike Manipulerade Mongon, though, the lyrics on Jag En Duva are entirely in Swedish, so I don’t know if they’re still as provocative as first-album cuts like “Auschwitz,” “Failed Abortion,” and the classic “Get Fucked.” One can only hope.

One track from the single Ugly Pop reissued, the title track from Nu Ska Vi Ha Kul!, appears on Jag En Duva. That song is kind of an oddball for the band with its ska rhythm, but otherwise it’s a pretty good indicator of how Jag En Duva smooths out the first album’s rough edges. If you have that Ugly Pop single, you can revisit that track for a sense of where things went on Jag En Duva (the cut “Rough Sound” from that single, though, is much more like the first album). It might be easier, though, to just dial Jag En Duva up on your favorite streaming service… even though the record has never been reissued in any physical version, it’s available (along with the first album and Nu Ska Vi Ha Kul! single) everywhere.

Now that I’ve heard the main part of P.F. Commando’s discography, I’m interested in checking out what else is out there. There’s a 1979 cassette-only release called In a Pose that contains over 45 minutes of music. It’s on YouTube and dipping my toe in makes me want to grab a copy of the vinyl reissue, which came out in 1997 (I don’t see an original cassette copy falling in my lap). There’s also P.F. Commando’s first release, 1978’s Svenne Pop EP, which Ken Rock reissued in 2012. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Sorry State carried that when it came out, though I can’t remember at the moment). Despite the title, it sounds (and looks!) pretty fucking punk to me. They even, like their peers in the Rude Kids, have a song about Raggare. It looks like I’ll be hunting for a reissue of this one too, as it looks like originals sell in the $500 range.

This past December, my wife came down with pneumonia just before Christmas, so we didn’t get to visit any family. Thankfully, I didn’t get sick, but I still had to stay at home… I didn’t know if I would get sick at any moment, I was afraid of transmitting germs to elderly relatives, and Jet also needed me to stay home and take care of her. Thankfully, that’s all long behind us (Jet made a full recovery), but it meant that when we got together for our annual family vacation last month, we had some Christmas gifts waiting for us that no one had been able to give to us. My mom gave me a big stack of books, and I wanted to write about this one for my staff pick this week:

Michael Azerrad: The Amplified Come as You Are (HarperOne, 2023)

I’m sure I’ve said this in the newsletter many times before, but I am a Nirvana baby. Nevermind came out a few days after my twelfth birthday, and it was perfectly timed to hit me with full impact. I had loved rock music since I was a little kid and was already curious enough about it to have gotten deeper than what MTV and radio were feeding me (skateboarding had made me hip to Suicidal Tendencies and I was also exploring Slayer and Metallica), but Nevermind struck the perfect balance between the tunefulness the mainstream trains you to like and the more aggro / dangerous sounds I was getting interested in. I jumped on the Nirvana bandwagon relatively early in Nevermind’s ascent and I stayed with them for the entire ride, listening to all of their albums incessantly. Even today, hearing Nevermind takes me right back to where I was then… I can remember what shoes I wore, the boom box I played it on, and exactly how my backyard was laid out. Those were formative times.

Other Nirvana fans probably remember that Michael Azerrad wrote a book called Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana, which came out in 1993. It was the first book-length biography of Nirvana, and it was timed to coincide with the release of In Utero so that it could ride the wave of publicity surrounding that album. I definitely read Come As You Are at the time, probably multiple times. I developed my taste for reading about music as a teen, and back then it was tough to find a book that wasn’t about classic rock, which wasn’t of much interest to me. I still read books about the Beatles and the Rolling Stones because I wanted to know about music, but the music I was reading about didn’t mean that much to me. Honestly, I didn’t even really know it. My parents were really young and listened to contemporary rock radio, not the oldies stations that so many of my friends’ parents listened to. I remember reading a book that analyzed the Beatles songbook in excruciating detail, but I’d never heard 90% of the songs they were writing about. I suppose that primed me for listening to the You Don’t Know Mojack podcast, where I still listen to hours-long dissections of later-era SST releases I haven’t heard and probably won’t ever take the time to check out.

Anyway, the conceit of the book I’m writing about, The Amplified Come as You Are, is that Azerrad is revisiting Come as You Are, reflecting on the book, analyzing and updating what he originally wrote. It’s a full reprint of Come as You Are, but every few paragraphs Azerrad’s 2023 voice (set in a different typeface) interrupts the narrative. Given when Come as You Are was written—In Utero hadn’t even come out, so obviously no one knew Kurt would take his own life, that Dave Grohl would start the Foo Fighters, etc.—there is a lot to update. I heard an interview with Azerrad on The Music Books Podcast and the conceit sounded interesting when he explained it, and it is indeed a gripping read. I haven’t been able to put the book down.

A few things stand out as key themes in The Amplified Come as You Are. The first is suicide. It’s staggering how much suicide came up in the original Come as You Are. It feels like on almost every page Kurt is saying he’s going to kill himself or making some sort of reference or analogy to suicide. As Azerrad notes again and again, the signs were right there for anyone to see, but it seems like he and everyone else dismissed it as Kurt being melodramatic or just depressed, but with hindsight it’s clear that he was thinking about suicide almost constantly, normalizing the idea and getting used to it in his own mind, paving the way for him to actually do it. The lesson, of course, is that if you know someone who does the same thing, heed those warning signs. Try to help them, or at least listen to them. Ignoring those cries for help only reinforces the sufferer’s idea that no one cares and they won’t be missed. I’m not a psychologist or a counselor, but if you care, just try to do something.

That leads to the second big thing that strikes me about the original Come as You Are, and that’s how young and immature the members of Nirvana were. Kurt was 24 when Nevermind came out, and the other members of the band and most of the other key players in the story were around the same age. I’m 45 now, and I often still feel lost, alone, and totally without perspective. I look back at what I was like when I was 24, and I think about how self-obsessed, narrow-minded, and immature I was, and that’s kind of how Kurt was too. Azerrad notes repeatedly Kurt’s pattern of passive aggression. If he wants something from someone, he never tells them directly, but acts hostile to signal something is wrong, then descends into a deeper spiral of anger and alienation when the target of his displeasure doesn’t do what he wants. There’s this hilarious quote from Dan Peters (the drummer for Mudhoney, who was also briefly the drummer for Nirvana) where he blithely sums it up: “their communication skills at that time were kind of not happening.”

(An aside about Dan Peters. One thing I’d kind of forgotten that this book reminded me of is how fucked Nirvana’s treatment of Dan Peters was. They had kicked Chad Channing, the drummer on Bleach, out of the band and started playing with Dan Peters. They played one show with Peters and wrote and recorded the song “Sliver,” and were just about to leave for a UK tour. Just before the tour, they secretly auditioned Dave Grohl and decided they wanted him as the drummer. They didn’t tell Peters until literally the last minute… he had already done press and taken publicity photos with the band in advance of the tour. Kurt even, during an acoustic radio appearance, said on the air that the band had a new drummer when they hadn’t even told Peters yet. This is all pretty fucked, but it made me think of a personal story. One of my ex-wife’s good friends was Dan Peters’ niece, and when she got married, Peters came to the wedding, which I also attended. I didn’t talk to him directly as I was too shy, but I eavesdropped on some of his conversations, and it seemed like all anyone wanted to talk to him about was Nirvana and Kurt. These were total norms at the wedding, people who almost certainly didn’t know Mudhoney, so to them he was just this guy who had known Kurt Cobain. Peters insists his experience with Nirvana wasn’t painful, but surely it must have been, and worse I’m sure he has to revisit it all the time in situations like that wedding.)

This portrait of Nirvana and Kurt—dark, dysfunctional, immature—is so different from the version of Kurt I recently lived with as I listened to The Cobain 50 podcast a few months ago. (I wrote about my first impressions of the podcast in a previous staff pick, but I stayed with it for the whole series and enjoyed it.) Azerrad notes repeatedly how eager Kurt was (at least in some contexts) to secure his underground bona fides. Usually this meant downplaying his interest, as a young man, in heavy metal and classic rock and emphasizing his connections to the punk underground. Kurt’s list of all-time favorite albums, which was the basis for the The Cobain 50 podcast, is totally pitched this way. While some personal touchstones like Aerosmith and the Beatles appear, the bulk of the list is K Records-approved, politically progressive underground groups like the Raincoats, Kleenex, and the Marine Girls. There was so much of that music on the list that I kind of came away with the impression that Kurt was deeply ingrained in the Olympia scene that introduced him to all that stuff. But Come as You Are paints Kurt as kind of a redneck interloper to that scene, holed up alone in his apartment smoking cigarettes and experimenting with heroin while the rest of the Calvinists (Kurt’s derisive term for the followers of K Records founder Calvin Johnson) played kickball and listened to Talulah Gosh or whatever. Kurt was enormously self-conscious about the poverty and lack of cultural sophistication he grew up with, and that self-consciousness sometimes manifested itself as a need to impress more cultured or sophisticated people, though at other times he lashed out at these people, knowing he’d never truly be one of them. That’s something I can absolutely relate to, and I wonder if it’s one reason I latched onto Nirvana so thoroughly when I was young.

Also like Kurt, I have struggled with the depression demon my entire life. While The Amplified Come as You Are has totally engrossed me, it’s also left me in some pretty dark headspace. I’ve had some personal changes in my life over the past few weeks and months that I’ve been ruminating on and struggling to make sense of, and the portrait of depression in the book calls to me like a siren song. While I’ve been in some pretty dark places in my life, I’m lucky to have something in me that pulls me back from the brink. (Or maybe I’ve just been lucky so far?) Part of Kurt’s brilliance surely came from the fact that he could and would dive deeper into the void. The Amplified Come as You Are makes me feel like I’m following him further down there than I ever would have ventured myself, and it’s fucking scary. After all, he didn’t come back. So yeah, great book, but trigger warning: it’s fucking dark.

If you are struggling or in a crisis, you can call or text 988 for help or chat at 988lifeline.org.

Let’s take a break from all this punk nonsense and go for something a little different this week:

Stray: S/T LP (Transatlantic, 1970)

Stray was from London and formed in 1966, releasing this self-titled album, their debut, in 1970 on Transatlantic Records. I know basically nothing about the members of Stray or what they got up to in the years between 1966 and 1970, but one thing I really love about this album is that you can hear all four of those years of massive development in the rock world in Stray’s music. It’s hard to overestimate how much happened in that short period. In 1966 Revolver was the hot new Beatles album, but by 1970, Led Zeppelin had three albums out, Black Sabbath had two, the Stooges Fun House had come out… the 60s were fuckin’ dead, man!

Not so for Stray, though. Or at least not completely. Stray’s leadoff track, “All in Your Mind,” feels like it comes from that perfect moment in 60s rock when the era’s best artists had been fully trained as hook-generating machines, yet they’d also grown up a little, maybe turned on, and gained some artistic ambition. The songs got more complex, but kept their big pop hooks. Records like the aforementioned Revolver, the Kinks’ Face to Face, and the emerging freakbeat scene with bands like the Creation and Pretty Things feel like the musical antecedents of “All in Your Mind.” Maybe it’s the word “Mind,” but my brain also jumps to another favorite from late 60s London, the Open Mind.

That’s hardly the entire story with Stray, though… in fact, I don’t think anyone would call Stray a freakbeat band, as the emerging hard rock scene and the high psychedelia of 1967/8 are also fundamental ingredients on this album. For starters, “All in Your Mind” isn’t a concise two-minute pop tune, but a 9-minute-and-fifteen-second labyrinth of a song. Trust me when I say, though, that those nine minutes fly by. I think that’s where the pop song craft training comes in… Stray gets freaky with it, but keeps the song exciting and packed with hooks and melody. (There is a three-and-a-half-minute single edit of “All in Your Mind” out there, but I haven’t heard it.) “Around the World in Eighty Days” is more in that high psychedelia mode, its huge chorus hook and lyrics evoking a sense of childlike wonder reminding me of so many progeny of Sgt Pepper’s. Side A then ends with “Time Machine,” which starts off with a Sabbathian crunch and wanders into a sitar-emulating fuzz guitar solo, a heftier, more substantial take on the raga rock descended from “Within You Without You.”

I’ve seen Stray described as a hard rock band, but aside from “Taken All the Good Things” and “Only What You Make It,” their songs generally avoid the blues / Cream / Yardbirds influence that shaped so much proto-metal. Instead of the blues licks and structures, what Stray takes from that sound is the density, the insistence of the rhythm, and the sheer volume. In blues rock, vocals can often seem like an afterthought, and the guitar solo is typically the gravitational center of the song. But, like I said, Stray’s songs, for all their stretched-outness and heaviness, still feel like pop tunes with short instrumental hooks and vocal melodies as their basic building blocks.

So yeah, check it out… a fantastic and pretty unique record, I think. Oh, and I should also mention that Stray is often cited as one of Steve Harris from Iron Maiden’s favorite bands (Maiden even covered “All in Your Mind”), but I can’t hear much of a musical connection myself. Don’t let that dissuade you from checking this out; just don’t expect it to sound anything like Iron Maiden. And if you can track down an older pressing, the packaging is pretty cool, with the band’s logo die-cut into the jacket to show the inner sleeve. The inner part of the cutout has been ripped away on my copy, but you can just see how the band’s logo is stylized into the outline of a cat… pretty neat.

A few months ago, I wrote about the old Spanish punk compilation Punk Que? Punk for my staff pick, and in my write-up I mentioned how much I enjoyed the two tracks on that comp by KGB and that I’d like to hear the band’s other material. Amazingly, our friend Marko in Finland read my babbling and got in touch, offering to sell me his original copy of KGB’s lone single. Marko and Usman have been pen pals for a while and were already planning to meet up while we were in Helsinki last month, so Marko hand-delivered the single to Usman and it’s my staff pick this week:

KGB: Treblinka 7” (DRO, 1983)

Man, what a single! One thing I love about a lot of old Spanish punk is that the bands often wear their ’77 influences on their sleeve, and that’s certainly the case here, with both the a-side and b-side of this single being upbeat songs with big singalong melodies in the chorus. I compared KGB to the Dickies when I wrote about Punk Que? Punk, and while these two songs aren’t as sunny-sounding as that, they definitely have a similar combination of super tight playing and pop songcraft chops. I think KGB’s bass player is their not-so-secret weapon. The bass is way in the front of the mix on the single’s two tracks, and the way the bass player’s runs cascade across these relatively straightforward chord progressions really makes them pop.

The production on these two tracks is really strong. The recording isn’t lush or overdone, but the drums and bass have rich and clear tones that keep these tracks chugging along. There aren’t a ton of overdubs, but some keyboards help bring “Treblinka” to a big climax, while the falsetto backing vocals on “Luftwaffe” practically beg you to join in singing. I have a feeling that if I spoke Spanish the urge to sing along would be even stronger, but it’s pretty darn strong as it is.

The packaging on the single is excellent too: a beautiful 3-color print on heavy, textured paper that folds out multiple times. It’s thoughtfully designed and looks classy as hell, whether it’s folded down to 7” size or all splayed out. This is what collecting old punk singles is about… I’m sure I could have dialed these songs up on YouTube, but hearing them at maximum fidelity and getting to interact with the great packaging really helps bring the whole thing home.

Thanks once again to Marko for the hook-up, and for everyone else who reads the newsletter so closely. Please get in touch if you’re ever able to hook me up with something I’m looking for. Speaking of which, now I really need to track down the KGB LP on Vomitopunkrock Records, which appears to collect songs from their two rare cassette-only releases.

My selection for this week is another pickup from my recent trip, which I wrote all about in last week’s staff pick. I was actually hoping to find this record while I was in Sweden, and when I saw a copy at Trash Palace, it went straight in my pile.

The Rude Kids: 1984 Is Here to Stay... 12” (Sonet Records, 1981)

Some months ago, I came across a mention of this record on some list or another and added it to my “to listen” list. While I knew nothing about 1984 Is Here to Stay, I knew the Rude Kids’ earlier records well. I’m certain my introduction to the band was the blazing “Absolute Ruler” on Killed by Death #2, probably the best volume of KBD (if it’s not the best, it’s certainly my most played). Over the years I picked up copies of their first three singles. I remember my copy of their second single, 1978’s “Stranglers (If It’s Quiet Why Don’t You Play?),” came inside another completely unrelated LP. I can’t remember what record it was, but I bought some LP online and when it showed up, there was a copy of the Rude Kids single inside the jacket, picture sleeve and all. Looking back, I probably should have contacted the seller, but hopefully the statute of limitations is up on that one. Around a decade ago, I picked up a copy of the Rude Kids’ first LP, Safe Society, and there was a solid year where I listened to it almost constantly. Starting off with “Absolute Ruler” and also including the first single, “Raggare Is a Bunch of Motherfuckers” (which you might remember from Bloodstains Across Sweden), Safe Society is a top-notch ’77 punk LP, up there with the best UK and American bands. If you love the Damned’s first album, you should definitely check it out… it has a similar, Raw Power-on-amphetamines kind of feel.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to find this copy of 1984 Is Here to Stay before I had taken the time to listen to it online, so my first experience of the record was on vinyl, and this is a great-sounding copy of a well-recorded record. While I think 1984 Is Here to Stay is great, it’s very different from the Rude Kids’ earlier stuff. While it sounds bad on paper that they’re not nearly as fast and have lost much of their off-the-rails energy, in my opinion they make up for it with stronger, subtler playing and a big emphasis on hooky songwriting. Some songs are anthemic enough to bring to mind Twisted Sister’s first album, but the music is denser and moodier, reminding me of the Professionals (particularly the guitar player, who sounds just like Steve Jones in places). After I formulated that “Twisted Sister meets the Professionals” equation in my head for a while, I realized that what 1984 Is Here to Stay really sounds like is the Dictators’ Blood Brothers. The big production, over-the-top hooks, frontperson with a big personality, tongue-in-cheek lyrics, but consistently upbeat and energetic… if you ride for Blood Brothers, you’ll hear a lot of similar qualities here, and I’m pretty sure you’ll like them. Plus, 1984 Is Here to Stay is a 6-song, 45rpm 12” (best format!), and the Rude Kids are wise to keep things brief and to the point.

The first track on the b-side, “Next Time I’ll Beat Björn Borg!” (which also came out as a single in 1980 with a memorable picture sleeve) feels like the record’s anchor, serving as it’s longest, most ambitious, and best song. The Rude Kids throw all their best moves at you on this one: huge Pistols-inspired riffs, a monster chorus… even a great middle eight part. It’s a fuck of a long way from the savage, explosive “Raggare Is a Bunch of Mothers,” but it’s still great. It shoulda been huge, I tell you! It’s as good as the best Dictators songs I think, and has a combination of heft and pop sophistication that will appeal to folks who love any Ramones albums past the first three.

The Rude Kids released two more singles after 1984 Is Here to Stay. I haven’t heard them, but if I’m lucky enough to visit Sweden again, you bet they (along with the “Björn Borg” single) will be on my shopping list.

So much has happened since I wrote my last staff pick that I hardly know where to start. I guess the big news is that I got to spend a couple weeks in Europe. I bought tickets to this year’s K-Town Hardcore Fest hoping that I could actually make it, and in the end I not only went to the fest, but extended it into a little (mostly) solo vacation where I spent a few days each in Helsinki and Stockholm. I’d only been to those cities on tour, and anyone who has been on a tour knows you rarely get to see much of the cities you visit. I planned the dates so that I would intersect with the Public Acid / Kriegshög shows in both cities, and the days when I wasn’t hanging with that crew I spent sightseeing and record shopping. I was nervous about doing a solo vacation, but it turned out great. I saw some amazing sights like Suomenlinna in Helsinki and the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, ate as much good food as my delicate stomach would allow, spent a good amount of time just sitting in parks and other green spaces reading and relaxing, walked a ridiculous number of miles, and of course bought a ton of records. I’m sure I’ll be talking about those in my staff picks for some time to come.

The Public Acid / Kriegshög shows I got to see were totally epic. The Scandinavian leg of Public Acid’s European tour was virtually identical to the tour Scarecrow did last summer, so there was a persistent feeling of déjà vu as I found myself in the same spaces and (happily!) catching up with many of the same people. The Helsinki and Stockholm shows were in the same venues Scarecrow played, but fortunately I got to see some bands I hadn’t seen before: Ignorance in Helsinki and Prisão in Stockholm. The Helsinki show was great, but I was distracted with catching up with people, so I didn’t get to pay as much attention to the bands as I would have liked, though I made sure to watch Kohti Tuhoa closely as they played a bunch of new, as-yet-unrecorded music they’ve been working on. The after-gig karaoke was ace too. The Stockholm show was one I’d put near the top of my all-time favorite shows I’ve ever seen. The venue, Kafe 44, is just perfect, a little rectangular-shaped sweatbox that immediately gets over-filled with people and sound. Prisão kicked things off, and they were awesome. Lucas, Vidro’s guitarist, is the singer, and untethered from the guitar he’s able to lean into his acrobatic antics. Public Acid was next, and they just leveled the place. I’ve seen Public Acid dozens of times and I always say they’re my favorite current band, but tonight’s show was really special. They were tour-tight and exploding with energy, and while the rough moshing usually keeps me near the back of the room when I see them in the US (particularly in Richmond), tonight I planted myself right in front of the stage, pumping my fist and singing along the whole time. Marty even handed me the mic a couple of times, though for one of those I blanked on the words and just made a ridiculous attempt at a Marty-esque noise in the mic. After Public Acid’s set, Kriegshög took the stage and made it their own. Whereas Public Acid was wild and kinetic, Kriegshög rode a wave of simmering tension for their entire set, only occasionally and briefly erupting into full pandemonium. By the time it ended I was a spent, sweat-soaked mess. It’s been years since I had that much fun at a show I didn’t play.

As for K-Town Fest… man, what an amazing experience that was. People kept asking me if I was back this year because I was playing, but I was just attending because I had such a great time the year before. I can’t stress enough what a well-run festival it is. The collective that runs Ungdomshuset and the Fest is the most effective and organized punk collective I’ve ever seen, and it seems like they’ve thought through every aspect of the fest ahead of time to make sure everyone has as much fun as possible. Once you’re inside the festival area, you’re in a punk utopia where all the bands are great, the people are cool, and everyone is there to have fun. (Not to get too political or sanctimonious, but I put a lot of this down to K-Town’s anti-hard drugs policy… it seems like cocaine is as common as beer at many fests, and it would be hard to argue that doesn’t influence the vibe.) People come from all over Europe (and even further) for the fest, so the first day is kind of overwhelming as you say hi to a million different people, some of whom you know pretty well and are excited to see, and many others whom you may have only met briefly in some far-away city. By the second day, you’ve locked in and found the people you’re hanging hard with, though as late as Sunday I was still running into people who I hadn’t seen at all for the first two days.

As for the bands, it would be overkill for me to report on every set I watched, but I can hit a few highlights. First, I should say that K-Town is one of the best environments in which you can see a hardcore punk band. The venue’s sound is excellent, with top-notch house equipment and a staff who are very experienced at making hardcore punk bands sound great, and the crowd is just so welcoming. I’ve played places where it feels like the audience is giving off a vibe of “show us what you got,” but at K-Town it seems like everyone is just excited and wants to see the bands rip. And the bands you would expect to rip definitely did… the Kriegshög and Public Acid headlining sets were insane, and Cicada and Necron 9 lived up to the much-deserved hype their recent recordings have gotten. The Sorry State bands that played—Golpe, Plasma, and Lasso—were all incredible, and I felt very proud to be involved with them.

There were a few surprises, though, mostly from bands who had put out good records, but whose live shows were even better. Poland’s Traüme really knocked me out on the first day. I had listened to their LP on Quality Control HQ quite a bit, but live they were something else. The singer had a ton of charisma, and I gained a new appreciation for the guitarist’s dense, complex, but catchy chords. (I believe Traüme’s guitarist also pulled double duty at the fest playing bass for Golpe.) The Netherlands’ Oust was the biggest surprise of the fest for me… I thought their record was cool, but they were on another level live. I walked in the venue just as their set started, and the band was playing a kind of hooky, bouncy brand of hardcore that reminded me of Golpe, and they had the entire room dancing… like 500 people, all the way to the back of the room, bouncing in time with the music. Eventually, I realized the singer wasn’t on the stage. They had one of those super long microphone cords that let them roam around the entire venue (they eventually even wandered into the courtyard outside), and while I usually hate when bands do that because you can’t see anything, in this case it really worked. It felt like I was in Children of the Corn or something, trapped in a field of tall, writhing bodies, then at random times a crazed Dutch singer would leap out of nowhere and be screaming in my face. And as if that weren’t exciting enough, when Oust’s singer explained the lyrics between songs, they had this wild, fire-and-brimstone delivery that reminded me of a Pentecostal preacher. There was this one moment when they were explaining a song about the “manosphere” (look it up if you want to get depressed), and everyone was so fired up that if you had lowered Joe Rogan from the ceiling, I feel confident the crowd would have ripped him to shreds within seconds. The other big surprise of the weekend was the Greek band Plektani (ΠΛΕΚΤΑΝΗ). It feels weird characterizing them as a surprise because we were huge fans of their LP here at Sorry State and I have played that record a ton, but, as good as that record is, it pales compared to how insanely powerful this band was live. They were just so fast, so heavy… no frills, no antics, no gimmicks, just hardcore punk played with maximum power, precision, and energy. I’m extremely thankful I got to see their set.

Unfortunately, by Sunday night I was coming down with a nasty illness. I hadn’t been taking care of myself all weekend, skipping eating and resting in favor of watching more bands and chatting with friends. I could feel a fever coming on Sunday afternoon, and by the time Public Acid played their encore I was spent… I bolted out of the room and back to my hostel, where I alternated sweating and freezing all night, my throat too raw and sore to let me fall asleep. I was in a similar condition for the entire flight home (four hours from Copenhagen to Reykjavík, 6 more from Reykjavík to Raleigh) and the first thing I did when I woke up the morning after getting home was go to the doctor (a viral infection, so they couldn’t do anything for me aside from suggesting Nyquil and breathing steam). It was nearly a week before the congestion cleared enough for me to hear out of both ears, so I couldn’t even listen to my records. Eventually I got around to that, though.

Since this is my staff pick, I should pick one of those records to highlight. I’m going with this single by the Helsinki band Problems? from 1979. I picked this one up at Stupido Records in Helsinki. I actually stopped in Stupido the day arrived in Helsinki since it was just down the street from my hostel, but I stopped in a second time on the afternoon of the Public Acid / Kriegshög show, where I was surprised to run into my friend Markku. I was bummed because I didn’t think I’d see Markku on this trip since he lives in Turkku, but thankfully he came down to Helsinki for the gig and we got in a little hang time. I always joke that Markku is like a magical record fairy, and his magic definitely worked this time. I already had a big stack of LPs that I was buying, but when Markku went to the counter, suddenly a box of rare 7”s emerged that I had no idea existed. There were a few things I knew and grabbed right away, and a few things Markku told me I should get, including this 7”. I knew about Problems? from the Pohjalla compilation and I actually grabbed a few of their albums on this trip, but these two songs are the cream of the crop. The a-side, “Tapan Aikaa,” sounds like something that could have come out on Good Vibrations Records with its big pop hooks and kind of plaintive delivery, while the b-side, “Tahdomme Tilaa,” is a nastier one in a kind of Euro-punk style with a very memorable guitar hook.

The packaging is cool on this one too, and very indicative of its time and place. Like a lot of my Finnish punk singles, the same image is printed on both sides of the picture sleeve. It’s also somewhat small… from what Usman told me, the main Finnish pressing plant delivered 7”s in clear (but slightly hazy) plastic bags rather than in paper sleeves or on a spindle like many other plants. The bag was just meant to cover the vinyl, but Finnish bands and labels handmade picture sleeves at a slightly smaller than usual size so they fit in this bag. Well, now that I’ve bored everyone by writing about how Finnish vinyl manufacturers shipped records in the 80s, I think it’s time to wrap this up. See you next time!

What’s up Sorry Staters? I hope everyone has been holding up alright. Things have been busy for me with Jeff gone. He’s a total workhorse, so getting all his work covered while he’s not here is a challenge. I apologize if the newsletter has felt thin for the past few weeks. Partly that’s me having more to do, and partly it’s because I’ve been focusing on other parts of Sorry State. Running Sorry State often feels like struggling with a half-inflated balloon… when I get a handle on one part of it, the air gets pushed to another part and that gets out of control. If I’m really on the ball with the newsletter, no doubt I’ve gotten behind on ordering new stock or doing accounting or some other thing that needs to get done. I used to fantasize about perfecting a workflow that kept everything in check, but lately I’ve been more at peace with the idea that I can’t spread my attention evenly across everything that needs it.

No doubt part of the reason I haven’t been writing as much for the newsletter is that I’ve been struggling with burnout. I’ve learned to recognize when this is happening because I stop listening to as much music. When I get home at night, rather than throwing a record, I prefer to sit in silence, maybe reading or meditating. I’ve also been playing a lot of solitaire on my iPad, which I find relaxing. It’s such a pointless activity, but that’s kind of what I like about it. I can do it quickly or slowly, and it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes I win and sometimes I don’t, and I just have to accept that. Putting in more effort won’t help me get more out of it, so it reminds me to kind of let go. My brain likes to turn everything into some grand, goal-oriented project, but solitaire resists that mindset, which I think is good for me.

Even though I haven’t been listening to music as much as I normally do, I’m still listening to a lot by any other standard than my own. Aside from the Steröid LP that I’m still spinning regularly (Zack at the 185 Miles South podcast put it perfectly when he said there’s something weirdly comforting about this album, like a warm blanket), the record I’ve been getting the most pleasure from is this 1982 12” from Spain’s La Broma De Ssatán.

La Broma De Ssatán: S/T 12” (Victoria, 1982)

While I don’t think this is an unknown record by any stretch of the imagination, it’s one I can’t remember hearing anyone talk about before. I think I discovered it on some late-night internet research deep dive and added it to my “to listen” list. It usually takes several months (at minimum) for me to actually listen to something I add to that list, and then it takes a few listens before I decide whether I like it enough to add it to my vinyl want list. And then who knows how long it’ll take for a copy to pop up. So I probably checked this record out many months, if not years, ago. By the time a copy appeared on Discogs, I didn’t really remember what it sounded like, but I was buying something else from the seller. I decided to trust whatever former version of myself added this to my want list and pulled the trigger. I’m glad I did.

La Broma De Ssatán was from Madrid, Spain and formed in the late 70s. This 1982 12” EP was the only thing they released during the band’s original run. With seven songs in under 15 minutes, it’s a lean, no-nonsense affair. It’s funny, there are so many of these short-ass 45 RPM 12”s these days that I associate that format with the current era of DIY punk and hardcore, but there were a lot of short and sweet EPs in the 80s too. This record reminds me of records like TSOL’s first 12”, Kohu-63’s Valtaa Ei Loistoa, or Dead Kennedys In God We Trust, Inc. All those bands have full albums, and while the aforementioned EPs can feel one-dimensional in comparison, there’s something to be said for how the EPs distill the respective bands’ sounds to a more potent essence. Since La Broma De Ssatán didn’t release any other music, it’s hard to say whether this 12” offers a limited view of their sound, but it has the same kind of focused intensity I associate with those other classic punk 12” EPs.

With mostly sub-2-minute songs that are uniformly fast yet tuneful, La Broma De Ssatán’s 12” hits that perfect fuzzy spot between punk and hardcore. I hear similarities to Bad Religion’s How Could Hell Be Any Worse, but as with a lot of punk bands from Spain, I definitely hear the Clash’s influence on La Broma De Ssatán. The last track, “Vete A Morir A El Salvador” reminds me of “Capitol Radio,” but all the songs are tough and hooky in a way that will appeal to anyone who loves the Clash’s first album. The production here is a lot clearer, though, reminding me of the minimally-produced, live-sounding early 80s recordings I love so much. There’s only one guitar track and nothing is super distorted, which really helps show off the band’s playing. La Broma De Ssatán had been around for a few years by the time they recorded this record, and it shows. Not only is their playing tight and powerful, but also each musician really understands their role in the band and how best to serve the song. Notice how the bassist builds tension with a cool little fill right before the chorus to “Conflicto Mundial,” which really amplifies the chorus’s power. Most songs also start with a hooky little guitar riff (the one on the first song, “Terrorismo Autorizado,” kind of nods to “Pretty Vacant”), which reminds me of the way so many great 60s nuggets kick off. While the production is minimal, at their core La Broma De Ssatán’s songs are tightly constructed pop tunes.

I didn’t learn much about La Broma De Ssatán in my research (I’m sure a Spanish speaker would have better luck), but one factoid I gleaned is that the group was unhappy with this record’s artwork. That surprised me at first because I love the artwork… if I had flipped past this in a bin, I’d definitely want to hear it even if I knew nothing about it. Thinking about it more, though, I guess I get it. The band has been working on these songs for years, and I’m sure they wanted artwork that looked powerful and classic, but the record label intervenes and gives them… a drawing of a punk house cat with goofy, sub-Fast Times at Ridgemont High lettering. I love how it’s such a time capsule, though. And in the label’s defense, when this was released on Radikal 1977 Records in 2009 with band-approved artwork, their design did not exactly blow me away.

It’s crazy to me that some 30 years into buying punk records, I still regularly find bands and records like that that I’ve never heard of and are so killer. If this one sounds interesting to you, I strongly recommend giving it a quick listen on youtube. See ya in the bins!

HR: It's About Luv 12” (Olive Tree Records, 1985)

I’m feeling alright today since I just got back from a weekend in the mountains celebrating my wife’s birthday. Whenever I get away, I realize how much stress I accumulate and hold onto in my daily life. As I get further away from work (both spatially and temporally), I feel my muscle fibers loosen and my mind calm and widen. I have strategies like meditation and exercise that I use to cope with stress on a day-to-day basis, but at the end of the day I think the only real cure is time. You have to put in the hours in a space far away from your stressors, engaging instead with things that bring you peace and joy… nature, family, art, good food, etc. If only society encouraged us to set up our lives around these things rather than money, status, and all the other things that weigh us all down…

I didn’t listen to any records this weekend, but flipping through my recent arrivals stack, I realized I hadn’t written about HR’s first album, It’s About Luv, which I’ve been listening to regularly for the past couple of months. I’ve mentioned the Bad Brains a few times in my Staff Picks lately, and I guess I’ve had them on my mind. Mostly that’s due to reading H.R.’s biography and having the arc of his life and musical career come into clearer focus in my mind. I don’t think I realized, for instance, that It’s About Luv came out in the window between Rock for Light and I Against I, during the Bad Brains’ first (I think?) significant breakup. After getting super into that 1987 Bad Brains footage I wrote about a while back, I knew full well that H.R. still had it in 1985 when It’s About Luv was released, so I added it to my wants list. It wasn’t too long before a cheap copy popped up on Discogs and I nabbed it. I must not have been paying too much attention when I bought it (it was really cheap, after all), because when it showed up I was surprised to find that it was a sealed copy. Furthermore, the seller had listed it as the SST repress, when it was actually a sealed original pressing on Olive Tree. Not exactly the score of a lifetime, but I thought it was pretty neat. I felt like I’d drawn one of those Monopoly cards that says “bank error in your favor: collect $10.”

I’d always heard that a big source of the instability in Bad Brains was that H.R. wanted to get away from playing punk rock and focus on reggae. Given that, one might assume It’s About Luv is a reggae album, but it’s really not… there’s not much reggae on it at all, in fact. Having learned a little more about this period of H.R.’s life in Finding Joseph I and from listening to the SST Records-focused podcast You Don’t Know Mojack (where they researched and dissected each H.R. album at length and in great detail), I have more appreciation for where this album was coming from. I once saw someone refer to this as H.R.’s “military fatigues” era. With the Bad Brains having broken up, he was living in a collective house in DC, I believe with most or all the members of the H.R. band, and the environment was extremely counter-cultural. The vibe I got was that the group was living well outside mainstream society, focusing entirely on music and their deepening commitment to Rastafarianism. It seemed like H.R. was deep into a mission at this point in his life, and the H.R. band was a big part of that mission, aiming to be both culturally and musically revolutionary. The label Olive Tree Records was another part of this mission, and since the label was funded by a wealthy benefactor, the group could focus on the music rather than mere survival. The pieces were in place for something creative and exciting to happen.

My many hours listening to You Don’t Know Mojack made me curious about the guitarist on this record, David Byers, who seems to have been H.R.’s main musical foil during this part of his life. Byers had been in an early DC punk band called the Enzymes and numerous other projects that existed at the edges of the better-documented Dischord Records scene we all know, and by all accounts he was an enormously talented person. Of course nothing can match the uncanny chemistry of the Bad Brains’ original lineup, but the H.R. band is formidable too. Byers could shred, and It’s About Luv is full of blistering lead runs that aren’t totally unlike what Dr. Know was doing, but there’s something really unique about Byers’ melodic sensibility. His playing has an off-kilter jazziness to it, as he tends to play notes that aren’t quite the ones you expect. It’s kind of like if you took Greg Ginn’s unique tonal palette and filtered it through Dr. Know’s inhuman speed and precision. You can tell the H.R. band was using Bad Brains’ style as a jumping-off point, but Byers’ musical voice ensured they weren’t just a retread. The big guitar hook in “Let’s Have a Revolution” is a great example of what I’m talking about… it’s as heavy and as intense as the Bad Brains, but also doesn’t sound like anything Dr. Know would play.

Honestly, that’s kind of the vibe with It’s About Luvas a whole. I don’t think it’s as great as Bad Brains, but it makes up for that by being interesting and taking the sound places you wouldn’t expect it to go. The songs are stylistically diverse in a way that’s perfectly in step with H.R.’s vocal and lyrical idiosyncrasies. This makes moments like when he shouts “give me back my marijuana!” over and over or when he gives a detailed account of being busted for selling pot in “Happy Birthday My Son” (I’ll never forget that he had precisely $270 in his pocket) really pop and stick in your head. And while the slightly murky production mutes it somewhat, the band’s performance is blistering. Earl is still on drums, after all, and as I mentioned above, H.R. still very much had it in 1985.

I don’t know that I’d recommended everyone run out and buy this album immediately, but if you’ve digested all the Bad Brains’ classic material, It’s About Luv is well worth a listen.

Various: Systeemi Ei Toimi 7” (P. Tuotanto, 1982)

A few weeks ago, Usman was purging some duplicates from his collection and I picked up a few things. Bangers only, of course, but the one that really surprised me was this 1982 Finnish compilation. It’s funny, I could be remembering wrong, but I think didn’t actually ask to buy this record… Usman just brought it to work one day and told me the price and that I should take it. He was 100% right. I had no idea there was a Systeemi Ei Toimi-sized hole in my collection, but Usman saw it and fixed it up like the good friend he is.

I can’t remember ever listening to Systeemi Ei Toimi before, though I’m sure I’d scrolled or read past it on lists of 80s Finnish punk records. The compilation originally came out in 1982 on Vote Vasko’s label P. Tuotanto, which also released several of the rarest and most essential early Finnish hardcore records, including the Kaaos / Cadgers split 7” and Riistetyt’s first EP, Laki Ja Järjestys. Systeemi Ei Toimi features four tracks each from three bands: Kaaos, Laahaus, and Vapaa Pääsy. Since it’s only three bands and each has so much material, it doesn’t have the scattered feel of a lot of compilations. It’s more like a three-way split, as each band’s contribution feels roughly the length of one side of a 7”. I much prefer comps like this where you get a few tracks from each band… you get more of a feel for what each band is about rather than everything just whizzing past you faster than you can process.

Of course, everyone knows Kaaos rules, but the surprise here was the two other bands, both of whom were compilation-only bands whose only vinyl release was this compilation (Vapaa Pääsy also appeared on a couple of other cassette comps). Laahaus (“Dragging”) has a very down-the-middle Finnish hardcore sound that any fan of the classics will love, but their songs here are distinguished by being just a little more ragged and primitive than you might expect. The way the opening guitar riff to “Keskiluokan Painajainen” kicks off the record by punching you in the face and the simple tom accents on the chorus to “Mun Elämä” both remind me of S.O.A…. very straightforward, all impact. Their other two tracks are a little more punky, like a more stripped down Appendix. It all rips.

As for Kaaos’s tracks, they are gnarly as fuck. Usman can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe these tracks are exclusive to this compilation and otherwise only appear on the Totaalinen Kaaos collection. Listening to them just after Laahaus’s tracks, it’s remarkable how fast and vicious they are. Laahaus are ripping (I don’t just blithely hand out SOA comparisons!), but Kaaos takes it up several more notches. The guitarist’s right hand is so fast and relentless that it sounds like it’s going to buzzsaw right through the strings and into the body of the guitar, and the rhythm section is blistering fast, riding right to the edge of the cliff where it feels like at any second they could tip over into complete chaos. Jakke sounds like a wounded, snarling animal. It’s so fucking punk.

Vapaa Pääsy (“Free Admission”) holds down the back end of the compilation and changes up the vibe a little. Their first track, “Pakaluokka,” has a thin and scratchy guitar sound, a classic punk-inspired riff, and multi-tracked vocals that are a mix of hardcore snarl and punk snot. Something about this track reminds me of old Italian punk… perhaps it’s the punkiness of it mixed with how over the top the vocals are. Their other three tracks have a similar production, but the guitarist speeds up his strumming to hardcore tempos, which the lack of distortion really accentuates. These tracks remind me of Peggio Punx, but Amdi Petersens Armé fans are gonna be 100% on board, too. Vapaa Pääsy’s songs are a great way to end the comp… nearly as intense as Kaaos’s contributions, but coming from a slightly different direction.

The 1982 pressing of Systeemi Ei Toimi is a super rare and expensive record, but P. Tuotanto repressed it in 1990 on green vinyl, which is the version I have. Two other Finnish labels, Ratbite and Rock ’n’ Roll Bullshit, teamed up to repress the record once again in 2012, and this version is probably the easiest to find. It looks like the same two labels teamed up again in 2015 for an official reissue of Pohjasakka’s Maailma Täynnä Vihaa EP… I’ll have to keep an eye out for a copy of that so I can upgrade my bootleg, though I wouldn’t be bummed if an original crossed my path first…

Steröid: Chainmail Commandos (Crypt of the Wizard, 2025)

I would be lying if I chose anything other than Chainmail Commandos, the debut full-length from Sydney, Australia’s Steröid, as my staff pick this week… I have been obsessed with this record since I heard it last week. I’ve been listening to it constantly, playing it over and over more than just about any new release I can think of for the past several years. It’s one of those records I like so much I almost find it puzzling… I keep asking friends to listen to it in order to find out if I’m insane for liking it as much as I do, but aside from Danny no one has given me their impressions. I guess choosing it as my staff pick is really laying down the gambit, so hopefully I will hear from more people about what they think of this album. I’m really curious.

Basically, Steröid is the fusion of New Wave of British Heavy Metal and egg punk you never knew you wanted. If that sounds like a weird combination of sounds, that’s because it is. I found out about Steröid through the Punk This Week podcast, which is brought to you by Evan Minsker and his See Saw website. (You should definitely pay attention to See Saw, particularly if your tastes fall more toward the melodic and/or egg punk end of Sorry State’s focus.) I was washing dishes and listening to Punk This Week and Evan was talking about Steröid, describing their sound and aesthetic, and as I listened, I thought to myself, “this band sounds completely fucking bananas.” I can’t remember the last time I did this, but I turned off the podcast and immediately went over to Steröid’s Bandcamp to have a listen. My first reaction was that, yes, this band is just as weird as Evan had promised.

I should pause here to say that egg punk and NWOBHM are both subgenres I’m more or less ambivalent about. Regarding egg punk, I think it’s hilarious that some people are so hung up about it… like, there are people who seem mad egg punk exists. Who fucking cares? Personally, I think it’s cool that a new style of punk has emerged in recent years that sounds like absolutely nothing that has come before and caters primarily to young punk. I want punk to feel relevant, and it doesn’t stay relevant by rehashing the same sounds from four or five decades ago. There are great egg punk bands, mediocre ones, and bad ones. (I will admit that, as with any style generating a lot of media attention, there are a lot of lame, nondescript, or bad ones, particularly when you’re looking at releases that only come out digitally or on small-run tapes.) I think the Coneheads and D.L.I.M.C. are seminal bands, and I think Prison Affair, Gee Tee, and Snooper are all really good. That’s pretty much how I feel about NWOBHM too. I know people who base their entire lifestyle around this genre, but I’m OK with just the highlights. I think the early Diamond Head and Def Leppard records are essential, but this compilation I have called New Wave Of British Heavy Metal ‘79 Revisited (compiled by Lars Ulrich!) has more than enough good tunes to satisfy me if I get a hankerin’ for some NWOBHM.

So yeah, I never would have thought a band who combines these two styles would do it for me, but Steröid’s songs are so fucking great. The first track I heard, “Warzone in the City,” knocked me out. It starts with a cool riff and builds from there. First you get a cool little melodic lead guitar lead-in, then a brief verse before a pre-chorus that does exactly what a pre-chorus does, which is build tension and anticipation for the chorus. More and more I think the pre-chorus is the fulcrum of any great pop song, as that magical moment when the pre-chorus’s tension is released in the main chorus is the most exciting moment of the song. The chorus itself is solid and anthemic, just four words that anyone can join in singing the second time it rolls around. After another run through the verse/pre-chorus/chorus, you get a cool little bridge part where the guitars introduce an exciting new variation on the melody, then a guitar solo that offers a few moments of flash before boldly restating the song’s main melody. Then one more run through the chorus and we’re done. All killer, no filler. What a great fucking song.

They just keep coming, too. The next two tracks, “After Dawn” and “Chainmail Commandos,” are nearly as strong as “Warzone in the City,” and further into the album “Nowhere to Run” and “Desert Storm” provide another pair of high points. The entire album is very much of a piece, with the band mixing and matching instrumental and vocal hooks that are just different enough from one another to keep things interesting while maintaining a steady vibe. Chainmail Commandos is a no-skips experience for me.

As I mentioned, I’ve done a lot of pondering why Chainmail Commandos hits so hard for me when it doesn’t really map onto my usual musical preferences. Even more, though, I wondered how this thing could exist at all. If you are this good at writing songs and playing heavy metal guitar, why would you make a record that sounds like this? Why wouldn’t you just make something that sounds like a NWOBHM throwback? It would be better than 99% of the bands going for that, and you’d probably have a permanent meal ticket playing European metal festivals every summer. These songs feel like they could be huge, but not sounding like this. But really, that makes me love Steröid even more. Chainmail Commandos may not be in my stylistic wheelhouse, but “great songs played and recorded badly” is a vibe I have always had a lot of time for.

My first listens to Chainmail Commandos were delightfully free of context, but I’ve since learned a little more about the project. Apparently Steröid is a collaboration between people from the bands Gee Tee and R.M.F.C. and the person behind the dungeon synth project Quest Master. So obviously there are a lot of talented people in the room, but I still find it remarkable that those people have combined their respective strengths so effectively. Also, the record’s artwork, which perfectly articulates the music’s aesthetic, was done by Tin Savage, so clearly it’s not too far from our DIY punk world.

If you’ve checked this out and fallen for it like I have, you’ll probably want to know about a physical version. It looks like the UK label called Crypt of the Wizard released a vinyl edition of 250 that is already listed as sold out on their website. Of course, I emailed to see if there are any floating around that we could get for Sorry State, but I am doubtful. I found a pre-order for the album at Rough Trade US, so I made an order for myself. Fingers crossed it actually gets fulfilled. Maybe this record will sink without a trace and we’ll never hear about it again, but if there’s a repress at any point, you can bet I’ll load up for SSR and remind y’all about how awesome I think it is.