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This week I’ve had straight edge hardcore on my brain. Last week I picked up a small collection that included most of the early Revelation 7”s, and rather than taking them right to the store to be priced, I brought them home to give them a spin. (Related note: if anyone needs a 2nd press black vinyl Warzone 7” and wants to trade me something more in my wheelhouse, hit me up.) I’m sure I’ve mentioned it in the newsletter many times, but like a lot of folks out there, the straight edge scene was my introduction to DIY hardcore. I started going to gigs in 1995, just as the youth crew revival hit. All the East Coast youth crew revival bands of the time played Virginia, and I definitely got swept up in the energy. My relationship to that stuff is pretty ambivalent now… once I started digging more into early 80s hardcore I found a lot of stuff that was more to my taste musically, and once I discovered the more political / punkier corners of the hardcore scene I felt more at home socially too. I still have some fondness for straight edge hardcore, though, the same way you might have a fondness for the local pizza joint in the town you grew up in. It may not be the best thing ever, but it’s part of who I am, and revisiting it brings me back to a more innocent time.

I’m tempted to go through these records and give my thoughts on each of them, but I have a slightly different direction in mind for this week’s staff pick. Still, I’ll share a few thoughts. First, for a label that is (justly) renowned for its strong branding, Rev’s early releases are kind of a mess from a production standpoint… certainly it’s part of their charm, but those early 7”s are not slick AT ALL (at least in their original pressings). The design and layout work is super rough around the edges, the print quality is pretty poor (low quality paper, off-center prints, misaligned cuts, etc.), and the actual sound of the records was pretty bad too. I don’t hate the songs on the Warzone 7”, but the recording and/or pressing makes it almost unlistenable. While not on Rev proper, there was a first press Judge 7” on Schism in the collection, and that looked and sounded pretty dodgy too. There wasn’t a Together comp in the collection, but we’ve had those come through the shop before, and I remember some serious fidelity issues on that too. Rev stepped things up for the Sick of It All 7”, which sounds considerably better and also looks good with a spot color pocket sleeve and cool photography. Sadly, though, the first SOIA 7” has never done it for me musically. As for the Gorilla Biscuits 7”, it still feels pretty magical to me. Returning to it with a lot more hardcore listening under my belt, I’m struck by how much Victim in Pain I hear in the band’s sound, but even at this early stage Gorilla Biscuits was overflowing with their unique charisma. Side by Side is the real gem of the early Rev catalog I think… the lyrics are undeniably corny, but the band is fucking blistering.

I’d been listening to and thinking about these 7”s, and then earlier today I was driving around town listening to the latest episode of the 185 Miles South podcast, where Zack talked about going to see the Earth Crisis / Judge / Integrity tour last month. It seemed like he enjoyed the show, but he mentioned the bands seemed like shadows of their former selves. He also mentioned that Porcell gave a long speech about straight edge before playing “Straight Edge Revenge” by Project X, which prompted Zack to pose the question (I’m paraphrasing here, so apologies if I’m not 100% accurate), “is it OK these bands are hypocrites?” I thought that was a really interesting question. My take (that no one asked for) is that, from my perspective, these Gorilla Biscuits / Judge / Youth of Today / etc. reunion shows that seem to happen pretty much every weekend these days have seemed, for many years now, like hollow, low-effort cash-ins. Aside from seeing Youth of Today play a set at Chaos in Tejas, I haven’t actually gone to see any of these bands play, and I’m sure it’s fun, but I feel like I’m always hearing stories about cobbled-together lineups, sloppy playing, and other half-assery. (I bet no one forgets to print the merch, though!) Clearly none of these bands have any interest in writing new material or being any kind of living creative entity… it’s like an ultra-niche version of the old nostalgia circuit shows where they’d bring out a parade of one-hit wonders to deliver a shaky version of their hit song to a half-interested audience. Dark shit. That these bands, as part of creating this simulacrum, proselytize straight edge from the stage when they (or at least most of them) clearly don’t give a fuck about it is, to me, just another symptom of the hollowness of the entire enterprise.

(I want to make it clear, by the way, that I have the utmost respect for Revelation as a label. They are a huge and important part of today’s hardcore scene. They directly support Sorry State in ways I am eternally grateful for, and they do the same for many other labels and bands. If some of their generosity is funded by selling colored vinyl on behalf of some old sellouts, that’s a tradeoff I’m perfectly comfortable with.)

Now that I’ve introduced the topic of corny and false straight edge, it’s time to get to my staff pick for this week… the corniest and falsest straight edge record of them all:

No For an Answer: You Laugh E.P. 7” (Revelation, 1988)

Where do I even start with this one? When you look at You Laugh in the context of Revelation’s discography, it feels like a total misstep. As I noted above, I think Rev got off to a rocky start, but the Gorilla Biscuits and Side by Side 7”s (Rev 4 and 5) are cornerstones of Revelation’s identity. And then when the label moved to putting out LPs—The Way It Is comp, Youth of Today’s Break Down the Walls, Bold’s Speak Out (Rev 7, 8, and 9)—they were firing on all cylinders, leveling up considerably in their design, production, and presentation. They had more or less perfected the Rev aesthetic by the time they put out the Gorilla Biscuits and Judge LPs (Rev 12 and 15), arguably the two best-known and most universally loved records on the label. But then sitting in the middle of that run is Rev 6, this fuckin’ stinker.

Now, I can’t say I hate this No For an Answer record. It has its charms. The layout is pretty classic, and the stickers of cool early 80s punk bands on the guitar on the cover pique my interest. The drumming is sloppy as fuck, but in kind of a cool way… it sounds like the drummer is playing as fast as he can, and even though he’s barely hanging onto that fast beat, he still works in some rhythmic accents that increase the intensity. The band sounds upbeat and alive. The guitarist doesn’t have much in the way of cool riffage, but the way he buzzsaws through the fast parts definitely helps keep the energy level high. The songs are dead simple, but they’re performed with passion and intensity, as hardcore should be.

The lyrics, though… oof. “Without Reason,” a song against drunk driving, has a flatness and lack of detail that reminds me of those pamphlets religious nuts hand out on the street. The EP’s title track is a tirade against casual sex, and it’s similarly one-dimensional, accusatory, and self-righteous. “Just Say No” has always been the most offensive to me, though. It’s crazy that in 1998, when Reagan was still in office, a band would take Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug slogan and appropriate it as a gang chorus. It’s like if a straight edge band today implored us, deadly earnest and with their crew backing them up, to “make America great again.” And there’s also “About Face,” which is an anti-sellout song. Here’s the first verse:

Where once stood convictions in things you would say,
There now stand restrictions your mind sold away.
You once were a symbol of true strength and heart,
But now you’re a warning of where the sickness starts.
You stood there and preached independence and faith,
You talked of commitment then made an about face.

I mean, obviously this is just gobbledygook (“restrictions your mind sold away?”), but it’s also absurd to me that someone who—judging by the lack of detail and nuance in the lyrics—has almost no life experience is calling out someone else for the choices they’ve made. Straight edge has always been judgmental as fuck (one of the biggest bands is literally called Judge!), with countless songs about sellouts and backstabbers, which invites a certain amount of schadenfreude when the self-righteous narrator inevitably cannot live up to their own standards. There’s also this ubiquitous language of oaths and commitment—being “true ’til death”—which is always going to ring hollow when that shit (again, inevitably) falls to the wayside. If you’re over 40 and straight edge—hell, over 30!—then respect. If you’re less than 5 years out from living with your parents, I don’t want to hear about your oaths and commitments. Even if you get them tattooed on you, like the singer for No For an Answer, who devotes one side of the record’s insert to showing off that he has “POISON FREE” tattooed in giant black block letters on his forearm. Take a wild guess whether he’s straight edge today.

I don’t mean to pick on No For an Answer or their singer… they were just kids, and more people love their record than will ever love anything I’ve played on. Also, in reading more about their singer’s story as I’ve been writing this, I learned he grew up with addict parents and that his aversion to substance abuse came from a very real place. I guess I’m just reflecting on those feelings of insincerity and hollowness Zack mentioned on the podcast. Those are things I’ve always felt were part of the ambient energy of straight edge hardcore, basically baked into the genre in all its youth crew-derived incarnations. NFAA’s lyrics are an egregious example, but they’re hardly atypical. That doesn’t mean the music isn’t good, and it doesn’t mean people shouldn’t enjoy it. There are far worse ways you could spend your time and money. But if you’re looking for these bands to feel as meaningful as they did 35 years ago, you’re begging for disappointment.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here in Raleigh, which is why we didn’t get a newsletter out last week, and also probably why I’m writing this right now on my couch, covered in a warm, fuzzy blanket, because I’ve called out sick from work the past two days. Being sick sucks, but if it was an unavoidable side effect of everything I’ve been up to, I’d say it was worth it.

First up, Will from To Live a Lie Records booked a hardcore show at RUMAH headlined by Dry Socket from Portland. Sadly, I missed the first band, but I got to see Natural End play a solid set of tough hardcore and MERC rip through a set of gnarly, old-school sounding power violence in the vein of Crossed Out. MERC had a unique sound, and I couldn’t figure out how they were generating it until I asked one of the band members. Turns out they’re a guitar-less band featuring one regular four-string bass and a Bass VI as the second set of strings. I’d never seen that setup before, and I really liked it… I know there’s a reason most bands use the same instrument setup, but I still like to hear folks fuck with the formula now and again. Dry Socket closed the night with a ripping set that got everyone moving. The band had a very dialed-in sound, a super tight performance, and their singer oozed charisma… I’d catch them if you have the opportunity.

Then on Sunday evening, Rigorous Institution rolled through Raleigh on their current tour. I booked this gig and hosted the band at my house, so my stress level was considerably higher for this one. This was the first gig I’d booked (or even been to) at a new venue in town called Cannonball Music Hall, and it worked out well I think. The environment is perhaps a little sterile because everything is so new, but they had great sound and the staff there did a great job making everything run like clockwork. Richmond’s Gnostics kicked off the night playing (if I remember correctly) their third show ever. Gnostics feature Rigorous Institution’s original guitarist Scully and have a similar neanderthal riffing style as the early Rigorous stuff, balanced out with a lot of atmosphere and some cool anarcho-inspired parts (I loved when their drummer joined in on vocals). Gnostics has a tape out soon on Roachleg Records, so watch out for that. Raleigh’s Paranoid Maniac played next and were on fire, ripping through a short set of their hyper-fast, left-of-center hardcore. I love it when a local band plays and you see all the touring musicians slowly gather in front of the stage as they realize how great the local band is. Hopefully we can get P Mane to play out more in the future. Then Rigorous closed the show and demolished everything. I was glad I booked this at a proper venue as the band sounded monstrous and their unique vocals popped just like they should. I’d seen Rigorous play a few years ago in Richmond, but on the tail end of a long-ish tour they sounded extremely tight and powerful. Like Gnostics, there’s a new Rigorous record coming soon on Roachleg that you need to watch out for… the Raleigh gig was actually the first tour date where the LP was for sale, since Sorry State is helping Roachleg with the distribution.

The show marathon continued on Monday with what was probably the main event for most people, Golpe’s long-awaited return to Raleigh. Plastique Pigs, a new Raleigh band whose name you’ve probably seen in the flyers section of the SSR newsletter over the past few months, opened the gig with their first set since Usman joined the band on drums. Usman hadn’t learned all the songs yet, so the set was quite short, but goddamn it ripped. I don’t think we’ve announced it anywhere, but Plastique Pigs have a demo tape coming out soon on Sorry State, and fans of hooky USHC like Government Warning need to watch out for that. Next up was my first set playing bass for Starving Bomb, and I think that went alright. We played the songs OK, though it’s tough for a three-piece to get the crowd revved up. One band that never has an issue revving up a crowd is Golpe, and they obliterated RUMAH that night. It took a song or two for everyone to loosen up, but before you knew it, bodies were flying and the venue was a sea of smiling faces, everyone reveling in what a great band we were seeing. Long live Golpe! If you have the chance to see them on this current US tour, please don’t miss it. Given the way the world is going, a return trip is not a given.

After 3 gigs in four days, I got a small respite before we had a big rager at my house for Usman’s 35th birthday. Invertebrates had a show in Asheville on Saturday night, and they kindly came down to NC a night early to celebrate Usman’s birthday. Our friends Marty and Terence also made the drive down from Richmond for the get-together. Music was blasted, the fire pit was lit, about 40 gazillion beers were consumed (I am responsible for exactly one of those LOL), and everyone had a great time. I think I slept until 3PM the next day though.

I haven’t had a ton of time to listen to records in the midst of all this partying and show-going… in fact, there are a bunch of new arrivals at Sorry State I’m eager to check out. But one LP I’ve put on a few times lately is my staff pick for this week:

Gary Numan: Telekon LP (1980, ATCO Records)

Since I’m an 80s baby, Gary Numan has been part of my world for as long as I can remember. But it wasn’t until the 2000s that I realized the depth of the world beyond “Cars.” The Tubeway Army stuff and The Pleasure Principle have been in regular rotation since then, but I’d never gotten around to checking out much of Gary’s post-Pleasure Principle material. A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Telekon in some bargain bin or another, and then another few weeks went by until I pulled it out of my “to listen” pile and put it on the turntable. Something about it perfectly matched the mood of the fall weather we’ve been having in Raleigh, and I’ve spun it several times since.

When I read other people’s takes on Telekon online, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that Telekon presents a “more sophisticated” or “subtler” version of Gary Numan than the one we heard on The Pleasure Principle. I think that’s fair. It’s hard to put my finger on, but something about Telekon seems less in love with the sound of the synthesizer than The Pleasure Principle. The arrangements are more three-dimensional, instruments floating in and out of the mix slowly and gracefully. The songs seem less tethered to pop gestalt, taking on a novelistic quality that ebbs and flows and wanders in a way that feels very organic. Though maybe people just think it sounds more sophisticated because violins play what would otherwise be a synth melody on “The Joy Circuit.” It does sound a bit upper crust, I guess.

Even though Numan’s music is often described as cold or icy, like I said Telekon feels like perfect fall music. It’s so organic-sounding that a color palette of leaves changing to red and yellow feels like the perfect window dressing, and the way the album takes in so much seems right for a time of year when the seasons change before your eyes. Get yourself a warm blanket and a hot toddy, throw this one on, and see if you agree.

Hi there everyone. Thanks for clicking on our newsletter. Hopefully we find you well.

I write this week still high on a full four days of music from attending a small festival this past weekend: Shakori Hills Grassroots Festival Of Music And Dance, to give it its full title. A wonderful small boutique music festival that is into its second decade and just under an hour away from Raleigh. I used to attend this biannual festival regularly, but for several reasons I haven’t been able to these past few years. I chose a great one to return to. The whole four days from Thursday to Sunday was wonderful. I saw great music being performed by so many talented artists. I hung out with old friends, met new ones and generally had a nice chill time. Although just an hour away, I always camp the entire five nights there and take the opportunity to disconnect from the outside world and recharge myself mentally and spiritually. In years gone by, there was no cell phone service or internet, which made the disconnect even more complete, but technology marches on, and now there is wi-fi available. I still barely looked at my phone other than to pass on a message or two, and certainly wasn’t walking around with it. However, I will admit to watching the Chelsea vs Liverpool game. Although not the result I wanted, I was in such a good mood that it wasn’t going to spoil my day. Mushrooms for breakfast will do that for you.

What I love about this festival is that it is all about the music and the love for it. Created by musicians for fellow musicians and friends to come together and play and enjoy. No egos, no big corporate sponsors, no trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator as far as artist booking goes, no huge crowds, no stress. Just good vibes and camaraderie. It sounds a bit hippie, and perhaps it is, but I’d rather that than some huge event sponsored by Evil Beer. At Shakori, you at least get to enjoy the free filtered well water that is accessible around the site. I always fill up my canteen on leaving for one last drink on the drive home. It’s good water. There’s also no closed off V.I.P. area here. Artists and festival goers, for the most part, rub shoulder to shoulder and are all together. I love seeing an artist play and then later running into them or having a meal with them or something. That happens all the time. I have had the privilege to meet so many cool people over a bite to eat or a cup of coffee.

I also attend the festival to participate. My buddies and I run what is known as the Vinyl Lounge, where we host a dance party late nights and play records between bands throughout the day. We have a lot of fun. I enjoy spinning during the day and often play stuff I wouldn’t generally get to as a DJ. The vibe is more mellow and laid-back. I broke out some jazz and bluegrass for instance. My fellow DJs are no slouches though, and bring some of the best music knowledge and selection skills to the festival. I’m always honored and humbled to be in such company. I see them busting out killer tune after killer tune and think how lucky I am to hear these jams direct from vinyl played through a fat sound system.

I feel like if I listed all the great sets I saw it would go on for a while. I also don’t want to mention some and forget others. I definitely whooped it up watching Del McCoury though. That was a lot of fun. So was seeing The Meters legend George Porter Jr. and his band. A lot of the fun about this festival is seeing artists that you don’t know, who blow you away. The bill is always packed with amazing talent, and every year I come away with a new favorite. The festival does a great job of bringing in a diverse set of acts from all over the world. It’s not just American roots music. There’s Afro, Latin, Cumbia, Celtic, you name it. Getting to see the musicians play so close also adds to the appeal, and you will witness some incredible individual performances. I have to say that this year the drummers really stood out. They killed it. Great stuff. Rather than ramble on more on the topic, here’s a link to the festival line-up and bios for those interested.

A few days away from the store, and a lot has happened. Looks like a bunch of very cool titles have come in. I have a lot of catching up to do. As do you guys. Go visit our webstore and take a look. I was excited to see that one of my most favorite and treasured artists of all time has a new record out, and so it was a no-brainer as to what my pick was going to be for record of the week this newsletter. It has become a tradition now. If he has a new record out, I’m going to pick it as my choice. I’m referring to Gruff Rhys from Wales, solo artist and member of Super Furry Animals. His new album is called Dim Probs and is out on Rock Action Records.

The album is his ninth solo album and the third to be sung entirely in Welsh. If you include the ones made for his previous bands Ffa Coffi Pawb and Super Furry Animals, that total goes to seven I believe. The title of this latest translates simply as “no probs.” It’s got all the trademark song crafting style that fans have loved from Gruff all these years. Beautiful melodies sung over his signature strumming guitar sound. Interesting percussion elements added, and on this one he is joined by fellow Welsh musicians Cate Le Bon and H. Hawkline. I’m not too familiar with the latter, but the former is great, and we have stocked her records here.

As I only bought the album yesterday and have only played it twice, it is a little early to give a detailed track by track review. Not that I do that much anyway in these things. LoL. I can tell you though that I enjoyed the record a lot and the quality control hasn’t dropped off one bit. Not that I would ever expect it from Gruff. He hasn’t made a bad record yet in my opinion in the thirty-plus years that I have been a fan.

So, it’s been a great couple of weeks for me musically. I saw Johnny Marr the other week, went to the festival this week and have Golpe to look forward to very soon. Give thanks for the good things in life.

Quick postscript. Another of my favorite singers, Lady Wray, has a new one out called Cover Girl. I’ve plugged her two previous albums on Big Crown in past newsletters and urge any of you who are into contemporary soul and r&b to check her out. This latest is tipped to be her best yet, and I am excited to dive in and find out.

And if all that wasn’t enough, it looks like we have some interesting compilations in stock too. The punk one called Cease & Resist - Sonic Subversion & Anarcho Punk In The UK 1979-86 looks cool and very well put together. Lots for us all to check out.

Happy listening. Thanks for reading and for supporting us and all the music that we carry and love so much. Cheers – Dom

Sorry again for not getting a newsletter out last week. Running Sorry State is always a balancing act, and last week it felt like all the plates came crashing to the ground. I needed a few days to recover, but now I’m back to pushing the rock uphill. It’s bound to happen from time to time, and I appreciate everyone’s patience when it does.

Last week I went out to Local 506 in Chapel Hill to check out Sacred Bones artist Anika play. I don’t think I’ve talked it in the newsletter at all (aside from maybe a brief mention in the new arrivals section), but Anika’s new album, Abyss, has been one of my most played records of the year so far. I spend so much time listening to contemporary hardcore punk that not much non-punk new music penetrates my orbit. Anika was on my radar, though, because Rich from ISS and Paranoid Maniac recommended her old band, Exploded View, to me at some point. I picked up one of Exploded View’s records in the clearance bin at Chaz’s Records in Durham a few years ago and spun it a lot, and when I read the description of Abyss and realized Anika was the singer, I gave it a spin. I liked Abyss right away and have kept returning to it all summer. Anika’s rich, deep vocals and evocative lyrics carry over from Exploded View, but there’s a kind of 90s alt-rock heaviness to the record that really does it for me. It’s like Nico singing for Dinosaur Jr or something. I urge you to check out Abyss if that sounds at all like it might be interesting to you.

The show was an interesting experience. Before the gig, I hit Mediterranean Deli, one of my favorite restaurants in Chapel Hill, which had been closed for several years after a fire destroyed their space. Med Deli is located right near the beloved (and sadly now-defunct) Chapel Hill venue the Nightlight, and I always used to joke that it was responsible for many a sluggish set from Raleigh punk bands who ate a big, nap-inducing meal there before the gig. The meal was everything I remembered and more, and I walked up the street to Local 506 in a great mood. I knew absolutely no one at the gig, which was kind of nice. I arrived just as the opening band was finishing, and rather than make a new friend, I passed the time between sets planning SSR’s staff meeting on my phone.

Anika’s set was excellent, though not entirely what I expected. She is based in the UK (I think), but the rest of her band wasn’t along for the trip. The ensemble for tonight was Anika on vocals, a guitarist whose name I didn’t catch playing all those reverb-drenched shoegaze-y parts, and one of Anika’s bandmates from Exploded View on drums. The bass and other effects came from a backing track, which had its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, the sound was absolutely incredible, and almost indistinguishable from the record… it felt like blasting Abyss on the best sound system in the world. But I got the impression that playing along to backing tracks kept the members’ performances on a tight leash… even subtle things about Anika’s performance, like the inflection of the words and the way she would periodically overload the mic, sounded eerily like the record. There were a few moments of spontaneity, though, like how Anika jumped into the crowd for the punky “Out of the Shadows,” and a couple of stripped-down tunes (including a Yoko Ono cover) without the backing track at the end of the set. Since I didn’t know anyone, I kind of bolted at the end of the set. Anika was posted up at the merch table chatting with people, and while I wanted to know why she speaks with an English accent but sings with a German accent, I was too shy to ask.

Anika’s set was the kickoff for a busy couple of weeks of shows in this area. I always say it’s feast or famine for shows in Raleigh, and we’re feasting right now. Sadly, I had to miss the Catharsis show at Kings on Friday, but it looked like it ruled. This Friday, Will from To Live a Lie Records is putting on Dry Socket and a bunch of other bands at RUMAH, then Rigorous Institution plays on Sunday at a new venue called Cannonball Music Hall, and then Golpe returns on Monday, which will also be my debut as the bassist for Starving Bomb. And then after that, maybe I’ll rest a bit.

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to choose a record as my staff pick, right? Let’s go with this 1980 compilation from New Zealand, which I’ve been listening to a lot lately. Its title is a bit confusing… I’ve seen it referred to as Four Stars, ****, and various combinations of the two. It originally came out on a label called Sausage Records, and it features a few tracks each from four bands: Life in the Fridge Exists, Wallsockets, Naked Spots Dance, and Beat Rhythm Fashion. For the first two bands, Four Stars was the only material they released; Naked Spots Dance managed an album in 1983, while Beat Rhythm Fashion released 3 singles before breaking up in 1982. All four bands sound like they could have been on the early Rough Trade roster, playing scrappy renditions of punk that had only recently acquired the “post-” prefix. That’s one of my favorite eras of music, and these groups have a similar vibe to the Raincoats, Swell Maps, the Slits, etc… arty weirdos who walked through punk’s door found more than just power chords and tired rock cliches.

One clear highlight is the opening track, “Have You Checked the Children,” by Life in the Fridge Exists. Full of angry young woman energy, the song rises above your typical DIY clatter with a particularly impassioned delivery and some clever wordplay. I love the line, “your sons and your daughters / are working in saunas,” which is exactly the kind of clever half-rhyme that makes me smile. Maybe saunas are stigmatized in New Zealand, but in my 21st-century American brain there doesn’t appear to be anything so bad about working at a sauna. The image, for me, pushes the song into the realm of the surreal, the singer getting all worked up about something that doesn’t seem like a big deal at all. I’m struggling to explain where the language’s power comes from, but it’s there for me.

My copy of Four Stars is a bootleg that came out in 2020. The original is impossibly rare… only 250 copies pressed, and the Discogs median currently stands at $340 USD (one copy is currently for sale for $450). I could be wrong, but it appears the bootleg copy I have may come from the same source as two other semi-recent bootleg compilations: The Buntington Long Playing Record and Scaling Triangles (the latter of which we carried at Sorry State). All three titles have similar packaging and a similar MO, bringing a very obscure regional compilation back into print at a budget price. Everyone has an opinion on bootlegs, but I say god bless the folks responsible for these. Compilations are a logistical nightmare in the first place, and I can’t imagine what it would take to officially reissue a small regional compilation from 40 years ago… just contacting the bands would be a challenge, not to mention getting them all signed on for a reissue. A bootleg is a quick and dirty option, and since I don’t think there’s much money to be made in this enterprise, all can be forgiven in the name of spreading around some great art. I can’t help but wonder, though… if these three compilations are all part of the same series, are there others I’ve missed? Please let me know if there are!

I’m running way behind on the newsletter, so I’ll try to keep things relatively brief this week. That shouldn’t be hard, as I know more or less nothing about my pick for this week:

Agitate Power: Noise Distraction 7” flexi (self-released, 1990)

According to Discogs, Agitate Power formed in Tokyo in 1987, and this 1990 flexi is very much of its time, featuring six blazing hardcore tunes and an instrumental intro (charmingly titled “Intoro”). I’d describe Agitate Power’s sound as skate thrash, and if the photos on the inside of the sleeve are any indication, they had the look to match. While there were strong connections to other scenes, this vein of skate thrash seemed like a very Japanese phenomenon, branching off from the established hardcore scene over the second half of the 80s. The music was still hardcore, but more hyperactive and less groove-oriented than earlier iterations of Japanese hardcore, with bands employing super fast paddle beats that segued into mid-paced mosh parts at semi-regular intervals. Anthemic choruses with gang vocals were another very prominent feature of the style. As for the fashion, spikes and studs were out, as many bands grew their hair long and adopted skate culture’s streetwear aesthetic… shorts, neon colors, hi-tops, bandanas, etc. Bands like Heresy, Ripcord, and Lärm were doing something similar in Europe, but as is often the case, the Japanese iteration of this sound and style turned everything up to eleven.

While I don’t know much about the people who were part of this scene or how it operated, I imagine its popularity was tied, at least somewhat, to the band S.O.B., who’s 1986 7” Leave Me Alone and 1987 mini-album Don’t Be Swindle got a lot of attention both internationally and within Japan when they were released. S.O.B. weren’t really skate thrash, but they were super fast and their colorfully illustrated album artwork looked like it came from the design crew behind Zorlac Skateboards. As skate thrash coalesced into a distinct strain of Japanese hardcore, some groups that had been around for a while—among them Deadless Muss, Rose Rose, and Outo—started to resemble the new thrash bands in their sound and aesthetic, while a new crop of younger bands put down skateboards and picked up guitars and drumsticks. For whatever reason, this style isn’t very fashionable nowadays, so a lot of these records (especially ones by lesser-known bands) can be found cheap… the Discogs median on this Agitate Power flexi currently stands at $8.50 USD.

I’ve had this flexi on my want list for a couple years (a reasonably priced copy from a US seller prompted me to pull the trigger), but since it arrived, it seems like Japanese skate thrash keeps popping up in my world. Yesterday Usman posted the first edition of Hardcore Knockouts for some time, and the records he chose were two of my favorite late 80s Japanese records, the Chicken Bowels 7” (which I wrote about as my staff pick a few years ago when I finally found a copy) and the Half Years 7”. Half Years was the short-lived band formed by guitarist Zigyaku after he left Gudon and before he formed Bastard (and after that, Judgement)… Zigyaku also produced the Chicken Bowels 7” (and, if my ears aren’t mistaken, contributed some wicked guitar leads). We were talking last night, and I guess Usman doesn’t consider either Chicken Bowels or Half Years skate thrash, but that might be because he likes those bands and he thinks skate thrash sucks. (The market agrees with him… while I mentioned cheap skate thrash records above, Chicken Bowels and Half Years will set you back a pretty penny if you can find them.) I think both bands definitely have elements of the style, though, and if the singer’s shorts on Half Years’ Discogs profile image aren’t a smoking gun, then I don’t know what is.

I’ve also been thinking about Japanese skate thrash thanks to the big grindcore / fastcore / hardcore collection that I mentioned last week. I’ve been listing 7”s from that collection to the used section of our website most every day, and there’s a lot of what I’d classify as skate thrash in there, though mostly from the late 90s and 2000s. While that late 80s / early 90s thing seemed like mostly a Japanese phenomenon, the sound and aesthetic eventually migrated east, leaving a big impact on the “bandana thrash” bands of the early 2000s. I have a feeling that the OG Japanese bands were a big influence on American groups like What Happens Next?, Life’s Halt, Scholastic Deth, and Gordon Solie Motherfuckers. One key labels from that scene was 625 Thrashcore, who has carried the torch for this brand of skate thrash longer and further than anyone. Alongside his other focus on west coast power violence, Max from 625 continues to release small-run records by Japanese thrash bands to this day.

There’s a whole world of this stuff out there, but sadly I’m not the person to guide you through it (at least not yet). This Agitate Power flexi definitely punches above its Discogs median, though, so pick it up if you have the opportunity. It’s also on the meaner / tougher end of the skate thrash spectrum, so it might be a good entry point if you’re still in the process of acquiring a taste for this unique style. Also, shout out to my friend Markku for introducing me to this record and Judd from Sex/Vid, who was the US seller I bought my copy from. I first traded records with Judd nearly 30 years ago, so it’s a trip to see his return address on a package in 2025.

Last week we put up a preorder for new reissues of the classic Naked Raygun albums. After a few years of licensed vinyl pressings on Haunted Town Records, Naked Raygun’s catalog is returning to Quarterstick Records, the Touch & Go subsidiary that handled the first round of Naked Raygun CD reissues in 1999. I don’t know if there will be anything particularly new or special about these pressings, but I’m stoked to have the essential albums by one of my all-time favorites back in stock. The other day I was driving home from Greensboro after picking up a collection for the shop. The sun was shining, it wasn’t too hot (a rarity in North Carolina), and the day seemed to beg for some singalong punk. That’s when I decided I’d celebrate these reissues by listening to the entire Naked Raygun discography and putting together a quick user’s guide to the band’s catalog for those of you who might not know them well or haven’t checked out everything. I also put together a YouTube playlist featuring all the key tracks I call out below, which functions as a nice audio primer on the band.

If you’re a total Raygun novice, the first thing you should know is that Naked Raygun is from Chicago. Not only are they from Chicago, but they’re a particularly Chicago-y sounding Chicago band. For many people, it’s Naked Raygun and their peers the Effigies who defined the Chicago punk sound with their big vocal melodies and tough, but slightly somber-sounding, chord progressions, echoes of which you could hear in the city’s home-grown takes on pop-punk and emo that came long after NR and the Effigies’ heyday. Chicago’s scene was somewhat unique among American cities in that its bands (and Naked Raygun and the Effigies in particular) took a lot of influence from 70s UK punk. The Buzzcocks and Stiff Little Fingers seem to have been held in particularly high regard in Chicago, so if you love that sound—big guitars, big vocal melodies, a driving rhythm section—Naked Raygun is going to be right up your alley.

Naked Raygun’s first record was 1983’s Basement Screams, though it’s not the place I would recommend starting if you’re digging into Naked Raygun for the first time. Even though the band had been bumping around for several years (they formed in 1980 and contributed an early version of “Bomb Shelter” to 1981’s Busted at Oz compilation), Naked Raygun hadn’t quite found their voice on Basement Screams. You can hear glimmers of their later melodic punk stuff (particularly on “I Lie”), but the record draws more from UK post-punk bands like Gang of Four, Wire, and Joy Division. Naked Raygun would always have quirky, arty moments on their records, but the scales tip in that direction on Basement Screams. While I wouldn’t rank it among Naked Raygun’s strongest records, Basement Screams certainly has its moments, and for people whose tastes lean toward artier sounds, it might be the only Naked Raygun record you really like. I’ve always been partial to the song “Tojo” with its upbeat, Fall-esque rhythm, big chorus, and odd lyrics. If you take a liking to this era of the band—and many people do—check out reissues of Basement Screams, whose bonus tracks flesh out the picture of this first iteration of Naked Raygun. Key tracks: “I Lie,” “Tojo.”

Collector Nerd Sidebar: In 1984, Ruthless Records previewed Naked Raygun’s debut album with a 3-song 7” called Flammable Solid. This record has never been reissued. The versions of “Surf Combat” and “Gear” on the b-side are exactly the same as the album versions as far as I can tell, but the a-side track, “Libido,” sounds to me like an alternate mix that shaves about a minute off the song’s runtime and adds some electric organ overdubs. This release is for nerds only, and super-duper nerds will also need it with the vellum lyric insert and sticker. My copy actually has 3 stickers, 2 of which have different Naked Raygun stamps, so I guess that makes me a super-duper mega turbo nerd.

Naked Raygun’s first proper full-length was 1985’s Throb Throb, which saw guitarist John Haggerty join the band, an important moment because—along with Jeff Pezzati’s soaring vocals—Haggerty’s beefy guitar sound was Naked Raygun’s most identifiable sonic hallmark. The earlier, art-punk Naked Raygun is still here on tracks like “Gear” and “Libido,” but “Rat Patrol,” “Metastasis,” and especially “I Don’t Know” (that lead guitar part!!!!!) find the core element’s of Naked Raygun’s high style falling into place. Another standout is “Surf Combat,” which fits in that art-punk bucket structurally, but is so kinetic and boisterous that it’s kind of hardcore. With all that energy and the band’s leanest, most direct-sounding recording, Throb Throb is a lot of hardcore fans’ favorite Naked Raygun album, and a great place to start if you love 80s American hardcore but don’t really know Naked Raygun. Key tracks: “Surf Combat,” “I Don’t Know.”

For me, though, Throb Throb’s follow-up, 1986’s All Rise, is Naked Raygun’s best album. I think most fans would agree it has the best production, with a clear, bright, and heavy guitar sound, hefty bottom end, and the band delivering an energetic, locked-in performance. Stylistically, this finds them at a fruitful intersection of their art-punk and melodic punk periods. Tracks like “Mr. Gridlock” and “The Peacemaker” have a similar sort of tension as early Killing Joke, but they’re songs I can’t imagine anyone other than Naked Raygun doing. But the melodic songs are undeniably the album’s highlight, with “Home of the Brave,” “Knock Me Down,” “I Remember,” and “Those Who Move” all delivering the combination of power and beauty that I think of as Naked Raygun’s thing. And there’s also “New Dreams,” another canonized Raygun classic, which sounds like it was ripped straight off Pink Flag with its aggressive yet artfully minimal attack. All Rise is an utterly singular record, and for my money one of the great American punk albums… there’s just nothing else out there with its unique combination of characteristics. Key tracks: “Home of the Brave,” “New Dreams.”

Here I must interrupt my run-through of Naked Raygun’s full-lengths to highlight the band’s 1987 non-album single “Vanilla Blue,” which came out between All Rise and its follow-up Jettison, self-released on the band’s own Sandpounder Records (the label’s only release). I mentioned earlier that Naked Raygun took a lot from UK bands, and they must have been mimicking the singles-oriented approach of those bands in putting out “Vanilla Blue” as a stand-alone 7”. God knows that releasing your band’s best song this way was a perverse gesture in the United States circa 1987, when general interest in 7” singles seemed to be at an all-time low. But fucking SHIT, “Vanilla Blue” is a banger. Starting with a kitschy but credible surf intro, it blossoms into the definitive Raygun tune, Haggerty doing little more than bashing out the chords but sounding like a million bucks doing it, while Pezatti delivers the song’s soaring melody with a stoic cool that, Sinatra-like, hints at a world of feeling beneath the surface. Thankfully, “Vanilla Blue” has been tacked onto some reissues of Jettison, but I don’t know if it gets lost in the shuffle of this latest catalog reissue… that would certainly be a shame. The original pressing isn’t hard to lay your hands on, though. Oh, and if you’re wondering what’s on the B-side, Naked Raygun made another perverse choice in backing their best song with their worst song, the novelty tune “Slim.” Key track: “Vanilla Blue.”

In 1988, Naked Raygun was coming off a pair of brilliant records, poised to make their artistic triumph, and… I wouldn’t say they whiffed, but they didn’t fully connect. On the band’s third album, Jettison, the Buzzcocks-style melodic and driving songs that had provided their earlier records’ highlights come to dominate the runtime. “Soldiers Requiem” is a Naked Raygun classic and among their very best songs. It’s so simple, too… John Haggerty bangs out the song’s classic-sounding chord progression over a driving punk beat while Pezzati totally abandons the English language for the track’s brilliantly whoa-tastic chorus. Even the way they balance those driving passages with the more musically expansive instrumental breaks is so Buzzcocks, the band having absorbed every drop of wisdom from Singles Going Steady. As great as the songs and performances are, though, Jettison is plagued by a tinny recording that blunts their impact. The guitar sound on Jettison is like Hüsker Dü’s on New Day Rising and Flip Your Wig, and as with those records, I can’t help but wonder what Jettison would have sounded like with All Rise’s perfect balance of warmth, heft, and crispness. The album’s sequencing accentuates the feeling of bathos, ending with a live cover of “Suspect Device” that’s fine, but feels like an afterthought. Even with these flaws, though, Jettson is a brilliant album and well worth spending a lot of time with if you develop a taste for Naked Raygun’s unique style. Key tracks: “Soldier’s Requiem,” “The Mule.”

Naked Raygun returned in 1989 with their fourth album, Understand?. Understand? has a much stronger recording than Jettison, with Haggerty’s trademark guitar sound back in full effect. Again, there are some great songs. “Wonder Beer” is like raw meat tossed into the packs of hungry Raygun fans, its massive chorus calling back to the band’s most anthemic moments. “Treason,” which the label promoted with a pink vinyl 12” single, also has its place on the list of Naked Raygun’s best songs. Its four-note lead guitar riff is punk rock elegance personified, the simmering tempo shows off how great Naked Raygun was at holding teeth-grinding tension, and by this point you know there’s a fucking great vocal hook in the chorus. As great as some moments are, though, the band just sounds tired on Understand?. The songs have this torpor about them, like they’re deliberately pulling back the tempos, and when they apply that approach to a slow song on “Vagabond Dog,” it’s downright turgid. I still like that song and I love Understand?, but it’s missing a certain spark when you compare it to the band’s other albums. As with the Beatles’ Let It Be, it’s an example of great musicians operating at not exactly the height of inspiration. Key tracks: “Treason,” “Wonder Beer.”

I don’t know if guitarist John Haggerty indeed felt uninspired when the band recorded Understand?, but he left Naked Raygun sometime after recording it, forming the brilliant Pegboy, whose first album Strong Reaction rekindles the spark that was missing on Understand?. As for Naked Raygun themselves, they replaced Haggerty with guitarist Bill Stephens and soldiered on, releasing their fifth album, Raygun… Naked Raygun in 1990. Obviously, losing a key member like Haggerty is going to affect the band’s sound, but I think Raygun… Naked Raygun often receives derision from people who just assume it isn’t any good. Personally, I think it’s a better album than Understand?. The band doesn’t sound sluggish like they did on that album, and they’re still churning out classic songs. The album’s opening track, “Home,” continues Raygun’s pattern of opening their albums with a classic track, and the next song, “Fever Island,” nails what Jettison should have sounded like. Stephens proves a capable stand-in for Haggerty, to where I wonder how much of this material was worked up before Haggerty left. The Buzzcocks-esque one-note guitar part on the chorus to “Home” and the way Stephens cranks out the chords on “Fever Island” are textbook Haggerty. If Stephens came up with those parts, it’s a testament to how perfect he was for the job. (Also, don’t miss the b-side of the “Home” single, a cover of Chelsea’s “Last Drink” that fits Naked Raygun’s sound perfectly, particularly since it works as a kind of sequel to “Wonder Beer.” There are also two Buzzcocks covers from around this time that appeared on a tribute compilation… these are also worth hearing.) Key tracks: “Home,” “Terminal,” “Last Drink.”

While Raygun… Naked Raygun sounded like a step in the right direction to me, it proved to be the last album in Naked Raygun’s original run. The band fizzled in the early 90s, though they came together sporadically in the years after, apparently unable to develop much momentum. A temporary reunion in 1997 led to a recording session with Steve Albini that went unreleased at that time, but eventually came out as part of a collection called Last of the Demohicans. While that recorded is padded out with a bunch of live stuff, the 1997 tracks are excellent. In some ways, these four songs sound like a different band—it seems like Stephens really finds his own voice as a guitarist here rather than emulating Haggerty—but they feel creative and exciting in a way the last few Naked Raygun albums didn’t. As you might expect, Albini’s recording is also one of the best the band ever got. Another shoulda coulda moment in a catalog that has too many of them. Sadly, The Last of the Demohicans isn’t part of the current reissue campaign, but the Chicago label Dyslexic Records did a vinyl pressing a few years ago that shouldn’t be too hard to find. Key track: “Off the Edge.”

So that’s Naked Raygun’s original run as a band, and then some. Eventually Naked Raygun got back together for real, releasing a series of 7” singles on the Riot Fest label (I think one of Riot Fest’s early coups was promoting a well-received Raygun reunion show) and eventually moving to the seminal Wax Trax! label for their only post-reunion full-length, 2021’s Over the Overlords. These releases all have a more modern sound, and they’re not as good as the records the band’s classic lineup did, but they’re solid melodic punk records packed to the gills with Jeff Pezatti’s unique songwriting and singing. Once you’ve digested the classic material, any of these records (as well as the assorted live records that have come out) can give you the Raygun fix you can’t get anywhere else.

If any of this piques your interest, you can preorder Naked Raygun’s catalog at Sorry State and listen to our Naked Raygun Key Tracks playlist here.

We took last week off from the newsletter so I could spend a few days driving around the east coast of the United States seeing bands, visiting record stores, eating vegan deli sandwiches, and trying to squeeze in the odd hour of work on my laptop whenever I could. The journey started at the Life / Destruct gig in Richmond, proceeded to Norfolk, Virginia to see Illiterates, then up to New York and then Philly to catch two of Yleiset Syyt’s four US tour dates. The shows were a blast… the bands ripped, and it was great to see so many friends, particularly my Finnish buddies Ville and Tumppi. And while I only mentioned the touring / headlining bands above, all these gigs were stacked with killer locals too, including bands I knew like Richmond’s Ultimate Disaster and Philly’s Early Grave and bands that were totally new to me like Norfolk’s Living Dead and Richmond’s Massacre System. If you didn’t already know it, punk is alive and well.

I also visited a ton of record stores on my trip. I got to catch up with Tony at Celebrated Summer, Colin at Sit & Spin, Max at Nexus, Dave at Vinyl Addiction, and check out a bunch of other shops too. Of course, I came home with a ton of records. It’s a weakness of mine. I’m interested in so much music that it’s nearly impossible for me to leave a record store empty-handed. Even in a crummy store, I can usually find a record or two that I’m curious about. At stores like any of the Academy locations in New York, where the stock is always fresh and the prices are attractive, I’m dragging armloads of vinyl to the counter. If I’m lucky, I find a few things I’ve been actively looking for (Academy, for instance, had several punk compilations that were on my want list, one of which I’m sure I’ll write about for the newsletter soon), but usually what I find are records I’ve heard about but don’t really know, or things that just look intriguing. And then sometimes you decide that today is the day you finally pull the trigger on a record you should have bought a long time ago… such is the case with my pick for this week:

The Authorities: Puppy Love 12” (Buckwheat Headlock Productions, 1995)

Like many people, I’m sure, my first exposure to the Authorities was via Screeching Weasel’s cover of the song “Achtung,” which appeared on Kill the Musicians, their first collection of non-album tracks that came out (on CD only!) on Lookout! in 1995. I must have bought Kill the Musicians right around the time it came out, and I wore that fucker out. Aside from the Minor Threat discography CD, it was one of my first exposures a compilation of non-album tracks by a punk band. I would soon learn that these were usually where the gold was, since punk bands often put their best songs on EPs and singles. That’s certainly the case with Kill the Musicians, which contained many of Screeching Weasel’s best songs. Even among those, though, “Achtung” stood out with its hooky vocals (the verses are even catchier than the chorus!) and those precise, lunging stops that occur throughout the song. Brilliant track.

While I’m sure Ben Weasel’s rambling liner notes for Kill the Musicians mention that “Achtung” is a cover, it was many years before I heard the Authorities again. I’m guessing my next exposure was “I Hate Cops,” which memorably kicked off Mystic Records’ We Got Power (Party Or Go Home) compilation (which I often refer to as my favorite compilation of all time). “I Hate Cops” is right up there with “Achtung” as far as brilliant hardcore punk tunes go, but there was still more to hear! It was probably somewhere in the late 90s when I heard the first Killed by Death compilation, which features both “I Hate Cops” and the Authorities’ third stone-cold classic tune, “Radiation Masturbation.”

All three tracks (along with “Shot in the Head,” which ain’t no slouch either) appeared on the Authorities sole 80s release, 1982’s Soundtrack for Trouble EP. Sadly, I’ve never been able to land an original pressing, but in 1995 Buckwheat Headlock Productions combined Soundtrack for Trouble with a previously unreleased 1983 studio session and released it as the Puppy Love LP. While the 10 extra tracks you get on Puppy Love might not have the cache of the original Soundtrack for Trouble songs, you’d be hard-pressed to discern any dip in quality. The band still plays with fire, hard and fast but brimming with classic punk hooks and a touch of 60s psychedelic texture. If you’re a fan of Angry Samoans, you’ll love it… though I’d argue the Authorities do it even better. It’s nice, too, that Puppy Love is succinct, taking an all-killer-no-filler approach rather than digging up sub-par material like live and rehearsal tapes. It’s so short that it spins at 45rpm.

The Authorities were from the small city of Stockton in northern California. Music heads will remember Stockton has another notable musical export: indie rock legends Pavement. The bands aren’t unconnected, either; Pavement’s original drummer Gary Young helped engineer and mix the 1983 session on Puppy Love and also played drums in a band called The Fall of Christianity with Authorities guitarist Brian Thalken. I’m a fan of Pavement and the Authorities, and it’s cool that Pavement has always name-checked the Authorities. The Authorities definitely got a mention in the recent film Pavements, and Pavement even got the Authorities to reunite when they curated the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in 2010, which led to more touring and some releases by the reformed band (which, honestly, I haven’t heard).

While the version of Puppy Love I picked up at Academy is the original 1995 pressing on Buckwheat Headlock Productions, Get Hip Records has kept the Authorities flame alive by keeping both Puppy Love and Soundtrack for Trouble in print. We should do a better job keeping them in stock at Sorry State, but they’re out there and available if you need to get some material by this brilliant band in your collection.

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.