News

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.

The song that’s been playing on a loop in my head all week has been the Velvet Underground’s “Foggy Notion,” mostly because it mentions calamine lotion, which I’ve been swathing myself in every few hours for the past week. Last Sunday the weather was super nice, so I did some yard work, and I guess I touched some poison ivy. I’ve always had sensitive skin, and I remember breaking out in mysterious bumps and rashes all the time when I was a kid. It hasn’t been too much of an issue in adulthood, but around ten years ago I was exposed to poison ivy for the first time as an adult and it was pretty bad. This exposure isn’t quite as bad, but it is highly unpleasant. The weird / frustrating thing about it is that the pain and itchiness comes in waves. I’ll go a few hours without really thinking about it, then it’ll come on and my skin will feel like it’s burning from the inside, or like bugs are trying to crawl out through my arm and leg hair follicles. Actually, I think I’m manifesting more itchiness by writing about it right now, so let’s move on to another topic…

I mentioned in a previous staff pick that I’d been listening to a lot of old John Peel radio programs on YouTube, and one thing I love about so many of his shows is how much reggae he plays. Reggae has been sounding better and better to me lately… or maybe it’s just that I’m finding more of the stuff I really like. John Peel was a big fan of the London reggae group Misty in Roots, and he played them often. Misty in Roots’ name had been on my radar for a long time thanks to their association with the Ruts, but I knew little about the band or that connection until hearing them on Peel’s programs prompted me to investigate further. After sampling some of their albums, I decided the one I needed to start with was their first: 1979’s Live at the Counter Eurovision 79.

Musically, Misty in Roots played in a heavy roots reggae style (surprising, I know) built around massive bass lines and a distinctive, spooky-sounding organ. Unlike the more pop and soul-influenced end of reggae, Misty in Roots’ sound was darker and less melodic, but still very soulful and intense. Their intensity reminds me of Bob Marley in places, but there’s something grimy and confrontational in Misty in Roots’ sound that makes it sound of a piece with punk rock to me.

Another very punkish element of Misty in Roots is their confrontational politics. Like so many punk groups, the members of Misty in Roots were squatters, avowed radical leftists, and enthusiastic participants in the Rock Against Racism movement. They even, echoing Crass, at one point decamped to a farm in Zimbabwe to establish an intentional community according to their political vision. They also operated as a collective, with members rotating in and out of the group, and the collective also ran their in-house record label, People Unite, which released records by Misty in Roots, several other reggae artists, and the first single by the Ruts, the all-time punk classic “In a Rut” b/w “H-Eyes.”

The Ruts song “Jah War” is another connection to Misty in Roots, with the song’s lyrics telling the violent story of a police raid on Misty in Roots’ squat in Southall, West London. The National Front held a demonstration in Southall, and members of the Misty in Roots collective counter-protested. Tensions built, and a riot erupted, with police perpetrating acts of heinous violence, mostly against the Indian and West Indian communities who called Southall home rather than the National Front members who started the incident. Misty in Roots’ manager Clarence Baker (whose name you’ll recognize if you’re familiar with the Ruts’ song) had his skull fractured by a police truncheon and was in a coma for five months.

Given the political and social conditions in late-70s London—the same conditions that gave rise to punk—it’s hardly surprising that Misty in Roots’ music is soaked in darkness and intensity. If, like me, you’re a punker who dabbles in reggae, check out Live at the Counter Eurovision 79. Sadly, it’s not on streaming services, but it’s pretty easy to dial up a vinyl rip on youtube, and the vinyl is a relatively easy find (particularly in the UK and Europe), though not quite dirt cheap.

Various: Punk Que? Punk 12” (DRO, 1983; fan club, 2025)

First, I wanted to take a moment to mention the passing of SS Decontrol’s Al Barile. I rarely write eulogies in the Sorry State newsletter unless it’s someone I knew personally, but I was really sad to hear Al lost his battle with cancer. Of course I love SSD’s first two records to the moon and back, but what I really admired about Al Barile was the way he was so dedicated to forging his own path and seeing things his way. For a long time, he was a mysterious figure who kept the punk media world at arm’s length, but when he started giving interviews over the past few years, I feel like I really got a sense of who he was as a person. He had this incredible ability to see past the hangups that ensnare so many of us—ego, ambition, vanity, fear of / concern for what others think—and get right to the heart of the matter. Interviews with Al often seemed kind of awkward because he almost never said what you expected him to say. And it’s not like he was being contrary… he was just accessing a level of truth, honesty, and clarity that most of us will never know. Cheers Al, rest in peace.

My pick for this week’s newsletter is this 1983 compilation of Spanish punk rock, Punk Que? Punk, originally released on the Spanish label DRO in 1983 and recently reproduced by (I presume) an enterprising bootlegger. I read about Punk Que? Punk years ago (where and when is lost to the sands of time) and added the record to my want list, so when I saw we were getting in a reissue, I was stoked to check it out. I did not know I would like it as much as I do, though… it’s been on near-constant rotation since it arrived. Like a lot of 80s Spanish punk, the bands on Punk Que? Punk tend to have a potent combination of energy, power, and melody. As longtime readers will know, I’m a huge fan of 70s punk, and for whatever reason, 80s Spanish punk and hardcore seem to have a lot more 70s punk in their DNA than most scenes. Not that they ignored the worldwide trend toward harder and faster sounds, but they kept the melody and the strong songwriting from the original 70s bands.

Punk Que? Punk features two songs each from seven bands, each band delivering one song on each side. I’d only heard a few of the bands before, which is unsurprising since most of them never made records of their own. Madrid’s Espasmódicos released a 7” and a 12” EP and we carried their discography LP on Beat Generation a while back, so I was familiar with their upbeat, slightly arty punk, which would fit nicely on a mix tape full of Dangerhouse Records singles. Seguridad Social is by far the most prolific band on the comp, having released many LPs and EPs in the 80s and continuing to release music into the 2000s. Coincidentally, I had come across their 1982 cassette ¡¡Konsspiracion!! online a couple months before this comp got re-released and had listened to it a bunch. I checked out several of Seguridad Social’s records, but it seems like they drifted away from punk and toward new wave pretty quickly. Their two songs here, though, are pure punk, but with very strong chorus melodies. I particularly like their song on the b-side, “Cuando Llegue A Casa Te Desatare,” which has a bright, major-key chord progression and a memorable vocal melody, but still sounds tough as nails.

Alongside Seguridad Social, the other standout band for me on Punk Que? Punk is KGB. Very much in the melodic, 70s-influenced mode I associate with classic Spanish punk, KGB’s two tracks here remind me of the Dickies in that they’re fast, tight, and powerful, yet still put vocal melody front and center. “Maroto” is my favorite song on the record, with a massive singalong chorus that would have been right at home on Dawn of the Dickies, but their other track, the curiously titled “Agradable Sobremesa Con Una Japonesa” (“A Pleasant After-Dinner Chat with a Japanese Woman”) isn’t too far behind. KGB released a single on DRO in 1983 that I would really like to get my hands on, and there’s also a 2016 compilation LP on Vomitopunkrock Records with additional tracks. I need to investigate that too.

Most of the other bands on Punk Que? Punk only appeared on compilations, but don’t let this deter you as their quality ranges from very good to excellent. Carne De Psiquiatríco have a couple of tracks with a humorous bent (like “Quiero Ser Guitarra De Siniestro Total,” “I Want to Be the Guitar Player in Siniestro Total”) and a heavy Sex Pistols influence. San Sebastian’s No also sounds kind of like a second-wave UK punk band, while Urgente keeps things similarly raw yet song-oriented. Bilbao’s N.634 is the toughest-sounding band on the comp with simple, primal drums and busy bass playing. It’s kind of UK82-sounding, but with a gluebag griminess that makes me think of the first two Chaos UK singles.

So yeah, all killer and no filler on this one. We still have a few copies in stock as of this writing, so grab one if it sounds up your alley. And someone hook me up with a copy of that KGB single!

Unfortunately, I’ll have to keep things brief this week as I’m running late, but if an abbreviated staff pick doesn’t give you your “Daniel talking about records” fix, you can watch last week’s episode of What Are You Listening To? with me as a guest. I was joined by WAYLT?’s host Mike along with Tom from Static Shock Records and Dave from Sewercide Records. Shoegaze was derided. The gospel of Wire was sung. A good time was had by all. Watch it here.

One record I mentioned in passing on WAYLT? is my staff pick for this week: the debut LP from Finland’s Ratsia, released in 1979 on the Johanna label. Many of you know how great Finnish hardcore is, but their ’77-era punk scene was just as strong. Ratsia is one of my favorites, but there are a ton of great bands: Eppu Normaali, Kollaa Kestää, Loose Prick, and many more. While American punk bands from the 70s often sounded scrappy and raw, many of the Finnish bands were quite professional-sounding, following the lead of bands like the Buzzcocks and Stiff Little Fingers who continued growing after punk’s initial explosion of energy. Like those bands, Ratsia had an artisan’s approach to pop songwriting, and they weren’t afraid of strong production values either. If you’re the kind of punk listener who goes deep into the discographies of the ’77 set rather than just focusing on the earliest stuff, I bet you’ll really appreciate what Ratsia does.

After this self-titled LP, Ratsia released two more albums before they disbanded in 1982. Their second one, Elämän Syke is a little more new wave-sounding, of a piece with the first album but adding more layers and textures, while their final LP, 1982’s Jäljet, takes a turn toward post-punk. There are also four singles along the way, but I haven’t heard those and we’ll see if I ever lay my hands on them. Hopefully I can return to Ratsia’s discography again one day when I have more time and energy to dig in.

I’ve had the Bad Brains on my mind lately. A few weeks ago I picked up a copy of Black Dots at Vinyl Conflict (I bought this on CD when it came out and never owned it on vinyl) so I’d been listening to that a bunch, and then the other night when I was scrolling YouTube I came across this live set from 1987:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-wgzqTKFiE

I don’t know what I expected, but as the band launches into the intro from the I Against I album and the camera lands on HR, stalking the stage and conducting the band with his arms, I saw this glimmer in HR’s eyes and I was just like “oh shit, this is about to pop off.” From there, they segue into “I,” and when HR starts to sing… holy shit, he is on fire.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the footage of the Bad Brains playing at CBGB in 1982… it’s up there with Die Kreuzen’s public access footage as one of the most electrifying punk performances ever caught on video. But it’s such a different event than this Florida show. Not that it’s possible to overshadow the band’s incredible charisma, but the crowd is so into it at CBGB—losing their shit from the very first note—that they’re as much a part of the experience as the band in the video. You’re watching a great band and an audience who know their witnessing greatness and are acting accordingly, creating this feedback loop that propels the CBGB set to incomparable heights. The Florida set couldn’t be more different. The stage is huge; the sound isn’t that great; the setting is bizarre, and the crowd is mostly normies separated from the band by a gigantic barricade. The Bad Brains aren’t feeding off the audience here; they are their own power source.

I know some people consider I Against I the Bad Brains’ finest moment, but to be honest it’s never totally clicked with me. I remember a few months ago I was working the counter at the store while Jeff was in the back and I played a used copy we had in stock. The store was pretty quiet, so I played it loud and listened fairly closely. I hadn’t listened to I Against I in years, and I thought this might be my moment of epiphany, but no dice. A lot of my issue is with Ron St. Germain’s production, which sounds so dated to me… something about the guitar tone reminds me of a TV commercial… it’s just so slick and like corporate sounding. The irony there is that, aside from the Omega Sessions (which is thee greatest Bad Brains studio recording in my humble opinion), Ron St. Germain probably did a better job of capturing the Bad Brains on tape than any of the other producers they worked with. But still, watching this footage from Florida shows he didn’t even get close.

The version of “House of Suffering” on the Florida set in particular annihilates what they released on I Against I. The band’s energy level is a notch higher, and HR’s vocal performance is light years beyond what he does on the album. This live version has so much passion and character, and when you listen to the album version next to it, the vocals sound comparatively flat and lifeless. Beyond that, the song just clicks in a way the album version doesn’t, its main melody landing cleanly and directly like a perfectly placed body shot. The song never really stuck out to me on the album, but here it is a revelation.

After “House of Suffering,” they do a reggae medley of “Day Tripper” by the Beatles into “She’s a Rainbow” by the Rolling Stones (similar to what they do on The Youth Are Getting Restless live album recorded that same year). This should be totally cheesy, but somehow it’s not… I love the way Daryl starts the song playing the “Day Tripper” riff on the bass… I couldn’t place the melody until HR gets to the chorus. I imagine the Bad Brains must have developed this version for occasions just such as this, when they were playing for an audience full of spring breakers. I love the way HR gets lost in the song and improvises on the lyrics and melody. It feels like I’m watching genius at work.

Coincidentally, I started reading Finding Joseph I, Howie Abrams’ biography of HR, a few days ago (I’m about halfway through the book as I write). Abrams’ book charts HR’s ascent and descent better than anything else I’ve read or seen (including the Bad Brains documentary, which is very good), so I have a clearer sense of what version of HR I am watching in 1987. While people uniformly describe HR as smart, charismatic, and brilliant in his early years, signs of instability and darkness started showing in his behavior by 1982. By 1989, it seems like that first version of HR had all but disappeared. In 1987, though, you get a kind of peak. The band still has all of their musical chops, but they’ve been playing together for a full decade and have developed a level of flexibility that matches their power. That’s true of HR as well. The early performances can seem manic, bordering on out of control. The HR we see here is supremely controlled, but just as powerful. In 1982, he’s a machine gun spraying bullets, but in 1987 he’s able to wield the massive weapon that is his talent as if it were as compact and light as a pistol.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll stare at this video slack-jawed until the very last second, when HR’s perfectly timed backflip lands right on the closing beat of “At the Movies.” Fucking hell.

Various: Greetings from Bulgaria cassette (Aon Productions, 1996)

This week I have another item from the big haul I picked up at Vinyl Conflict a couple of weeks ago. Now, I’m not a big collector of vintage cassettes. They’re too easily counterfeited, and even if they are truly what they purport to be, magnetic tape is prone to oxidation and other types of decay and damage that make me wary of sinking money into them. But there have been a few occasions when I’ve lucked into a stash of old tapes, and they’re definitely fun to pore over. While records feel like a mass market medium—you usually have to make at least a few hundred of them, which changes the way the artist interacts with their audience—tapes are more intimate. While a personalized mix tape is like a letter from one person to another, looking at and listening to hand-duplicated tapes can feel like the pre-internet version of eavesdropping on a group chat, getting a window into a small community with its own in-jokes and idioms. I love that so many 80s and 90s metal bands circulated rehearsal tapes, workshopping their ideas and getting feedback from trusted sources before they took their ideas to the masses.

The cassette I’m writing about today is called Greetings from Bulgaria, and it’s one of several hand-duplicated compilation tapes I picked up from Vinyl Conflict. According to Discogs, it was released in 1996, and from what I can tell the tape was compiled by Ivailo Tonchev, the person behind Aon Productions, who primarily released cassettes by Bulgarian bands, though they also put out a couple of compilation 7”s and cassettes by Scandinavian bands like S.O.D. (the Swedish one) and Valse Triste. The “pay no more than £2” note on the j-card flap indicates this copy reached me via Mitsey Distro, a tape distro apparently based in Sheffield. I’m curious about how that connection was formed and how this tape found its way into the world (maybe at some point I’ll find an ad for it in an old MRR when I’m scanning ads for the newsletter), but that information may be lost to the sands of time. It seems, though, that there have always been people like me who are interested in music from off the beaten path, and I probably picked it up used for the same reasons someone would have picked it up from Mitsey Distro thirty years ago.

The tape starts with a recording of an old Bulgarian political song, meant to set the background atmosphere as an example of the only music one could hear in behind-the-iron-curtain Bulgaria. It’s kind of what you’d expect, somewhere between a religious hymn and a military march, and it’s hard to imagine how it might excite anyone. It’s sounds like music not meant to express anything really, but merely to lend authority and mystique to the state. After hearing nothing but that all your life, hearing raw and expressive rock and roll must have felt like a total revelation.

The liner notes don’t say this explicitly, but the tape’s a-side features Bulgarian bands from before the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989. Most bands have two tracks, and the tape’s liner notes give some basic information about each band. A lot of them sound like second-wave UK punk bands, making the music it seems natural to make when you first pick up electric guitars and drums: basic beats and chord changes and a ton of passion. D.D.T. sounds kind of like Warsaw-era Joy Division, and Aon Productions later released a more extensive compilation of their recordings. U.Z.Z.U. is a little more complex, reminding me of Post Regiment’s early recordings with their commanding vocals and darkly melodic guitar riffs. Review is another standout who actually released an album on the state-run label Балкантон. The recordings are all very raw, and some of the masters are clearly damaged with drop-outs and other problems, but I don’t mind at all. It feels like these are transmissions from another world, and I’m grateful to have them at all.

The b-side of the tape features bands who, by and large, were contemporary with the compilation and presumably still active when it came out in 1996. I hate to say it, but this side of the tape is a lot less interesting. The bands on the a-side are all punk bands and they don’t sound all that different from the punk bands rich western countries produced, but there’s something special there. I’m really projecting here, but I’m guessing maybe the 80s bands had heard a few examples of punk rock, but mostly they knew punk rock was loud, fast, and angry, and they filled in whatever other gaps they needed to make their music with their intuition and with knowledge they inherited from their own cultures and backgrounds. The 90s bands, on the other hand, sound kind of like carbon copies of western bands. Several of them are straight edge bands playing various styles of youth crew and mosh-oriented hardcore, and there’s a band called Just a Product that sounds like they were weaned on the same Lookout! and Epitaph catalogs we Americans were choking down. I was going to shows by 1996, and by and large these bands sound exactly like the local and regional bands I was seeing as a teenager. I’m sure it was great for Bulgarians to have access to so much more music after their 1989 revolution, but I can’t help but feel like something was lost. I guess that’s capitalism’s main rub: it opens up a theoretical world of choice, but somehow that always gets reduced down to just a few generic-ass options.

So yeah, Bulgarian punk… who even knew it was a thing? I’m thrilled to know even this little bit about it, so kudos to the folks who originally made this cassette and to all the people exploring the wide world of music, homogenization be damned!