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The Only Ones: The Only Ones LP (1978, CBS Records)

There’s nothing like striking something from your want list by finding it in the wild. I’ve had the Only Ones’ first self-titled album on my want list for years, watching copies pop up infrequently, usually overseas, and always for inflated prices. After stalking the record for years I knew what I was looking at when I found a copy, and when the momentcame, I knew what was happening and ripped Excalibur from the stone… carpe’d motherfucking diem, if you know what I mean. Ridiculous analogies, I know, but I was pretty darn excited when I found this record.

I love the Only Ones. I think I first heard “Another Girl, Another Planet” on the Rhino compilation No Thanks! The ‘70s Punk Rebellion. That compilation is perhaps the best survey of 70s punk you’ll find, and over the years I’ve bought the album or single for just about every one of the 100 tracks on it. However, even among such heavy company, “Another Girl, Another Planet” stood out. It’s one of the best power-pop songs ever. If you don’t agree, then it’s clear we have radically different ideas of what comprises a great pop tune. My love for the Only Ones deepened when I picked up a copy of their second album, Even Serpents Shine, at Vinyl Conflict many moons ago. That album knocked me out, and it’s one of those rare records that I first heard in my late 30s, but I listened to enough to learn every nook and cranny of it. If you ever come across a copy of that one pick it up, as it’s usually cheap.

Neither Even Serpents Shine nor this first, self-titled Only Ones albums ever got released in the States during the band’s heyday… instead, we got Special View, one of those mongrel collections of British bands’ material repackaged for the American market. Compiling songs from the first two Only Ones albums, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with Special View, but it never clicked with me… I could just tell this wasn’t how we were supposed to be listening to these songs, and just like when you hear the original UK track listing of the Clash’s first album, everything makes a lot more sense when you hear these songs in their original context, including the bits that some suit or another decided weren’t good enough for American ears.

Reading up on this self-titled album to prepare for writing this staff pick, I didn’t see too many kind words for it. People’s criticisms fall into two camps. There are the folks who dismiss the album because none of the other songs are as good as “Another Girl, Another Planet.” Fair enough, I suppose, as I’m sure an album full of pop bangers of that caliber would have been something to behold. But taking the album on its own terms, I like how it starts with its two most accessible songs, “The Whole of the Law” and “Another Girl, Another Planet,” then writhes around in this druggy, dream-like space for the rest of its running time. It seems appropriate given the lyrical subjects. The other criticism I see of this album is that it’s not punk, to which I reply… “so what?” Did the Only Ones ever present themselves as punks? “Another Girl, Another Planet” appeals to a lot of punks, but beyond that, I’m not sure where that expectation arises, other than from the time and place in which the Only Ones were making music. Only Ones drummer Mike Kellie was in Spooky Tooth, for chrissakes, so I don’t think they’re too concerned with their stash of punk points. (This is, of course, putting aside the fact that Spooky Tooth’s album Ceremony: An Electronic Mass (one of the many albums Dominic has turned me on to over the years) is, by my arbitrary metric, pretty punk, dude.)

Anyway, back to this Only Ones album. Is it a great album? Perhaps not. It’s certainly not as great as Even Serpents Shine, though I can’t shake the feeling that it doesn’t aspire to greatness. It’s a murky, dingy album, the jacket’s muted, earthy, and unassuming layout doing a good job of capturing its overall approach and vibe. It certainly pulls me into its world, and all the way in at that. The album, particularly its second side, evokes what I imagine withdrawals must feel like, time moving slower than it seems like it should, the minutes grinding past like sandpaper against your skin. Not that it’s a difficult listen, just that it distorts your sense of time and makes you listen on its own terms. It’s an album to smoke a joint to and lose yourself in, not to throw on while you’re washing the dishes.

Right now I’m still basking in the glow of acquisition, so who knows where this album will land with me in the long term? Will it stick to my turntable like Even Serpents Shine, or will it live on the shelf, doing little more than making my Only Ones section feel complete? Either way, I’ve already gotten several enjoyable spins out of it, and I’m nowhere near ready to file it away.

Hatfied & the North: The Rotter’s Club LP (Virgin, 1975)

I’ve often said that “when it rains, it pours” is the most useful cliche in the record world. I always think of the time when we had three copies of the infamous Beatles “butcher cover” in stock at one time. I found them all in the wild, close enough together that I wondered, “is this record even rare?” Of course I haven’t seen another one since, so I’ll chalk that up to coincidence. The last few months have been slow for us in terms of used stuff coming in, but the floodgates opened over the past couple of weeks and the vinyl gods have inundated us with cool stuff. Our used drops should look pretty good for the next several weeks. Of course I kept a few items for myself, which leads me to this week’s episode of the synchronicity files.

I was on a house call where this guy had an amazing collection. His entire basement was full of packed shelves of CDs, vinyl, and books, and even as someone who has spent a lot of time looking at people’s music collections, it was impressive. When I got back to the store, I told Dominic it looked like the guy had bought just about every reissue reviewed in Mojo and Ugly Things since the 80s. We were chatting about our favorite records, and he told me his all-time favorite record is Soft Machine’s Third, and that he was a big fan of the Canterbury scene, including bands like Soft Machine, Caravan, and Hatfield & the North. I know a little about that music, but not a lot. I wrote about Caravan’s In the Land of Grey and Pink as my staff pick a few years ago after hearing a track on the BBC 6 program The Freak Zone (actually, I swear that I did, but now I can’t find the post to link it), but Canterbury is a world I’ve brushed up against, not dove into. Anyway, when someone who has 20,000 records in their basement tells you what his favorite record is, the smart thing to do is to listen to that record, so I listened to Soft Machine’s Third. It is excellent, and you shouldn’t be surprised if I write about it for my staff pick somewhere down the road.

I was looking at that collection on a Saturday, then on Monday I got to work and started getting settled in, and Jeff sends me a message that someone called the shop about selling some records and that it sounded promising. I had a moment, so I called the guy back, and since my next few days looked pretty busy and he was available, I went straight out to look at his records. It turns out the guy had a killer collection full of experimental music from the 70s and 80s, including a lot of UK imports, and you’ll see those records popping up on our Friday Instagram posts over the next several weeks. Oddly, this collection included many of the records I had just been talking about at the other guy’s house two days earlier… many of them records I’ve never seen or seen only once or twice. This happens a lot… I’ll buy two collections at more or less the same time and think to myself, “these two people should be friends.” I’ve never actually made a record love connection, but when the universe rings me up I try to answer, so I skimmed copies of Soft Machine’s Third and Hatfield & the North’s The Rotter’s Club off the top of that buy and brought them home.

For whatever reason, The Rotter’s Club is the record I keep coming back to. I think this might be a signal that I’m developing a taste for Canterbury. I may be speaking out of turn here because I’m a neophyte rather than an expert in Canterbury, but here’s a quick rundown. The scene gets its name because it was centered near the English town of Canterbury (the same Canterbury from Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales). Scene fulcrum Robert Wyatt’s mother owned a 15-bedroom Georgian mansion near Canterbury, and many of his musician friends rented rooms there. Musical connections formed, people came and went, projects formed and splintered… it’s a whole long story I’m not qualified to tell, so look it up if you’re interested.

To my ears, Canterbury music brings together three musical styles: whimsical, often absurdist pop; sophisticated classical composition; and incantatory psychedelic improvisation. Those elements were all in the air in late 60s and early 70s Europe, but they didn’t come together anywhere in quite the same way they did in Canterbury. Critics often compare the whimsical pop element to Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, but Floyd were contemporaries of the Canterbury scene, not influences on it, and the Soft Machine often played the UFO Club alongside Floyd in both bands’ early days. The playful lyrics, filled with absurdities in the vein of Edward Lear or Lewis Carroll butting heads with low-brow jokes and puns, often garner comparisons to Monty Python. However, these playful passages sit, perhaps slightly awkwardly, next to complex, classical-influenced compositions that would coalesce into prog (many of the Canterbury bands formed before prog stalwarts like Yes and King Crimson had released anything). And even these proto-prog passages might drift away from the tight compositions and arrangements and do some free-form psych improvising for a few minutes. It’s a mixed bag, and it makes it harder to find your way into this stuff because if you’re interested in only one or two of those elements, the others may grate on your nerves.

The Rotter’s Club is a prototypical mix of these elements. I’m still not sure I’m 100% sold on the opening track, “Share It,” but from there I’m on board. And who can’t get behind song titles like “(Big) John Wayne Socks Psychology On The Jaw” and “Your Majesty Is Like A Cream Donut?” Actually, there are probably a lot of you out there who can’t, and if that’s the case, then you can ignore this whole corner of music history. The same goes if you hate early Yes and Crimson, or you can’t stand German progressive rock (aka “Krautrock”). I guess you have to have a pretty open mind to like this Canterbury stuff, or maybe you just need to be a middle-aged Anglophile who spends way too much time and money on music. Either way, they got me.

Kaaos / Cadgers: Split 7” (Lärmattacke Records 2022, original P. Tuotonto, 1981)

Like a lot of you out there, I took home a big stack of releases from the batch of Lärmattacke Records reissues we got in a few weeks back. As much as I’ve enjoyed all of them, I return to this one over and over. It’s funny, because I was on the fence about whether I needed to keep a copy. I’m not sure why… I think I had it in my head that these were less interesting, formative recordings by both bands and that I had the tracks on other compilation releases. It turns out neither of those things were true.

I don’t feel qualified to give the historical background on this record in the same newsletter that Usman, SSR’s resident scholar of Scandinavian hardcore, writes in, but I’ll do my best. Originally released in 1981, the Kaaos / Cadgers split must have been one of the earliest Finnish records in the hardcore style. In fact, it’s early even by worldwide standards, released in the same year as landmark early hardcore records like Minor Threat’s first EP, Black Flag’s Damaged, Discharge’s Why, and Dead Kennedys’ In God We Trust, Inc. Both bands were very young—teenagers, as far as I can tell… they all look like babies on the cover—and had long careers ahead of them, with Kaaos undergoing a series of lineup changes and releasing several more records, and Cadgers changing their name to Riistetyt and releasing their own impressive discography.

I have a huge weakness for young punk bands that leave it all on the table with little sense of finesse, and that’s how both bands play here. It seems like most people prefer the Kaaos side because it’s just so fucking fast. It must have been one of the most intense hardcore records released at that point, with tempos matched only by the Bad Brains and the Middle Class, but delivered with a chainsaw-wielding ferocity reminiscent of Discharge. The first track, “Kytät On Natsisikoja” (“Cops are Nazis”) became a Finnish punk anthem thanks to its infectious, shout-along chorus, but as someone who doesn’t speak Finnish, I’m just as enamored of the whiplash effect I experience when the song swings between the verses, where the drummer wails on the cymbals, to the verses where he goes to the toms. Throughout the record, the tempo seems to snap suddenly up and down, each member of the band clambering to catch up to the beat or let it catch up to them. The vocals are raw as fuck, frequently pushing into the red, but delivered with a total lack of posturing… the singer doesn’t scream or growl or bark, just yells with brute force like a total fucking psychopath.

The Cadgers side is a little different, but I play it just as much as the Kaaos side. The recordings are similar, which is interesting because they were recorded at different studios, albeit only a few weeks apart. A lot of that similarity comes from the way the vocals distort on the loudest and most intense parts, something I can never get enough of. As I mentioned above, the tempos aren’t as frantic on the Kaaos side, but my favorite track is the last one, “Kirkot Kyteen,” which is the slowest one on the record. I love how the singer lays into the last syllable of each line in the verses, stretching them out to absurd proportions to make room for more unhinged snarling. I can picture the rest of the band egging the singer on while he recorded his vocal tracks… “make it crazier!” On the choruses, the slightly off-time backing vocals add to the chaotic feel, and there’s a rad guitar lead squeezed in there too.

So, musically, the record rules. As for my assumption that I had these tracks on compilations, that was not true at all. Usman can correct me on any / all of this stuff, but from what I can tell, the Cadgers side of the split never appeared in full on any compilation release. I assumed the Kaaos side appeared on one of their several compilations, but it’s not on Höhnie’s Totaalinen Kaaos collection, which is where I had assumed it would be. The only comp it appears to have been on is Lost and Found’s 1994 CD collection, Total Chaos, though according to Discogs, that CD omits the last song from the split (even though it appears on the disc’s track listing). I don’t think I ever owned that CD anyway.

Hindsight being 20/20, it seems obvious this record would have bowled me over. It’s a classic record whose existence I had known about for years, but never checked out. It turns out there’s a reason people drop over a grand for the 200-copy first pressing, and it’s not just because of the rarity. So yeah, if you’re in the same boat as me, pick up one of these while you can. I think it deserves a place in the pantheon of great 80s hardcore records.

Rat Nip: My Pillow 7” (Songbook Records, 2023)

Rat Nip’s previous 7”, Comfortable Chair, was Record of the Week when it came out in September 2020, and My Pillow would have been Record of the Week this week if it hadn’t already sold out. I knew this record was limited and that it would be really good, so I got what I thought would be enough copies to last us a minute. However, they arrived at the same time as the Koro repress, and we got a massive flood of orders. Over the past week, I’ve picked a lot of orders that had both Koro and Rat Nip 7”s, and with good reason. I try to reserve the Record of the Week honor for things we can sell to you, so fuck it… I’ll make Rat Nip my staff pick.

For those of you who didn’t catch Rat Nip’s demo tape or first EP, at their core, Rat Nip is a dark and heavy hardcore band in the tradition of Black Flag’s Damaged. While Rat Nip doesn’t imitate Black Flag’s musical quirks in the manner of Annihilation Time or someone like that, the desperate vibes are similar. Like Rollins on Damaged, Rat Nip’s vocalist sounds like they’re mustering all their strength for a last spasm of anguish after soaking up years of abuse. While Rat Nip’s singer never goes fully unhinged a la “Damaged I,” the comparison I hear is based on all the pain mixed in with the power and aggression. Rat Nip’s vocals don’t feel like posturing; they feel like they come from somewhere deep and real.

Rat Nip’s rhythm section is rock solid, executing these tracks with the workmanlike precision and power one expects from a band from Pittsburgh, where the bar for hardcore punk is so high. The rhythm section rarely calls attention to itself, but if you are listening, there are moments of finesse like the blink-and-miss-‘em bass breaks in “Too Late” that betray just how deft and intricate these performances are.

The star of My Pillow, though, is the guitar. It’s one thing to find a workable guitar tone and use it for the entire record (something way too many bands cannot do), but it’s something else to use the tone and texture of the guitar in an interesting, artistic way. The riffs on My Pillow could stand on their own, but they’re enhanced by the way Rat Nip sculpts the sound. Much of the record uses a Public Acid-type approach of one guitar track with a crunchy tone and another one that’s totally fucked (or at least fucked from a different direction), but it’s far from a formula. Just check out my favorite track, “Too Late,” whose slow part features a crystal clear guitar chiming on the skinny strings before it descends into a black metal-ish, reverb-drenched spooky lead. Another favorite moment is in “Old Sky,” where you’re bopping along to a fist-pumping verse and then when the chorus kicks in this super chunky, Celtic Frost-sounding guitar track touches down in the mix for just that part. So sick.

Rat Nip’s attention to tone and texture also extends to the non-hardcore passages on My Pillow. There are several brief moments of haunting static and feedback, and a short sound collage between “Hurt People” and “Old Sky” that is genuinely fucking creepy. I would be interested to hear more stuff like that, but I’m sure Rat Nip doesn’t want to become fucking Neurosis or something.

If you’re wondering about my photo for this piece, here’s the story. A few weeks before My Pillow came out, a promo package arrived at Sorry State from Songbook Records containing a poster for My Pillow (currently hanging in Sorry State’s window) and the baggie I’m holding. It’s labeled “prop for the new insert,” and, without the actual insert, I was puzzled why they sent me a bag of Fritos and dried fruit. While the image on the insert isn’t easy to parse, I take it that the baggie contains actual “rat nip” that, like the body of the punk who just offed himself in the photo, will provide a tasty treat for our rodent friends.

Like I said above, unfortunately My Pillow is sold out at Sorry State and from Song Book Records. Song Book says they won’t repress the record, so if you see a copy floating around a distro or shop, grab it while you have the chance.

The other day I was standing by the stage at a gig, chatting with my friend Billy as Flower set up their gear. Talked turned to the band Nausea, and Billy mentioned he first heard Nausea when he picked up one of their Punk Terrorist Anthology CD collections on a school field trip to Florida. That made me remember that, coincidentally, I also discovered Nausea on a school field trip to Florida. My senior class trip was to Disney World in Orlando. On the way back to Virginia, we stopped for a day in Daytona Beach, and since I went to the beach all the time back home, I skipped out on frolicking in the sand with my classmates and went looking for something more interesting. I ended up at some kind of record store or another and bought a copy of Nausea’s Extinction on CD. I didn’t like it then, thinking it was too metal. I can’t recall hearing it since then, so maybe I would like it now. I’ll get around to that one day, perhaps if a reissue comes through the distro.

Remembering how I found that CD unlocked a bunch of memories about school field trips. As I’ve noted many times, I grew up in an isolated environment. “Small town” doesn’t even cover it… soybean fields surrounded my house for at least a mile in every direction, and the nearest city was Norfolk, about 50 miles away. As a teenager into punk rock and skateboarding, I took every opportunity to get out of there. Whenever there was a school field trip, I signed myself up. I’m not sure if it was still the case, but it was a tradition at my school that, every year, the 9th grade class went on a field trip to Washington, DC. I figured out that you could sign up for the trip even if you were no longer in 9th grade, and I’m pretty sure I went on the DC trip all four years I was in high school. The bus would drop us off at the National Mall, right in front of the Smithsonian Museum, and while the rest of the class filed in to the attractions there, I ventured out on my own, looking for punk. This being pre-internet, I didn’t know where to look, and sadly I never made it as far as Georgetown, where Smash Records was at the time.

Another field trip I signed up for was when the French club went to a French restaurant. After years of studying French culture, the teachers had the idea to treat us to some French cuisine, but the closest French restaurant was four hours away in Alexandria, Virginia. I remember liking the meal, though the only dish I remember was a bright green soup the color of the walls at Sorry State.

After our meal, we had a small block of unstructured time in Old Town Alexandria, where I found a small record store. I don’t remember what it was called. In my mind, it was on the second floor of a building, though I may be mixing it up with one of the other hundreds of record stores I’ve visited in my life. While I remember little about the store, I remember exactly what I bought: a single by the Holy Rollers (which I bought because it had the Dischord logo) and this single by the Clash.

I haven’t listened to any of my Clash records in years, though I have a lot of them. I have mixed feelings about them as a punk band, but it would be hard to argue they didn’t have talent as songwriters, and their tunes got hooks into me early. Exploring punk in the pre-internet days, they were one of the biggest names associated with the genre, and (some of) their music was easy to find. In high school I thrifted a cassette of Combat Rock that I listened to all the time. To me, it seemed at least as punk as Black Flag’s Slip It In or 7 Seconds’ Soulforce Revolution, other releases I stumbled upon in my early days. The Clash also rivaled the Sex Pistols in terms of the attention they received from mainstream media, so I read several books about them back when the only punk bands that featured in libraries and bookstores were them and the Pistols.

Whenever I get a hankering to listen to the Clash, as I did the other day, I end up spinning this single. As many great songs as there are on the Clash’s albums, many of their best ones only appeared on non-album releases like the The Cost of Living and Black Market Clash. This single features two songs from The Cost of Living, which was never released in the US. This single was never available as a stand-alone item… it was only sold as a bonus item that came with initial US pressings of the Clash’s first album. As a single, it’s a monster, with a Strummer song on one side and a Mick Jones song on the other. The Strummer song, “Groovy Times,” is good. It’s a lot like the material on Give ‘em Enough Rope, which makes sense because the Clash first demoed the song during the sessions for that album.

Truth be told, though, I’m a sucker for the Mick Jones songs, and “Gates of the West” is one of his best. From what I can gather, the song is about the Clash’s desire to break it big in America, a task they’d only started to tackle when they wrote this song. They pack the song with great melodies, and I love how the music has a similar mix of swagger and trepidation as the lyrics, with Mick belting out the chorus but more hesitant, almost mumbly in the verses. It’s crazy to me they never put this on an album, as it’s one of my favorite Clash songs.

That’s a rather roundabout way to recommend you a single tune, but if you haven’t heard it, here it is. Here’s to field trips!

Lately the grind of running Sorry State has been weighing on me. We’ve been busy and I feel like I’m falling behind on essential tasks. When I get overwhelmed, it’s hard for me to enjoy music. The problem is compounded because listening to music is part of my job for Sorry State, and sometimes it can feel like an endless treadmill of getting new releases in, giving them a few listens, and moving on to the next thing. Last weekend I blocked off a few hours of unstructured time for decompression… no plans, nowhere to be, no pressure on myself to take care of anything on my to-do list, just a little time to feed my soul whatever it needed in the moment. So, of course, I ended up listening to records.

I’m not sure what prompted me to pull out these two Fairytale records. They might have been at the front of my mind because I’ve been hearing rumblings they have an LP in the works. At any rate, I had that feeling that these are the records I wanted to hear in that moment, and since I had the time, I threw them on. And they sounded great!

I just re-read my descriptions for these two records I wrote when I named them Record of the Week in 2020 and 2021, and I don’t think I hit the nail on the head as to what’s special about them. As I wrote, Fairytale’s foundation is in noisy d-beat hardcore in the tradition of Swedish bands like Anti-Cimex and Shitlickers, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to describe them simply as a noisy d-beat band. But there’s so much more to their music, particularly on their self-titled 5-song EP on Desolate Records. Whereas a lot of d-beat bands aim for a heavy sound with a robust bottom end, Fairytale’s sound is like phyllo dough, a bunch of thin layers that feel substantial together without losing that sense of delicacy and complexity. I swear I hear phantom sounds emerging from the mix, poltergeists of feedback, echo, and distortion that dart through the music but evaporate before you can pin them down.

“Fantasy,” the first song on the 5-song EP, is my favorite track on these two EPs. Starting with a single guitar playing a simple, vaguely bluesy riff, inevitably the song erupts into a straightforward d-beat assault. However, there’s so much expression and subtlety to the playing. I love the way the guitarist accents the higher strings in part of the main riff rather than just banging away on the power chords. The riff creates an intense dynamic, interacting with the inventive vocal cadences and rock-solid rhythm section to create that alchemical magic I wrote about above. I also love the song’s coda, where the rhythm section continues barreling forward while two lead guitar tracks explode then wander away from one another, the rest of the band coming in for a final thump before the song lands and kicks up a pile of dust.

Sunday afternoon I posted some photos of my weekend playlist to Sorry State’s Instagram stories, and Fairytale’s guitarist Dan responded and offered to share recordings of their upcoming album. They were in my inbox when I got online Monday morning, and I listened to the record at least five times in a row. After that, I put it away, because I like to save some excitement for when the record arrives with its complete artwork and packaging. It was tough to stop listening, though, because it’s so killer. It picks up right where the EPs left off, leaning in to that ephemeral magic that is such a distinctive aspect of their sound. Of course, when it’s out we’ll do our best to get copies for Sorry State, and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about it in the other parts of the newsletter.

Another year is behind us, and it’s time to take stock. As always, there is so much great music out there for anyone who cares to pay attention to it. I know it’s nerdy, but I relish composing my year-end list. It’s sort of like those gratitude journals that people do nowadays, forcing you to give attention and acknowledgement to moments of joy you experienced over the previous year. And the hope is that, as a reader, maybe you’ll get turned on to something you didn’t already know about. I know that happened to me as the Sorry State staff worked out our lists behind the scenes over the past couple of weeks.

A note about my top 10: in the past, I have excluded Sorry State releases from my year-end lists. I thought this was important both to maintain some semblance of objectivity and because I try as much as possible to treat my children with equal love and attention. However, this year there were two releases on Sorry State that I think made significant contributions to punk and hardcore, and it felt wrong not to include them in my top 10. However, I haven’t included any Sorry State releases in my list of honorable mentions, but our other nine releases from 2022 all deserve a place there.

Also, note that none of these lists are in any order. It’s hard enough to narrow these things down, much less rank each item.

So yeah, here’s what moved me this year…

Daniel’s Top 10 of 2022

Straw Man Army: SOS 12” (D4MT Labs)

If you’re reading this, hopefully you already know about Straw Man Army. If you don’t, stop what you’re doing and listen to the two albums they’ve put out so far. Their music is thoughtful and earnest and beautiful in a way I rarely associate with punk, particularly hardcore punk… they’re one of those rare bands that is unmistakably punk while challenging punk’s philosophical and aesthetic norms and expectations. Most of all, though, they’re just a great band who writes great songs, and SOS finds their anarcho-punk sound evolving to embrace elements of psychedelia and pure pop. While their sound is more akin to bands like Zounds and Crisis, being a Straw Man Army fan today reminds me of being a Fugazi fan in the 90s, when you knew you were watching something special happening in real time.

Nightfeeder: Cut All of Your Face Off 12” (self-released)

Cut All of Your Face Off is 2022’s windows-down, fists in the air, volume at max, everyone screaming along album. While embedded in the thriving world of dirty, Discharge-descended hardcore, Nightfeeder injects that sound with a hooky sensibility I find irresistible.

Rigorous Institution: Cainsmarsh 12” (Black Water Records)

Cainsmarsh was my most anticipated record of 2022… the one I knew was coming and couldn’t wait to hear. I remember the day it came in, taking it home, putting it on the turntable and thinking, “FUCK YES!” Cainsmarsh gives us more of the stomping, anthemic punk and incredible lyrics I loved on their earlier singles, but fleshes it out with a sense of dark musical abstraction that reminds me of early Swans, a sound tailor-made for their dystopian lyrical themes. Another of contemporary punk’s most essential bands.

Peace de Résistance: Bits and Pieces 12” (Peace de Records)

Peace de Résistance’s debut LP blindsided me. Maybe it shouldn’t have, since I already loved Moses’s other band Institute and Peace de Résistance had already released a strong demo tape, but I don’t think too many people had “singer for Institute makes a glam rock masterpiece” on their 2022 bingo card. While you can hear Moses’s punk background in his lyrics and in the seedy rawness of the production, this record has its sights set on something bigger than punk. I’m here for it.

Sniffany & the Nits: The Unscratchable Itch 12” (Prah Recordings)

On the first night of Scarecrow’s European tour, my friend Flo asked me if I’d heard the Sniffany & the Nits album yet. I hadn’t, and while he talked it up that night, I didn’t get to hear it for another month and a half. It lived up to the hype. It sounds like the people who made this record have musical interests and knowledge beyond hardcore punk, but appreciate the genre’s intensity (not to mention its blistering tempos). Sniffany’s singer is also an ultra-charismatic frontperson, which makes for a gripping album.

Reckoning Force: Broken State 12” (Not for the Weak Records)

Being just a couple hours away in Raleigh, we knew there was a wave of killer young bands forming in eastern Virginia, but Reckoning Force’s Broken State made a lot more people sit up and take notice. A total powerhouse of a record, its big hooks, blistering speed, and wall of sound intensity bring to mind the best bands of the No Way Records years.

Rat Cage: In the Shadow of the Bomb 7” (La Vida Es Un Mus)

Man, I love Rat Cage. Every time they put out a record I play it to death, and this new single is no exception. While always a fast, raw, and in-your-face hardcore band, each Rat Cage record sounds a little different from the others. The lyrics for “In the Shadow of the Bomb” were inspired by a trip to Hiroshima, and the music gives a nod to the heavy and anthemic tradition of Japanese hardcore.

Shaved Ape: demo cassette (Sorry State Records)

For me, Shaved Ape’s demo is the most exhilarating piece of hardcore punk that came out this year. It is raw intensity personified, and whenever I play it I have a distinctive visceral reaction that I don’t get from any other record. It’s a similar kick to 7-inch bursts of intensity by DRI, YDI, Genetic Control, Negative Approach, or Deep Wound, but has enough personality to stand alongside those records rather than in their shadow.

Woodstock 99: Super Gremlin 12” (Sorry State Records)

Super Gremlin is another record that floored me when I first heard it. I remember that first listen, feeling surprised and delighted as each new song went in a direction I never could have expected. While it’s certainly episodic, the snarl of nihilistic hardcore runs through the entire record (well, most of it anyway), as does a Ramones-esque fusion of the dumb and the arty. One of those records that sounds like nothing before it.

Alienator: demo cassette (self-released)

I haven't stopped listening to Alienator's demo tape since it came out in January 2020. Alienator channels the moment when punk and metal first crossed over, when bands like Corrosion of Conformity, early DRI, and post-Discharge bands like Broken Bones and English Dogs exploded with the unpredictable intensity of water splashing into hot oil. Alienator references Siege’s speed, Slayer’s technicality, Sabbath’s heaviness, and YDI’s raw anger, arriving at a blistering sound you can’t hear anywhere else.

2022 Honorable mentions

Indre Krig, Ignorantes, Horrendous 3D, Verdict, Fatal, Long Knife, Delco MFs, White Stains, Personal Damage, Dissekerad, Vidro, Gefyr, Primer Regimen, Inferno Personale, Fuera de Sektor, Savageheads, Axe Rash, Neutrals, L.O.T.I.O.N., Gauze, the Prize, A.I.D.S., Cherry Cheeks, Judy & the Jerks, Ammo, the Drin, Yambag

Favorite Reissues

Pohjasakka: Kidutusta Ja Pelkoa 12” (Finnish HC)

Totalitär: 1998-2002 12” (Skrammel Records)

Agoni: En Röst För Fred 12” (De:Nihil Records)

Mercenary: Demos Collection 12” (Beach Impediment Records)

Sluggo: S/T 12” (4Q Records)

Aunt Sally: 1979 12” (Mesh Key Records)

Varaus: Tuomittu Elämään E.P. 7” (Larmattacke Records)

These are 2022’s reissues I was most excited about. It excludes some like Sealed’s reissue of Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church and TKO’s recreation of the Portland edition of Poison Idea’s Kings of Punk because I already had original copies and thus the reissues weren’t as important to me (though the music on them is). The reissues that are on the list presented music that was new to me and/or brought together material I already knew in a way that felt exciting and fresh.

Best Live Sets I Saw in 2022

Axe Rash, Inferno Personale, Vidro, Tower 7, Ammo, Golpe, Public Acid, Fried E/M, Mujeres Podridas, Suck Lords, Electric Chair, Woodstock 99, Indre Krig

After a few years without venturing too far from home, in 2022 I got to go on tour and to go to a few fests. I’d love to write about each of these experiences, but in the interests of keeping this to a semi-reasonable length, I’ll just say that if you have the opportunity to see any of these bands, take it.

2022 in Record Collecting

I feel like I’ve calmed down on buying collectible records, but these pictures tell a different story. That being said, I remain a bargain hunter, and as in my score photos of years past, a lot of the records you see here have sub-optimal covers or other flaws that kept their prices down. However, some were just plain bargains, like my biggest dawgs, Swankys’ Very Best of Hero LP and Anti-Cimex’s second EP. The latter is extra special because my pal Anders sold it to me the day after Scarecrow played an incredible couple of gigs in Cimex’s (and Anders’) home country of Sweden.

This year I’ve been trying to get my collection organized. I’ve been putting new polybags on everything, adding the several hundred LPs I’ve bought over the past 5+ years to my Discogs collection (I’ve been good about cataloging my 7”s), and trying to get digital copies of everything I have on vinyl. It’s an ongoing process. A lot of my record-buying filled gaps this process exposed, so I bought a lot of things this year that I should have owned already. If I posted them here, you’d say, “you’re 43 years old… why didn’t you own that already?” That being said, I think these Dead Kennedys OGs with posters elevate them to “score” status.

It’s funny, the Scarecrow European tour was not the orgy of record shopping you might expect it to be… we were all watching our finances and more interested in absorbing the unique facets of punk culture we encountered than looting these places for their cool stuff. Even so, I picked up most of the things in these pictures on tour. I’m a sucker for records I can associate with a memory, and epic out-of-town gigs with my buds have always provided some of the best ones.

Most Wanted Records

Every year I think about what records I want the most and figure, “I’ll never own those.” However, when I look back at a similar want list I wrote about a few years ago, I now have every record on it, including the Chicken Bowels 7” I got this year. So maybe one has to will these things into existence? Universe, if you’re listening, I’d love to lay my hands on:

Appendix: EP 7”

Confuse: Stupid Life 12”

Joe Henderson: The Elements LP

Negative Trend 7”

Nico: The Marble Index LP

Svart Framtid 7” (I’ve taken so many swings at this one that it’s approaching white whale status)

Other 2022 Highlights

I got married!

I toured Europe!

Scarecrow released our second EP!

Went to some sick fests

Got two great new employees at Sorry State

Sorry State put out 11 releases on our label

Collaborating with Paranoid on their 10th Anniversary reissue series

Getting to do Sorry State exclusive colors of a few sick records

That’s all, folks. Here’s hoping 2023 brings plenty of good news alongside the inevitable bad.

The Breeders: Title TK LP (2001, 4AD Records)

A problem one runs into when your record collection gets to be a certain size is making sure you give adequate attention to everything. I have enough records that I can’t store them all on easy-to-browse, eye-level shelving. The letters T through W of my LPs are behind a chair in my living room. If I know I want to listen to Total Control or Wire, it’s easy enough to reach behind the chair and grab one of their records, but it’s difficult to flip through those records and see what’s there. Consequently, Tarnfarbe or Univers Zero don’t get played as much because they’re just not as accessible and those artists’ names aren’t often at the front of my mind.

I’ve always been aware of this problem, and for years I refused to alphabetize my records, reasoning that if I kept my records in that order I would only play records that start with certain letters that were more accessible on my shelves. Eventually, though, that chaotic organizational system outlived its usefulness… I just couldn’t remember what I had or didn’t have, and I’d often want to listen to something and couldn’t find it. My latest solution is that I alphabetize my records, but I get help from technology when it’s time to decide what to listen to. While records are great at providing an immersive listening experience for the album you’ve chosen, digital libraries are more convenient to browse. So, I’ve been trying to get digital copies of everything I own in a physical format. As this process comes together, I’ve browsing my digital library to help me select what record I want to listen to.

I love this app called Albums, where the default view of your digital library is a grid of album artwork in random order. It only takes a few seconds of scrolling to find something I want to listen to, and then I go over to my shelves and pick out the record and play it. This method has prompted me to play records I hadn’t played in years. That’s what happened the other day with Title TK. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to listen to that evening, and when I scrolled past the album’s cover, I thought, “that’s exactly what I want to listen to.” It may have been ten years since I last listened to Title TK—who knows—but I’ve been having a lot of fun with it since I pulled it out.

Title TK is kind of a weird, under-appreciated album in the Breeders’ discography. It’s their third album, but it came out eight years after their breakout second album Last Splash. Those eight years were chaotic, with many line-up changes and expensive aborted recording sessions. Apparently, Kim Deal was a brutal taskmaster in the studio, alienating many of the musicians who contributed to the sessions. At one point, unsatisfied with the drum performances she was getting from every musician she tried, Deal decided to learn drums herself, moving back to her native Ohio to woodshed. (Deal, indeed, provides some of the drum tracks on Title TK.) After years of false starts, a new version of the Breeders coalesced in 2000 with three members of Fear (!?!?!?!) joining the fray, as well as Kim’s twin sister Kelley returning to the band after a hiatus.

If you get two Breeders fans together, they’re probably going to argue about whether the first album, Pod, or the second album, Last Splash, is the group’s high-water mark, but I think Title TK is their catalog’s quiet masterpiece. Maybe it just hit me at the right time, but there are so many things I love about this record that are unique to it. The biggest ones are the senses of space and rhythm that characterize these songs. I always thought I heard a distinct dub reggae influence on Title TK, not only in the heavy bass on tracks like “The She,” but also in the mix’s sense of wide-open space. So much of my listening diet around the time Title TK came out was punk and hardcore, and I found it refreshing to hear a record that sounded so light and airy. Plus, all that space in the mix provides the perfect setup for blindsiding the listener with a weird sound coming out of nowhere, like the synth burst that interrupts the otherwise gentle “Off You.” Also, while the album is as full of great guitar and vocal parts like you would expect, many of the songs get their mojo from unexpected rhythms. The first track, “Little Fury,” is a perfect example, where a minimal yet distinctive drumbeat provides the song’s most important hooks.

Those are the parts of Title TK that are unique, but it also has all the things I love about the Breeders’ other records. There’s Kim and Kelley’s harmony singing… there’s almost always something special about siblings singing in harmony, and the sound of Kim and Kelley singing together is just pleasing to my ears, syrupy but with a haunting quality. And then there are Kim’s lyrics. They’re imagistic, full of apparent non sequiturs, but always alive with potential meaning. They’re like Stephen Malkmus’s lyrics, but without the self-conscious erudition (some might say pretension). As with the lyrics, Kim’s songwriting seems to follow an idiosyncratic internal logic, never doing what you expect but always sounding natural and intuitive. I just love the way Kim’s brain works.

So yeah… Title TK… an under-appreciated gem. Check it out, or if it doesn’t sound like something that would appeal to you, give some love to one of the lesser-accessed corners of your collection.

Oh, and if you’re familiar with this album and you’re wondering why I’m holding it up backwards, it’s because I like the back cover better than the front, so that’s how I have it shelved. There are quite a few records I have shelved that way. This one has been that way so long I almost forgot what I know as the front cover isn’t actually the real album cover.

Neuroot: Right Is Might 7” (1986, Smuel Productions)

This week I’m writing about Right Is Might, the 1986 7” from Dutch hardcore band Neuroot. Neuroot has been on my radar for a long time—decades even—but I never had my “a-ha” moment with them until I picked up this 7” a few months ago. That happens to me often. I know many people who, if they hear something and it doesn’t speak to them immediately, decide they don’t like it and write the artist off forever. However, I tend to trust the wisdom of the crowd. If there are many people whom I respect who like a band or a record, I just assume it hasn’t hit me in the right way, that I haven’t heard the right record or listened to the band in the right context. I’m always circling back to artists like this, and many of my all-time favorite records and artists are ones I didn’t respond to on the first listen.

I’ve listened to various Neuroot reissues over the years, but this great-looking and great-sounding original pressing did my head in when I dropped the needle. Neuroot’s sound is big and powerful, as you always want your hardcore punk to be, but what strikes me here is the originality of their sound. While there are a couple of fast thrash passages on Right Is Might, most of the EP stomps along at a menacing, medium-fast tempo, like an army marching with purpose toward their intended target. By holding back from those cathartic passages of blistering speed or lumbering heaviness, Neuroot’s music builds tension, which they emphasize harmonically with dark and dissonant chords in the vein of Die Kreuzen or later-era Wretched. While many great hardcore records sound like explosions of energy, Right Is Might simmers like a pot at the edge of full-on boil. Perhaps that unique tone is what I had trouble locking into when I heard the band previously… it’s not what you come to an 80s hardcore record expecting.

Besides generating a unique brand of tension, Neuroot’s style also provides space for some noteworthy work from the band’s players (the vocalist is charismatic, but pretty straightforward in their execution). The guitarist bounces back and forth between the dense and dissonant chords I mentioned above and chunky palm-muting, emphasizing that relentless marching rhythm. The bass player often departs from the root notes, injecting wobbly, noisy fills into the songs’ many nooks and crannies. My favorite part of Right Is Might, though, is the drumming. It’s just so creative. Rarely relying on a straightforward punk beat, Neuroot’s drummer finds unique places for rhythmic accents. The drums never do what you expect them to, and while the drumming style is quite busy, the songs always have that powerful groove… it’s not like, say, Jerry’s Kids, where the drumming is so hyperactive you have trouble hearing the beat at the center. Neuroot’s songs are always rock solid. Perhaps that’s because they were a band for five years before they released Right Is Might, their debut record. Who knows when it emerged, but they exhibit a unique and powerful playing style here.

While Right Is Might has sparked a new appreciation of Neuroot’s music for me, that music sometimes gets overshadowed by this record’s relationship to a piece of hardcore punk record collecting lore. The insert for Right Is Might thanks Pushead for releasing the record in North America, but this never actually happened. The four tracks on Right Is Might, along with two others recorded at the same session, were supposed to come out on Pusmort Records as a split LP with the Canadian band Fratricide. It’s unsurprising that Pushead liked Neuroot… their metallic punk sound would have fit well with Pusmort artists like Final Conflict and Poison Idea. Unfortunately, though, the release never progressed past the test pressing stage. As you might expect, those original test pressings are highly collectible, though they change hands from time to time… there are though to be at least 25 copies in circulation. You can read a thorough analysis of the entire history of the aborted Neuroot / Fratricide split on the Negative Insight zine website, including scans of all of Pushead’s original correspondence with Neuroot from the 80s. So cool!

While Right Is Might isn’t rare or expensive, at least as far as 80s European hardcore 7”s go, a better (and certainly easier) option if you want to experience these tracks is Havoc Records’ 2020 reissue of the record, which expands to a 12” by adding the two additional tracks meant for the split 12” with Fratricide. (If you’re curious, the Fratricide material was also issued eventually on the Canadian label Schizophrenic Records). Even better, we have the Havoc LP in stock at Sorry State! Pick one up and get yer noggin crushed.

Flower Leperds: Dirges in the Dark LP (1988, XXX Records)

My staff pick for this week is Flower Leperds’ 1988 LP Dirges in the Dark. Flower Leperds were a Southern California punk band who appeared on a few compilations and released a 7” on Mystic Records called Has Hate Been Kind Enough in 1985. The Mystic 7” documents an earlier iteration of the band and it’s cool (in fact, I know many people prefer this earlier stuff), but I prefer the version of the band that came together a few years later and featured Tony from the Adolescents on vocals. This version of the band recorded Dirges in the Dark, and if you’re a fan of Tony’s vocals (particularly anything he did after the first Adolescents album), you’ll recognize his distinctive rasp right away.

While Flower Leperds’ early sound combined punk with elements of goth and metal, Dirges in the Dark is a very “rock” album. Most of the time, when punk bands decide to rock out it’s not a great idea… see records like SSD’s last LP, the Necros’ Tangled Up, or Discharge’s Grave New World. However, a few bands got it right. I’d put Dirges in the Dark alongside the FU’s Do We Really Want To Hurt You as a great rock/punk hybrid record. Both records keep the energy level high just like any great punk record should, but borrow the memorable riffing and big choruses of classic rock records like Alice Cooper’s early 70s recordings, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, and the like. The Leperds even cover Alice Cooper’s “Muscle of Love” on Dirges in the Dark, and it’s uncanny how much Tony’s voice sounds like Alice’s in places.

Besides the great music—there isn’t a bum track in the bunch—I really like Dirges in the Dark’s EC Comics-inspired artwork. It’s a shame the record has never been repressed and isn’t available on streaming services. Thankfully, though, a patient person should be able to score a copy for somewhere in the $20 range. What a value!

Buzzcocks: Singles Going Steady 12” (IRS Records, 1979)

I try not to complain too much because I know my problems pale compared to so many others’, but it’s been a rough week for me. I feel like I keep getting beat up on, particularly financially. The heating system went out in the store last week and it cost over $3,000 to fix, my health insurance quintupled in price, my car crapped out on me, and every time I look at my email I seem to find either new bills or notifications that next month’s bills are going up. It’s been rough, but I’ve been trying to keep my head up and press on. This is a time of readjustment for many people, and while it’s difficult, hopefully I come out the other end stronger.

Honestly, I have spent little time listening to music this week, and what time I have spent hasn’t gotten my full attention. Usually I’m voraciously consuming new music, with a big stack of records I’m eager to dive into and explore. This week, though, that stack felt like another burden, another thing on my to do list that won’t receive the attention it needs or deserves. When it came time to write a staff pick for this week (or, more accurately, several hours after the time when I should have completed writing my staff pick), I had to think hard about what music can give me right now.

I decided what I wanted was musical comfort food. Something that felt familiar, stable, and reliable. After a quick scan of my shelf, I landed on the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady. This is one of the most listened-to records in my collection, and hearing it—particularly in its entirety—brings me back to so many places. I remember being on the plane for my first trip abroad in 1999, reading Jon Savage’s book England’s Dreaming and trying to bone up on 70s punk as much as possible before I hit London’s legendary record shops. I have a vivid memory of picking up a CD copy of Singles Going Steady at a flea market in Perth, Australia, because this was a time before cell phones and mp3s and I wanted to listen to it and couldn’t wait until I got home. It was only feasible to carry a few CDs along with you on a big trip like that, so Singles Going Steady kept me company for much of that time.

One downside of being such a restless music consumer is that I rarely learn all the words on a record, even one I really like. However, I know every note of Singles Going Steady backwards and forwards, and there isn’t a moment in the record when I’m not singing, air guitaring, or air drumming along. It is a participatory experience for me, the record taking over my body and my mind. I tend to live in my head, forgetting how important physicality is to living. But moving along to a record you know and love, whether it’s shuffling your feet or waving your arms or blowing air through your diaphragm, helps to take you somewhere else. That makes me think of sleepless nights in my late 20s, during one of the bleakest depressive episodes in my life, trying to shake off the sads with full-body writhing to the Fall’s Grotesque alone in the dark.

That makes me think of a lyric from another favorite, Killing Joke’s song “Eighties:” “I have to push / I have to struggle.” I constantly fall prey to the capitalist fiction that earning one more dollar, making one more sale, fine-tuning my morning routine, or tinkering with my budget is going to make everything OK. But what are we working toward? Are we getting anywhere? I’m thankful for music, and the Buzzcocks in particular, for reminding me that cycles don’t have to be vicious. Sometime you just need to come back to the chorus, or to put on your favorite album and let it take you home.

Raw Power: Screams from the Gutter LP (Toxic Shock Records, 1985)

Earlier this week I was listening to Raw Power’s phenomenal second album, Screams from the Gutter. It’s one of my all-time favorite records, and listening to it prompted some reflection about how my listening habits have changed over the years.

This is one of many records I picked up back in the 90s, when buying records was very different. I had a small collection of records when I moved to Richmond for college in 1997, but I started buying records in earnest once I got there. I’d visit Plan 9 Records at least once a week, often more, searching for anything that looked cool or interesting. Most used LPs were priced at $8… occasionally you’d see a collectible punk record for a premium price, but it was rare. I remember seeing a copy of Bad Religion’s Into the Unknown for $50 and thinking it was insane that anyone would pay that much money for a record. $8 was about my hourly wage at the time, and since my tuition and living expenses were covered by a scholarship, the money I made at my job went to Plan 9 (as well as Soundhole, the punk and metal-focused shop that was out in the west end of Richmond, which I didn’t get to as often). I bought aggressively, and while I ended up with plenty of records that sucked, I also found gems like Screams from the Gutter that form the backbone of my personal musical canon.

While I don’t miss paying hard-earned money for shitty records because I didn’t know any better, I miss discovering records like Screams from the Gutter free of anything but the most minimal context. Nowadays when I’m exploring music that’s new to me, I start researching its context as I’m hearing it, the record playing on the stereo while I sit on the couch with my phone or tablet. I start by going to rateyourmusic.com and Discogs to see where the record fits in the artist’s and the label’s discography. Rateyourmusic is helpful as you can see how the users on that site have rated that record versus other similar ones, and you can also skim through the user reviews on the site. A lot of them are trash, but many of them are perceptive, and the site’s display algorithm puts those more thorough reviews first. I’ve learned so much from that site that I never would have known otherwise.

However, if I’d had these tools when I discovered Screams from the Gutter, would I have taken in the record the same way? I’m pretty sure I bought the record just because it looked cool and punk. I doubt I even knew Raw Power was from Italy, though the back cover makes that pretty clear. More than the mystique of the band being from a far away land, though, it was the music that knocked me out when I first listened to it. Raw Power recorded Screams from the Gutter with Paul Mahern from the Zero Boys, and much like the Zero Boys’ Vicious Circle, it’s a beautifully produced record. The tones are clear, heavy, and powerful, the recording hi-fi but free of bells and whistles. It sounds like a well-done recording of the band ripping it up in the studio, which is presumably what it is. That’s still my favorite kind of recording for hardcore punk.

As tools like eBay, Kill from the Heart, Soulseek, and Discogs developed in the 21st century, my love for Screams from the Gutter sent me down a deep rabbit hole where I’m still discovering things. What else is on Toxic Shock Records? Whoa, this Corrosion of Conformity record called Eye for an Eye is pretty cool, as is Dayglo Abortions’ Feed Us a Fetus. What other hardcore bands are from Italy? Wretched and Negazione sound insane! (I already knew Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, as their Into the Void LP was another 90s Plan 9 used bin purchase.) Hold on, did Raw Power release any other records? Turns out Screams from the Gutter is their second album, and many (most?) people think their first one, You Are the Victim, is even better. Not to mention their demo tape, which Ugly Pop Records released on vinyl in 2019.

Of course I’m thrilled to hear all this stuff. My life is much richer for it. However, if I had access to all this when I first heard Screams from the Gutter, would it have hit the same way? I can imagine not even making it through an entire listen before I dialed up You Are the Victim on YouTube because that’s supposed to be the superior record. And I almost certainly would have thought it was too, because putting You Are the Victim side by side with Screams from the Gutter, the double-bass drumming on Screams would have been a deal-breaker, particularly since there’s so much track listing overlap between the two records. Since I heard Screams so much earlier, though, the double-bass drumming is how I hear these songs in my head.

Going further, would I have responded to Raw Power at all if I had the history of music at my fingertips? After reading so much chatter about music, I “know” that 80s Italian punk is characterized by a loose and unhinged sound. Aside from the wild lead guitar breaks, that’s not the vibe on Screams from the Gutter. The playing on the record is tight and powerful, and based on the sound of this record, Raw Power could stand toe to toe with any punk band in the world in terms of chops and, ahem, raw power. But it’s not what Italian hardcore is “supposed” to sound like, and if I was curious about that sound maybe I would have gravitated toward Wretched or Negazione’s early records because they are closer to what I would expect.

Or maybe not. Maybe Screams from the Gutter is just such a great fucking record that it would have knocked me out whenever and wherever I heard it. In this timeline, though, it serves as a reminder to be in the moment, to take music on its own terms, and to trust my ears above all else.