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Rigorous Institution: Lords of Misrule cassette (self-released, 2022)

Last night Scarecrow played a fun as hell, stacked gig in Richmond with 80HD from New York, Public Acid, and Relief from Virginia Beach. It was Red from Scarecrow’s birthday (and close to the birthdays of the 1,000 other neurotic Virgos in attendance), so everyone was in a good mood and ready to have fun. The bands all killed it, and I was stoked to hear 80HD has a record coming at some point… whenever they can get it pressed, which is still a huge problem at the moment. Public Acid also played a couple of hot new tracks, opening with a new song that begins with some crushing mid-paced death metal riffing that is bound to soundtrack to numerous injuries in the future. You couldn’t ask for a better night.

A few weeks ago I was at the same venue for my first opportunity to see one of my favorite current bands, Rigorous Institution. This was just a few days after Scarecrow got back from our long European tour and the idea of snuggling with my dog on the couch was a lot more appealing to me than driving three hours in each direction for a sweaty punk show, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see Rigorous Institution. They were great, as expected, and the show was super fun. I was especially glad I went because Rigorous Institution was selling a new 2-song tour cassette. You know I grabbed a copy, and that’s my staff pick this week.

The a-side and centerpiece of the tape is a cover of the song “Horrible Eyes,” originally by the cult Italian band Death SS. For a band that has such an identifiable sound, Rigorous Institution has always been adventurous, yet “Horrible Eyes” still feels like something new for them. The song is more straightforward than most of their originals, moving along at a steady gallop that allows the focus to move from the song’s hypnotic organ melody (this is Rigorous’s invention and doesn’t appear on Death SS’s original version) to the always captivating vocals (the song’s lyrics are tailor made for Rigorous Institution) to a surprisingly structured, rock and roll guitar solo. I don’t think the track is streaming anywhere, but any Rigorous Institution fan is gonna love it.

If you like it (or just if you like music I suppose), Death SS is a band who is worth investigating. While the material collected on the compilation The Story Of Death SS 1977-1984 is within the era of heavy metal proper, Death SS doesn’t sound like a band influenced by metal’s first or second waves, but a group inventing the genre for themselves. They take a lot from Black Sabbath (they’re often name-checked in histories of doom metal, and Pentagram fans should look them up), but Alice Cooper’s shock rock was at least as big an influence. The band’s visual aesthetic is wild, a kind of campy horror schtick that’s like the New York Dolls crossed with Immortal. The music is like the Pentagram recordings collected on First Daze Here, but some parts are unexpected and off the wall… check out the song “Schizophrenic,” for instance. Also, here’s a tip. If you enjoy The Story Of Death SS 1977-1984, rather than jumping to the reunion album In Death of Steve Silvester (which only features the original vocalist), instead follow guitarist Paul Chain’s career. After Death SS, he started a group called Paul Chain’s Violet Theatre that continued pulling Death SS’s most interesting musical threads.

Back to Rigorous Institution. “Horrible Eyes” is backed with a rough, 4-track recording of the Cainsmarsh album track “Criminal Betrayers,” and it’s worth hearing if you’re as big a fan as I am. As I noted above, neither track appears to be streaming anywhere, but the tape’s insert says one or both tracks (it’s unclear) will appear on a 4-song cassette EP (also titled Lords of Misrule) Rigorous Institution will release in late 2022 on a new label called Dogs of Altamont. Hopefully Sorry State can get a big stack for all you freaks. In the meantime, listen to some Death SS and get wild.

Underage: Afri Cani 7” (Attack Punk Records, 1983)

It’s been a while since I featured an obscure 80s hardcore record as my staff pick, so I’m righting that wrong today with this 1983 EP from Italy’s Underage. It goes without saying that I’m a huge fan of classic Italian hardcore. After filling in on guitar for Golpe for a few gigs, I even consider myself something of an honorary Italian. (Since those shows, I’ve noticed my spaghetti tastes more authentic). That peninsula produced (and continues to produce!) so much great punk, much of it with a distinct flair you don’t get from anywhere else in the world. There’s also something romantic about the original vinyl from this scene. I remember when I was first hearing this stuff, records like Raw Power’s You Are the Victim or Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers’ 400 Fascists seemed unattainable, but I’ve tracked down copies of both over the years. I still don’t have a Wretched / Indigesti split, though! What I couldn’t have known until I held these artifacts in my hands was that the packaging and design was often just as distinctive as the music, typically handmade and packed with text and graphics, in keeping with the anarchist values so many in that scene held.

Back to Underage. Underage was from the Southern Italian city of Napoli. While I’m no expert, I am aware of the cultural divide between Northern and Southern Italy, the North being richer and more connected to European culture, while the South is poorer and more connected to the Mediterranean world. I wish I knew enough Italian to glean more from the dense insert booklet that comes with Afri Cani, particularly the essay on the back page by Jumpy from Attack Punk Records. It starts with the words, “Africani, Marrochini, Terroni”—Africans, Moroccans, and Terroni (a racial slur referring to people from Southern Italy and/or of Southern Italian heritage)—and the words I can make out paint a picture of a turbulent environment rife with injustice. There’s clearly a lot to be said about that topic, given that most of the classic, best-known Italian hardcore bands came from the more affluent North.

Musically, Underage is—like so many other Italian bands—most notable for their idiosyncrasies. They clearly take Discharge’s raw and primal hardcore as a big influence, but the charmingly shaky drumming, piss-raw production, and (most of all) the truly bizarre guitar sound are the aspects of Afri Cani that I find the most interesting. The EP’s highlights include “Thanks U.S.A.” with its Void-like pitch-shifted backing vocals, and “Entro Domani,” which captures something of Discharge’s sinister tone on Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, albeit without that record’s huge production. Both politically and aesthetically, Afri Cani feels like a radical statement, which is in keeping with Attack Punk’s other releases by raw bands from under-appreciated scenes like Spain’s MG15 and Yugoslavia’s U.B.R. It’s clear from the 9(!)-song track listing and the dense insert booklet that Underage had so much they wanted to say to the world.

While I couldn’t find much info about Underage in English, I discovered their drummer, Davide Morgera, wrote a book about his time in the band and the scene called Africani, Marrochini, Terroni, though it’s in Italian and also appears to be out of print. The one anecdote I found about Underage presumably comes from that book. 1983, Underage was offered an opening slot for the Exploited in Bologna, and after traveling all the way from Napoli to Bologna for the gig, the band Bloody Riot (whom I also like) jumped on stage and played instead of Underage, bullying the band out of their prestigious opening slot. After traveling dejectedly back to Napoli, the guitarist quit the band, effectively bringing Underage to an end.

Our Flag Means Death, TV series, 2022

I’m going to mix things up with my staff pick this week and write about a TV series I enjoyed. I don’t watch a ton of TV. My wife and I often watch an episode while we eat dinner, and afterward she begs to keep watching while I try to get us to go in the living room to listen to records. While I find the good in most records I listen to, I’m not impressed with most of what I see on TV. The things I like tend toward the silly and the absurd. What We Do in the Shadows is probably my favorite current TV series, if that is any indication.

My wife Jet recommended that I watch Our Flag Means Death even though she had already watched the entire first season while I was away on tour. I gave it a try for a couple of reasons. First, it’s set in the 18th century. Longtime readers will know that I did my PhD in 18th century studies and I still have a fondness for the art, architecture, fashion, and literature from that period. Second, the lead role in Our Flag Means Death is played by Rhys Darby, whom I loved in his roles as the manager Murray in Flight of the Conchords and as the leader of the werewolf pack in the original film version of What We Do in the Shadows.

Our Flag Means Death starts as a farce, following Rhys Darby in his role as Stede Bonnet, a wealthy aristocrat who abandons his family and estate in order to become a pirate (Bonnet was a real person, upon whom the story is loosely based). Bonnet buys a ship and hires a crew, and hilarity ensues as they embark upon the pirate life. Bonnet’s crew is just as inept as he is, but many of the best jokes come out of Bonnet’s inability to turn his back on his previous lifestyle, either its creature comforts or its deeper moral and philosophical assumptions. For instance, Bonnet’s captain’s quarters are outfitted with a massive library and an enormous wardrobe, the latter of which supplies Bonnet with ridiculous outfits that gain him no respect from fellow pirates or potential adversaries.

When Bonnet encounters the legendary pirate Blackbeard in the series’ fourth episode, the stage is set for even more fish out of water silliness. In one of my favorite episodes, Bonnet takes Blackbeard to a high society party full of foppish aristocrats wearing massive wigs and pancake makeup, with Bonnet teaching Blackbeard the art of passive aggression. (This episode’s guest stars Nick Kroll and Kristen Schaal are hilarious too.)

I enjoyed all the silliness, but I probably wouldn’t be writing about this show in my staff pick if it weren’t for the final two or three episodes, where the show takes an unexpected turn. It’s not so much a plot twist as a wholesale reconfiguration of the show… what happens in the final few episodes essentially changes the show’s genre and makes you look back on everything that happened earlier with fresh eyes. I can see why Jet wanted to watch the entire series again.

If you decide to give Our Flag Means Death a try, do your best to avoid spoilers. I worry I’ve already revealed too much, but it’s not just the surprise of what happens that’s so exciting. It’s the subtlety, depth, and beauty with which it’s executed. There’s a second season on the way too, so now is the perfect time to catch up.

Harry Sword: Monolithic Undertow: In Search of Sonic Oblivion (2022, Third Man Books)

Monolithic Undertow arrived at Sorry State in early July, just before we left for our big European tour. Based on the book’s description and my trust in the Third Man brand (particularly when it comes to the written word… how many times can I tell you to read Maggot Brain?), I was excited to read it, but I decided against dragging it through a dozen-plus countries and fighting to read it through bouts of carsickness. I’m glad I exercised patience, because I enjoyed the book and I’m not sure that would have happened if I didn’t give it the attention it deserved.

Monolithic Undertow investigates the history and significance of the drone, tracing humans’ engagement with the idea through millennia of cultural development. Sword defines the drone as an “audio space” where “sounds don’t (or, crucially appear not to) change at all.” He casts a wide net, finding examples of the drone in everything from the persistent hum of the natural world to the clatter of city life to the myriad musical traditions, both ancient and modern, that de-emphasize change and modulation. The significance of the drone is, ultimately, the reaction it causes in humans. Confronting a phenomenon that (theoretically, at least) does not change throws the emphasis back on our own (often fragile, mutable) psyches, much like the psychedelic experience, sending us to a third place where we are both participant in and observer of our own consciousness. It’s not about listening so much as being. I’m hitting a wall attempting to articulate what I mean here, but if you don’t have a taste for philosophizing, Monolithic Undertow probably isn’t for you.

While there isn’t a big section break at the halfway point, Monolithic Undertow is a book of two halves. Roughly half the book covers music up to and including the Velvet Underground, while the latter half of the book examines the rock era. The Velvet Underground is crucial for Sword because they’re the bridge between the avant-garde and the mainstream, the underground and the overground, carving a door to the wider world that everyone from Faust to Sunn O))) could charge right through.

For me, the first half of Monolithic Undertow is the real meat of the book. Sword goes way back, surveying a field called archaeoacoustics that I never knew existed. These scholars examine archaeological evidence, drawing conclusions about what the past sounded like. Swords spends much of the first chapter writing about the acoustic properties of Neolithic gathering spaces in caves, analyzing the way these spaces reverberate and imagining what sorts of sonic rituals might have happened in them thousands of years ago. It all feels very speculative, but that’s par for the course with paleoanthropology, since the archaeological record of the Neolithic period is so sparse. From there, Sword examines the drone as a motif in a range of religious and cultural traditions across the world and throughout recorded history, with a heavy emphasis on the Indian music tradition that so shaped 20th and 21st-century music. This is all history I was dimly aware of, but Sword is an excellent guide, providing plenty of signals of where to continue exploring if your curiosity is piqued.

I enjoyed the second half of Monolithic Undertow, but it was less revelatory for me. Sword’s history of the drone in the post-Velvet Underground musical landscape amounts to a capsule history of “head” / drug / psychedelic / trance / etc music, with a chapter each on kosmiche / German progressive / “Krautrock” (including Hawkwind, the main British purveyors of that style), doom and drone metal, and ambient and electronic music. The former two genres I’ve spent some time exploring so there wasn’t much that was news to me, but the electronic music chapter introduced me to some interesting new sounds (like, for instance, JK Flesh, a Justin Broadrick project that fuses techno, industrial, and dub reggae). Besides these histories being well-trod ground for music critics, I felt like Sword’s concept of the drone gets very loose in these chapters. Several times, I found myself thinking, “wait, what does this have to do with the drone?”While Sword doesn’t say this (at least that I remember), it seems as if in more recent music, the drone is less a musical motif and more of an idea(l), a semi-inchoate resistance to the idea that everything needs to be changing, evolving, and generating excitement all the time.

While I have these minor quibbles, Monolithic Undertow taught me about a bunch of music I didn’t know about, and it and kept me thinking long after I put the book down. In my mind, those are the marks of a great music book. Score another win for Third Man.

Note: Of course, just as I chose this book as my staff pick, we sold our last copy. I’ll try to get a restock next time we order from Third Man, and if you’d like to be notified when the restock comes in, there’s the handy “email me when available” widget on our website.

Solunsky Front: Mali Svet 12” (2014, Ne! Records)

When Scarecrow played a gig at the legendary MKNZ club in Serbia, the first person we met was our host and promoter, Simon. We immediately hit it off, as we could tell right away Simon loves punk and is a giant nerd about it just like everyone in Scarecrow is. The show that night was great. Simon took amazing care of us, fed us great food, gave us way too much booze, and showed us a great time, but I want to focus on here is Simon’s distro.

Simon had a few distro boxes on a table at the club, and I flipped through them, as one does. I flip through a lot of distros, and I could tell right away that this was a very good one. Simon had a lot of the same releases we stock at Sorry State, and you could tell this was the kind of distro where everything that was there only got its space because Simon cared about it and wanted other people to hear it. I already owned about 75% of the records in his distro, so I could tell Simon’s tastes were aligned with mine.

About 1/3 of Simon’s distro was dedicated to music from former Yugoslavia, mostly reissues from 80s bands. I knew a few of them like Quod Massacre, Proces, and Tozibabe, but most of the artists I either knew only by name or not at all. Realizing I was in the company of a knowledgeable person with excellent taste in music, I asked Simon what he would recommend from the Yugoslavian section. I grabbed a few records (and maybe I’ll write about the others later), but the one I’m writing about today is this compilation of two recording sessions (and a few live tracks) from 80s Belgrade hardcore band Solunski Front.

Solunski Front never managed a vinyl release during their original 1981-1985 run, only appearing on a handful of cassette compilations. In 1993, a 7” EP came out featuring four tracks the band recorded in 1984, but it was limited to only 200 copies and quickly became impossible to find. The lack of released material has nothing to do with the quality of Solunski Front’s music, and (presumably) everything to do with the social, political, and economic conditions in 80s Yugoslavia. Much like the great, under-documented bands from Poland, Solunski Front continued to hone their craft despite their lack of access to the bigger and more commercial punk networks in the west.

The 1984 session captured on the a-side of this LP is incredible. According to the interview in this record’s insert, Solunski Front never considered themselves a hardcore band. They were inspired by early punk like the Ramones, the Damned, UK Subs, the Clash, and Dead Kennedys. Of those bands’ records, Solunski Front’s 1984 tracks remind me the most of Dead Kennedys’ Plastic Surgery Disasters album. Like that record, Solunski Front takes catchy, classic-sounding punk songs, adds intense musical chops that only come from years of playing, and blasts it out with a hardcore-informed sense of power and concision. Dezerter is another good reference point, particularly in the way the songs are dense with musical detail, meticulously arranged, yet that core of a memorable, anthemic punk track still shines through. The tracks on the b-side of this album, recorded a year earlier, are rougher and more primal, but still showcase Solunski Front’s immense talent.

So, thank you to Simon for sharing his knowledge and passion for punk. Thanks to Ne! Records for getting this brilliant document to a wider audience. And thanks to records for allowing me to have this incredible souvenir from Serbia that will make me think of our amazing night at MKNZ every time I play it.

Chuck Biscuits’ Drumming on the First 3 Danzig Albums

Scarecrow didn’t visit too many record stores in Europe (I guess our schedule was too tight and there were other sites we wanted to see more), but between Scarecrow’s trips to Philly and New York earlier this summer and the handful of record stores we visited in Europe, I have a massive stack of recent purchases that I haven’t listened to yet. There’s also so much work to catch up on with Sorry State that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by music and records. My first instinct would be to sit down with a big pot of coffee and try to listen to everything, but I’m trying to give my brain some space to breathe.

One record I was excited to pick up at the great Static Shock Records in Berlin was an original European pressing of Danzig II: Lucifuge. Lucifuge is the record I’ve spent the least time with out of Danzig’s first three. The third one, How the Gods Kill, I got when it came out after seeing the video for “Dirty Black Summer” on Headbanger’s Ball, and the first one is just an all-time classic. It’s the kind of record that, if you’ve hung around punks and metalheads for a significant portion of your life, you can sing along to every word of even if you’ve never owned a copy.

When I threw Lucifuge on the turntable, I was struck by a feeling of deja vu, as I had the same sensation as the last time I’d listened to How the Gods Kill. I put the record on excited to hear catchy tunes, but as soon as I started listening, I found myself enraptured by Chuck Biscuits’ drumming. I’m not a drummer so I only have so much I can articulate here, but Biscuits’ drumming sounds like no one else’s. I’ve always loved drummers who play way in the pocket (especially when they play fast and in the pocket), and Biscuits is deeeep in there. Further, by stretching the beats so far, he’s able to generate what seems like a massive amount of space for his vast library of fills. A track like “Killer Wolf” could be a tepid blues rock jam, but Biscuits keeps me hanging on every bar, wondering what he’s going to pull out of his bag of tricks next.

I think Rick Rubin must have felt the same about Biscuits’ drumming, because the drums are right at the front of the mix, particularly on Lucifuge and How the Gods Kill. When I blast those records, I feel like my head is right in the middle of Biscuits’ kit, and the sound is sublime. I have a soft spot for big budget rock recordings from the late 80s and the 90s. This was the era of recording budgets that ran into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, and when you spare no expense at getting big rock sounds, you can end up with some pretty incredible results. The drum sounds on Lucifuge and How the Gods Kill are a case in point… I can’t imagine how Biscuits’ drums could sound any better.

When I pull back and take my focus off the drumming, Lucifuge is my least favorite of the first three Danzig albums. While “Long Way Back From Hell” and “Her Black Wings” are undisputed bangers, certainly part of the canon of great Danzig tracks, the rest of the record leans too far toward blues for my taste. I don’t know where I picked it up, but I’ve always had trouble getting into rock whose blues influences come too close to the surface. Plus, I think How the Gods Kill is just a better record. On that album, Danzig leans even further into the diversity you hear on Lucifuge, but rather than focusing so much on bluesy and rootsy influences, you hear Danzig’s love for pop crooning come out on tracks like “Sistanas,” which is just a fucking gorgeous song.

Until I was reading up on Biscuits for this piece, I didn’t realize that he also played drums on Danzig 4. I don’t think I’ve heard that record, because by the time they released it in 1994 I had immersed myself in underground punk and had no interest in Danzig. I’ll have to check it out.

Scarecrow spent last weekend at the inaugural Something to Talk About Fest in Philly and I had a great time! Everyone loves to complain about fests, but I like them. You get to see a lot of great bands you wouldn’t see otherwise (especially if you live in North Carolina), you get to see loads of friends you don’t see enough, and often you’re in the same space with said friends for much longer than you would be if they were just passing through on tour. Sure, fests can be overwhelming and exhausting, but for me the good far, far outweighs the bad. Even as fests go, STTA was something special. Jim and Amy, who organized the fest (with a lot of help from the other Philly punks), have a habit of surrounding themselves with great people, which made for a great vibe. And the lineup was phenomenal. I watched every single band that played at STTA (including the aftershows!), and I didn’t see a bad band the entire time! There wasn’t a band I wasn’t interested in, which made making time for things like eating, using the bathroom, and getting adequate amounts of rest very difficult. But hey, I made it! Like I said, I didn’t see a bad set all weekend, but for me the standouts included Rat Nip, Scalple, Mujeres Podridas, Fuckin’ Lovers, Savageheads, Quarantine, Horrendous 3D, Delco MF’s, and Ammo.

While we were in Philly, the hardcore record collecting contingent of the Scarecrew hit up Sit & Spin Records. I’ve only been to Sit & Spin a few times, but I feel confident saying it’s one of the best punk-oriented record shops in the United States. They have everything you could want in a record store… a top-notch selection of new stock, cool new and used band merch, and a wild selection of used items that ranges from bargain bin rippers to mega-rarities. I could kill a day and several thousand dollars there, but most of my attention (and my dollars) went to the rarities section, where one item got me very stoked.

This score brings together a couple of threads I’ve referenced in previous staff picks. I’ve mentioned numerous times that I am always down for a beater copy of a rare record… particularly if the vinyl is in decent shape but the sleeve has radio station call letters or other kinds of damage. I just don’t get those collectors who want pristine copies of everything… I like my records to feel like they have a little history, not like they’ve been sealed in a time capsule for decades. When I saw this copy of Iron Cross’s Skinhead Glory 7” on the wall at Sit & Spin, I could see right away that someone had used scissors to cut the band’s name out of the top of the record’s sleeve. Why would they do that? Maybe they booked the band and needed the logo for a flyer… maybe they needed it for a zine layout, or maybe they thought the name sucked and didn’t want to be reminded of it? Who knows, but when it allows me to get a rare record like this at way, way below the going rate, it’s easy for me to look past it. Plus, Skinhead Glory isn’t a record that I’d want to pay the going rate for. It’s not that I hate it or anything, but when you compare it to the other Dischord whole and half releases from the same period, it’s the runt of the litter.

Since I just filled this major gap in my Dischord collection, I think it’s time for a new family photo that brings me up to Dischord 8 1/2.

Now that I have Skinhead Glory, it seems very important that I acquire copies of Still Screaming and Boycott Stabb, which to be fair I should have done long before now… I’ve had plenty of opportunities. That’ll bring my Dischord collection up to about #15, though carrying it much beyond that will involve buying more and more records that I don’t care too much about.

Visage: Fade to Grey: The Singles Collection 12” (original Polydor 1983, reissue Rubellan Remasters, 2022)

If you flip through my record collection, you’ll see long runs of multiple records by the same artist. The biggest run is the Fall, whose 12”s take up at least half an expedit cube, but you’ll also see other favorites like Wire, the Kinks, Miles Davis, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and many others that have several inches of shelf space devoted to them. When I hear a record or even a song I like, my first impulse is to get everything the artist released, to pull that thread and see if there’s even more. Sometimes there’s something even better than what first drew me in. Often there are duds, but usually I can appreciate those within the context of an artist’s larger body of work.

The first time I heard Visage’s song “Fade to Grey,” I was smitten. I love a track with a big hook and a strong beat, and “Fade to Grey” fits the bill. Originally released in 1980, “Fade to Grey” is darkwave before there was darkwave, its tough drum machine rhythms presaging 90s industrial music while the lyrics and vocals add a dash of glamor. Their sound is gritty and colorful at the same, like someone dressed to the nines making their way through a seedy section of town on their way to the club. Which is appropriate, since Visage was born under precisely those circumstances.

Visage’s original goal was to create music for DJ Rusty Egan to play at his London club nights, where dancers favored the cold and futuristic sounds of 70s Bowie and Kraftwerk. Egan teamed up with Midge Ure, his bandmate in the Rich Kids (Glen Matlock’s post-Sex Pistols band) and cut a demo as a proof of concept. From there, they put together Visage, enlisting Ultravox keyboardist Billy Currie and scenester Steve Strange (who had also performed in a few under the radar punk bands) as frontperson and face of the band. The lineup expanded again to incorporate three-fifths of Magazine: guitarist John McGeotch, keyboardist Dave Formula, and bassist Barry Adamson. Magazine is one of my favorite bands (another who has a few inches of space on my LP and singles shelves), and if you’re a fan of that band’s top-notch musicianship, Visage’s first album is an essential listen.

Fade to Grey collects six Visage singles released between 1980 and 1984. “Fade to Grey,” of course, is the biggest hit and their best song, but I like every track on the collection. Visage’s first album is essential (and you can find it pretty easily and usually for not much money), but Fade to Grey is most useful for collecting the best tracks from Visage’s later years. Visage’s second album, The Anvil, isn’t as strong as Fade to Grey, but singles “The Anvil,” “Night Train,” and “Damned Don’t Cry” are all bangers. Visage’s much-maligned third album (made after all the folks from Magazine left), Beat Boy, is represented by “Beat Boy” and “Love Glove,” and while I rarely pull Beat Boy off the shelf, those tracks stand up next to the earlier material despite their glossier sound.

I’d been looking for a copy of Fade to Grey for years, but they don’t turn up often in the US. When I saw this reissue pop up on one of our distributor lists, I jumped on getting copies for the store because I knew I’d make at least one sale to myself. The record looks and sounds great and even contains the Beat Boy-era tracks I mentioned above, which aren’t on the original 1983 edition. And the “blue smoke” vinyl looks pretty cool too. Maybe you’re a darkwave DJ who can blow minds by dropping one of these tracks into the retro portion of your set, but if you’re like me, Visage’s insistent dance rhythms are the perfect soundtrack for sweeping, washing dishes, and getting things done.

Pick up Fade to Grey at Sorry State here!

The Devil’s Anvil: Hard Rock from the Middle East LP (Columbia, 1967)

I’d been on the lookout for a copy of the lone album from New York’s The Devil’s Anvil for some time now, and this week one popped up in a collection I bought out in the Raleigh suburbs. I’m not sure where I heard about this record—it’s on streaming services, so an algorithm may have served it to me—but the title, Hard Rock from the Middle East, intrigued me. It turns out the Devil’s Anvil isn’t hard rock and isn’t from the Middle East, but it’s still an interesting LP.

Based on the artwork, you might think this was some kind of exploitation record, but my research tells me the Devil’s Anvil’s cultural bona fides are at least somewhat legit. The band was based in New York and the members were either from the Middle East or of Arabic heritage. The lyrics for all but one track are in Arabic and besides farfisa organ, electric guitar and bass, and drums, the Devil’s Anvil also employed traditional instruments like the oud and the tamboura. The compositions smash together then-contemporary rock sounds with traditional melodies and modes from across the Middle East. I wouldn’t call it hard rock a la Blue Cheer, more like 60s garage akin to the Standells or the Electric Prunes, though some songs lean more toward traditional music than rock.

Reading what people have written about Hard Rock from the Middle East is interesting because opinions are all over the place. Some people view it as an exploitation record, a brazen act of cultural appropriation. Most of these people condemn it, but I found one person who described it as “hilarious,” a cringeworthy statement. Even beyond assessing its political correctness, opinion is divided on the quality of the music, with some people viewing it as an unfairly forgotten psych gem, while others find it ham-fisted and cheesy. I quite like it. While it’s not as self-serious as something like Agitation Free, a 70s German progressive rock band who also mined Middle Eastern sounds for inspiration, I think the songs are legit and I love that it doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard before.

Nearly everything I’ve read about the album online mentions that it didn’t sell, having been released just as the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was fomenting anti-Arabic sentiment in the United States. As we all know, anti-Arab sentiment in the US only got worse in subsequent decades. From what I can tell, the Devil’s Anvil disbanded after the album’s commercial failure, with producer Felix Pappalardi and guitarist / bassist Steve Knight working together again in Leslie West’s Mountain. I would love to visit an alternate reality where the Devil’s Anvil made more records, especially if they pulled in influences from bands like Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer who made hard rock much harder.

I don’t have a staff pick this week, so instead I’m going to whine. Y’all are down for that, right? You may have noticed that, in the intros for the past two editions of the newsletter, I’ve written about heading off to Thursday evening gigs after I finish putting everything together. That’s been a weight on me lately. In fact, last Thursday I didn’t finish the newsletter before leaving for the Fried E/M gig in Chapel Hill. I worked on the newsletter until after 9PM, then left for Chapel Hill (about an hour from my house), arriving in time for DE()T’s last song and missing Bug-E.M.S. I was in an atrocious mood, berating myself for not being more on top of my work, and I tried to avoid talking to anyone at the gig so I could sulk. Apologies to the few brave souls who approached me that night and had to soak up my bad vibes. After the gig I got home and worked until about 3AM finishing things up. Rather than sending it out at that hour, I scheduled it for early Friday morning.

The next day Scarecrow was playing with Fried E/M in Virginia Beach, so I knew I’d see those folks again. I know playing out-of-town gigs can stress some people out, but right now Sorry State is so stressful that I love going out of town for gigs… I feel like I’m away from all of my stressors. The crew from Not for the Weak Records was putting on the gig and they did a great job. All the bands killed, and I felt good about Scarecrow’s set even though I seem to be having problems with my distortion pedal. Friend E/M was incredible, and I even moshed a little, the first time I’ve done that in several years. Every time I think I’m a retired mosher, a song as good as “Inner Peace” comes around that pulls me back in.

Martin and Gabe from Fried E/M are old friends, and I’m stoked they were down to hang out after the gig. The Scarecrow, NFTW, and Fried E/M crews went down to the Virginia Beach oceanfront and hung out on the water until 4:30 in the morning, chatting about life and punk and the things you talk about at a post-gig hang. I loved how Usman and Martin had some kind of magical rapport… you’d think they’d be oil and water, but they’re more like an odd couple comedy duo. I’d listen to that podcast.

Back in Sorry State land, things have been so busy that I feel like I’ve had no time for myself. When I’m feeling depressed, I find it hard to get up in the morning and I linger over my morning cup of coffee for way too long. This week I resolved to get out of bed and get to work more quickly, but I haven’t been leaving work any earlier or taking it any easier. So, what ends up happening is that I work 12+ hour days, arriving home dead-eyed. I’m not sure whether it’s depression, stress, or some combination of the two, but I’ve had trouble finding enjoyment in the things that usually move me this week, most importantly music.

The one thing that sparked my musical curiosity this week was vaporwave. I was sitting on the couch, looking at my phone, trying to find something interesting to think about when I stumbled on a video that explained all the different subgenres of vaporwave with samples of artists from each one. I’ve known the term vaporwave for many years, but I can’t recall listening to any of the music. Rachel once described it to me as the background music playing at K-Mart, and some of it sounds like that, but not all of it. The more interesting things I heard reminded me of something you’d hear at a spa or in the background of a corporate training video, but what seems to separate vaporwave from your typical background music is that it sounds a little bit fucked up. Most of the releases have cassette hiss, like they’re ripped from an old VHS tape, and some have little glitches added in like the recording has been damaged. This style of music is meant to evoke peace and calm, but with vaporwave there seems to be something sinister lurking in the background. It’s like the cheery background music for a training video made by an evil corporation.

I keep listening to releases mentioned in that video. It’s all I want to hear right now. Why? I find it nourishing in my current state of mind, but I can’t put my finger on why. It’s like when you’re sick and all you want to eat is plain bread or oatmeal… something bland and grey or off-white. I’m probably being dramatic, but hopefully this week I can get a little more rest and get back to recommending you some killer punk next week. But, then again, Scarecrow is playing with Absolut in Richmond next Thursday, so that might not be a realistic expectation.

Shotgun Solution: Shotgun 7” (1983, High Rise Records)

I have little in the way of biographical information on Shotgun Solution. I know they were from Rome, Italy, and released this 7” in 1983. Other than that, I only have a few scattered shards of information I’ll share further down.

I believe I first heard Shotgun Solution in the early 2000s. I can’t pinpoint the first moment I heard them, but I had three primary sources for finding out about long lost 80s hardcore bands around this time. The first was exploring other people’s Soulseek libraries, and there were some doozies out there jam-packed with every punk rarity you could imagine. Another was making my way through the Kill from the Heart website and trying to hear every band it listed. The third was record collecting friends, chief among them Brandon from Direct Control and Government Warning. He and the people he introduced me to had a huge hand in shaping my taste in punk to this day.

Back then, I remember wanting a copy of this EP, but being convinced I could find a copy for under $50. Two decades later, I consider myself very lucky to have paid more than double for this copy. I bought this copy from Discogs on Record Store Day. I’m always a bundle of nerves leading up to Record Store Day, because we invest so much money in it. If it went poorly, we would be pretty fucked. However, it’s gone well every time (so far), and this year I think it went well. Weeks, if not months, of work go into making Record Store Day happen at Sorry State, and I remember basking in the glow of what felt like a job well done when I opened Discogs and saw this sitting there. Riding on good vibes, I smashed the buy button and my high was only slightly impacted when I opened the package to find the record had been over-graded. Oh well, the record sounds great, and that’s what counts.

The day this came in the mail, I brought it to a party at Usman’s house and my friend Rich told me he’d never connected with this record. I found that surprising, because I just love it. I’m a huge fan of early 80s Italian hardcore, particularly the loose and wild-sounding bands. Shotgun has plenty of that. While the playing isn’t straight up sloppy like Wretched, there’s a looseness that makes the record feel dangerous. The guitarist is also insane, with a noodly style that reminds me of Negazione in the way there are a million notes but you’re not sure they all make sense. And the lengthy, wah-wah drenched solo at the end of “I.C.Y.K.I.M.F.” is a fucking masterpiece. Trigger warning, though: that song has graphic and misogynistic lyrics that will be enough for some people to write them off completely.

Shotgun Solution’s wildness connects them to bands like Negazione, Wretched, and Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, but the anthemic, oi!-ish elements of their sound remind me of Raw Power’s big choruses and the oi! influences you hear in groups like Basta, Klasse Kriminale, and Nabat. There’s just a slight oi! feel, mostly in the guitars, as Shotgun Solution’s catchy and hyperactive anthems are more like classic California punk than anything else. In other words, you can sing along with it. (Though, as I mentioned, you might not want to sing along to “I.C.Y.K.I.M.F.”)

While Shotgun isn’t an easy record to get (I went twenty years without an attractively priced copy presenting itself to me), it seems like there are a lot of copies in the US. I remember an old Raleigh punk telling me about how Raw Power’s van broke down outside their house and the band stayed there for an entire week while they figured out new transportation. I think someone from Shotgun Solution might have been on tour with Raw Power, and they left a big stack of them at the house as thanks for the hospitality. I’m sure that person sold and gave away a bunch of other copies while they were in the States. Side note, this is not my story so I’ve probably mis-remembered the details, but I think it ends with Raw Power’s van rotting in front of said punk house for years until one night the punks lit it on fire and tipped it over. It was gone the next morning, apparently taken away by the city, and no one heard anything else about it.

Another short anecdote about this record. In 2011 (or maybe 2012?) I drove Smart Cops on their US tour. Of course, there was lots of talk of classic Italian hardcore, and the Smart Cops were rabid fans and very knowledgeable. Smart Cops guitarist Edo even played drums in the reformed lineup of Klasse Kriminale. However, at some point, I realized they hadn’t heard of Shotgun Solution. Getting to introduce a bunch of Italians to a killer record they didn’t know about is a highlight in my history as a record nerd.

Today we launched preorders for three new releases on Sorry State, and coincidentally test pressings for three upcoming releases just arrived yesterday. I’ll have plenty to tell you about those records in the coming months, but listening to the test presses last night had me reflecting on the process of releasing a record. Earlier this week I put a lot of energy into writing descriptions for the new releases, which is a weird exercise. I love writing for the newsletter, but I always struggle to write the generic blurbs that get passed along to distributors and reposted on the websites of stores and distros that carry the record. I feel like I know my audience for the newsletter. I imagine the people who read the newsletter are the die-hards like me who are eager to know about all the coolest new releases, and my job of telling you about what we carry is pretty straightforward. However, when I’m writing for the wider, more nebulous audience for the descriptions, it’s very different. The cliche is that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and I feel that when I try to both introduce and sum up a record I care about in one pithy paragraph.

For many of the releases on the Sorry State label, the official description blurb is one of the few things I write about the record. Which is ironic because these are the releases I feel the most connected to. While I lean on the bands for most of the creative work on the records I release, I develop a close relationship with releases as I shepherd them through the production and manufacturing process. This relationship feels even more intimate when I put out multiple releases by an artist. So, for my staff pick this week, I thought I’d give you an insider’s view of the three new releases.

The Sorry State label has never benefited from consistent branding. I’ve always released whatever excited me at the moment, and you can see trends in the label’s discography as I get into particular sounds or scenes. There are also certain styles I just like; Sorry State will always put out records that sound like early 80s hardcore. While the three new releases differ greatly from one another, each of them continues a thread that runs through the label’s discography.

Invalid’s self-titled LP is SSR-108, and given that it has the earliest catalog number, I’m pretty sure it was the first of the three projects to come together. (I typically only assign a catalog number once I have a master recording for a release; if you want to read more insane ramblings about catalog numbers, check out this old staff pick.) As I wrote in the main release blurb, Invalid appeared on my radar when they released their Do Not Resuscitate cassette on Cruel Noise Records. I didn’t know it at the time (though I might have assumed), but Invalid features members of heaps of other bands I like. If you cruise their Discogs profile, you can see connections to Blood Pressure, Caustic Christ, and EEL, for instance, but there are many more I’m sure.

It’s more than the pedigree that attracted me to Invalid, though. Stylistically, Invalid has this sound that I don’t hear often, but I love when I do. The three records I mentioned in the official description—Direct Control’s first 7”, COC’s Eye for an Eye, and Unseen Force’s In Search of the Truth—all fall under that umbrella. It’s 80s hardcore at its core, but with a bit of thrash metal in the riffing style and an emphasis on writing memorable parts that aren’t quite pop but are hooky as hell. So you get the intensity of 80s hardcore, the musicality of thrash metal, and the catchiness of more anthemic strains of punk brought together in one package. It’s a subtle balance to achieve, but Invalid nails it.

Beyond the style, I also love that Invalid performs their music with such intensity. Conventional wisdom states that hardcore is a young person’s game, but I tend to be fond of bands whose members are older. These bands know—if only intuitively—why they’ve stuck with hardcore. I love the sound of young kids discovering hardcore as an outlet for their youthful energy, but there’s something about old heads who use hardcore as a way of articulating and responding to life’s never-ending drudgery. It makes the music mean more to me, like hardcore is growing along with me as I get older and my values and passions evolve.

Next up is SSR-110, Woodstock 99’s Super Gremlin LP. While Woodstock 99 released a demo and a 7” before Super Gremlin, I’ve known the members for much longer than the band has existed. Their singer and drummer are both from North Carolina and I’ve known them and followed their projects since they were quite young. In that way, Woodstock 99 connects to another thread in Sorry State’s discography, and that’s documenting the hardcore punk from our part of the world. This part of the label’s mission, which is inspired by Dischord Records, waxes and wanes as our local scene does, but I’m always proud to put out music from North Carolina that I think deserves a wider audience. Not that Woodstock 99 is from North Carolina, but my connection to the band is personal, unlike with Invalid and Hüstler where I have had little real-life hang time with the band members.

Anyway, Woodstock 99’s three core members were in Cement Shoes, and I followed and enjoyed that band and the first two Woodstock 99 releases. I liked all of them, but I hadn’t considered putting out a Woodstock 99 record. Then my friend Trevor, who sings for the band, sent me the recordings that became Super Gremlin. I’m not sure if he was fishing for a label or just sharing what he made because we’re friends, but the record blew me away. It starts off in the (relatively) straightforward hardcore mold of their previous 7”, but bigger, bolder, and meaner, the crisp and bright recording and the band’s massive sound reminding me of War All the Time / Kings of Punk-era Poison Idea. But then the record goes somewhere else.

If you lived in the mid-Atlantic and saw Cement Shoes numerous times over the course of their existence, you probably noticed a change in the band. They’d always had an off the wall sensibility (just look at the cover art for their first album), but toward the end of the band, that evolved into full-on antagonistic crowd baiting. I remember a show where they opened for Warthog and L.O.T.I.O.N. in Richmond. Trevor harassed and abused the audience for the length of their set, to where I was kind of upset and worried about him. Now that I think of it, that was the record release show for their album, Too, and I remember one member telling me they sold zero copies of their record at the gig. It’s like they were daring the crowd to like them, and no one took them up on it.

I think the darkness of that era of Cement Shoes resulted from some particular circumstances, because once the members moved to Cleveland and reconfigured as Woodstock 99, the seedy darkness had reemerged as a more playful, yet still dangerous, psychedelia. One thing I like about psychedelics is their ability to unlock my sense of wonder, and even though I was sober and taking a walk on the nature trail by my house when I first listened to Super Gremlin, it summoned that sense of wonder. As I listened to each track, I couldn’t wait to hear what the band was going to do next. Super Gremlin isn’t like a genre record where you know what you’re going to get and the band impresses you with their adeptness at elaborating and interpreting a style. It’s a record that sees punk rock as a wide-open arena of possibility, and charges in whatever direction the wind blows. It’s a record that feels so fresh that I wanted to be part of it, even if I know some people will not get it at all.

Finally, SSR-113 is Hüstler’s self-titled LP, which compiles their two previous cassette releases on Sorry State. Hüstler is one of the few bands who I agreed to put out based on an unsolicited submission. People send me music all the time. Every day I get one or two emails, sometimes more, from people asking Sorry State to release their music. A large percentage of these I never listen to because I can tell that the person doesn’t know or care about what Sorry State does. Plenty of others I listen to and like just fine, but don’t feel the spark I need to in order to want to release a record. Putting out a record is a big decision that involves investing thousands of dollars and many hours of my and my employees’ time, and it’s not worth doing if I’m not passionate about the music. With these kinds of submissions, I suggest other places where they might send their music and offer to carry the record in our distro once it’s out.

Submissions rarely move me enough to want to release a record when I have no personal connection to the band, but when Tyler from Hüstler sent me what became their first tape, I was hooked. I couldn’t (and, truthfully, still can’t) articulate what I heard that drew me in so much, but Hüstler just had something. Their music had the intensity of the hardcore and punk I’ve always loved, but it sounded fresh. It didn’t sound like anything I’d ever heard, but I knew that I liked it. That Tyler just wanted to put out a cassette and wasn’t pushing for a vinyl release (which is much more expensive and riskier) made it an easy decision to press up 100 cassettes and see if the rest of the world responded like I did.

And they did! Hüstler’s first tape sold out quickly, and once the physical copies were gone, the digital version kept getting downloads on Bandcamp and plays on Spotify. A few months later, Hüstler did a second recording that was even better than the first one. Without losing the intensity, they leaned into the more idiosyncratic elements of their sound and arrived at something even more original and memorable. The second tape sold out even quicker than the first, and also continued to get plays on Spotify and Bandcamp. I haven’t checked, but I’m guessing Hüstler has done more business in digital sales than any previous Sorry State artist. I think we hatched a plan for an LP compiling both tapes around the time the second EP came out. Given the strong reaction the first tape got and the fact that the second tape was (in my opinion) even better made me confident that plenty of other people like Hüstler just as much as I do.

Re-reading this lengthy staff pick, I realize I pretty much said what I said in the official release blurbs I mentioned at the beginning, only with a lot more words. Maybe this version clicked with you when the snappier versions didn’t, or maybe you should ignore my ramblings and just listen to the music and form your own impressions, because you can do that in the year 2022.