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Pohjasakka: Kidutusta Ja Pelkoa 12" (Finnish HC) The archival label Finnish HC brings us this 5-song scorcher from Pohjasakka. Pohjasakka’s 1985 7”, Maailma Täynnä Vihaa, is a ripping record, as good a Finnish hardcore punk record as you’ll find and a definitive example of everything I love about that country’s 80s hardcore scene. Pohjasakka recorded the five tracks on Kidutusta Ja Pelkoa a year later, in 1986, intending them as their second EP, but that record never came out during the band’s original run (credit to Usman’s staff pick from last week for teaching me all this). While I would have loved another EP in the style of Maailma Täynnä Vihaa, Pohjasakka’s style is a little different on these tracks. They’re less gnarly and less hardcore, moving the focus from aggro to melody. Ordinarily this would be a bad thing for any hardcore band as a turn toward a (slightly) more melodic style usually comes with a loss of intensity, but Pohjasakka keeps things as intense as ever, but with even stronger and more memorable songs. These tracks are more in the vein of Toxic Reasons or UK Subs, but played with the intensity of the Partisans at their most scorching, and faster than all those. Man, this record is so fucking good! It sounds great, the performance is blistering, the songwriting is top-notch, and there isn’t an ounce of fat on the whole thing. Sometimes I wonder if anything will hit me as hard as the stuff I heard in my youth, and then I hear something like this, and I realize how much I still love hardcore punk.

Indre Krig: Destroyer 7” (Adult Crash Records) Usman and Angela both chose this new EP from Copenhagen, Denmark’s Indre Krig as their staff pick last week, and I’d like to add my voice to the chorus of SSR staffers singing this record’s praises. The bar for great punk in Copenhagen is pretty darn high, but Indre Krig distinguishes themselves with a sound that it as catchy as it powerful. They can sound super tough on a track like “Pinball Eyes” or “Halitosis,” but it’s not all rage… there are subtle hints of melody all over the record, and Indre Krig has a way of generating those goosebump moments you want from a great hardcore record. Check out the subtle lead guitar melody in my favorite track, “Claustrophobia,” or the climactic moment when “Pinball Eyes” returns to its crunchy mid-paced intro riff. I also love that the vocalist’s style matches the band’s approach, moving from a Boston hardcore-style growl to a more plaintive, slightly melodic style on “Claustrophobia.” The playing is as razor-sharp as the composition, and the subtle balance between being raging and hooky, straightforward and left-of-center works beautifully. A totally brilliant record.

Verdict: Time to Resign 12” (Phobia Records) Time to Resign is the debut record from this new Swedish käng band featuring members whose names you might recognize from similar groups like Meanwhile, Dischange, No Security, Disfear, and many more I’m sure (ask Usman, he’ll tell you). The sound, fans will be pleased to hear, is what you’d expect from this crew, but something about Verdict feels more vital and less off-the-cuff than other projects from the post-Totalitär Swedish hardcore underground. The first thing you’ll notice with Verdict is the vocals, which are hoarse, snarling, and captivating. The lyrics are in English, which is relatively uncommon for Swedish bands of this ilk, and they’re excellent, conveying a mix of anger, disgust, and horror at the current condition of the world, riding the fine line between being direct and more evocative and poetic. The music is pitch-perfect käng, so meticulously composed that it feels almost claustrophobic at first, but when you listen closely, you hear the inventiveness on display. As with Totalitär, the riffing ranges from super catchy (“Hypocrisy,” “Bound to Fail”) to straightforward and brutal (“Lock Down Society”), with the rhythm section executing a range of different d-beat grooves and tempos to match. Verdict constantly changes things up and keeps them exciting, knowing just when to shift gears into something like the standout “Dark Thoughts,” which speeds up the groove from Discharge’s “A Look at Tomorrow.” I can’t believe Time to Resign is 15 minutes long… it feels like half that, and every time the record ends I’m left wanting more.

Totalitär: 1998-2002 12” (Skrammel Records) Do you need Sorry State to tell you how great Totalitär is? Probably not, but I’m about to do it anyway! Like 1986-1989, which Skrammel released a few years ago, 1998-2002 collects several 7” EP from its titular years. You get 1998’s Klasse Inte Ras and Vansinnets Historia, 2000’s Dom Lurar Oss, 2001’s Spela Bort Allt Du Har, and 2002’s Allting Är På Låtsas. As Usman wrote in his staff pick, it’s far from a comprehensive overview of Totalitär’s output over this period, but it doesn’t have to be… getting five killer, hard-to-find records back into print is a fine mission as far as I’m concerned. You can never go wrong with any Totalitär record, but I’m fond of the era of the band captured here. The earlier records have a certain charm and I like that they’re more open-ended with their sound (though the later era of the band still has plenty of unexpected moments), but they’d locked into a thing by this period and perfected a sound that is wholly their own. A song like the title track to the Dom Lurar Oss EP is everything that’s great about Totalitär boiled down to its essence, and there are plenty of other moments that are just as strong. Whether you’re getting this because these are records you love and you want to have them compiled in a convenient format, or whether you’re adding these tracks to your collection for the first time, if you like Totalitär (and who doesn’t?), you’ll play the fuck out of this thing. As with 1986-1989, the packaging is no-frills by today’s punk reissue standards, but that’s in keeping with Totalitär’s total focus on the music (an approach they share with the almighty Out Cold). There are, however, two photo collages on the back that offer a rare glimpse into the people who made this music, and there are also some pretty hilarious photos of some unique merch items. 28 tracks of hardcore punk perfection.

Fatal: 6 Songs 7” (Bunker Punks Discs and Tapes) Fatal is a new band featuring Kevin Mertens, Out Cold’s original singer (who also returned to the band to sing on their final two albums), Jeff and Usman from Scarecrow on guitar/bass and drums, respectively, and some songwriting help from Eric from Government Warning and White Stains (since moving back to North Carolina, Eric has joined the band on bass). Fatal’s sound is explosive US hardcore, with no time for breakdowns, rock and roll posturing, or any other fiddly business. Every time I listen to this record, I take a deep breath before I drop the needle because I’m not going to get much more air before the side ends… the tracks are just too furious, the riffs coming at you with a speed and intensity that’s almost overwhelming (in that respect they remind me of another of Eric’s old bands, Blood Pressure). It’s like Fatal took a killer US hardcore record and pressurized its contents, or like a nuclear reactor that is meticulously controlled, but always on the edge of erupting into chaos and devastation. The packaging is great too, featuring a classic minimalistic punk layout with the band and label names hand-stamped on every sleeve. Forget the flavor of the week. This record is pure, undiluted hardcore punk.

Long Knife: Curb Stomp Earth 12” (Beach Impediment Records) In case you aren’t familiar with Long Knife, they began their life in Portland around a decade ago, and while they were an excellent, powerful hardcore band from the beginning, they were perhaps most notable for how much they sounded like Poison Idea. While there’s still some Poison Idea in the equation on Curb Stomp Earth, it’s the wide-vista’d, pop-inflected Poison Idea of Feel the Darkness rather than the earlier hardcore stuff. It sounds like, with Curb Stomp Earth, Long Knife has thrown off any preconceptions about what their music can or should be and let their creativity run wild, arriving at a real masterpiece of a punk record. There are so many moments on this record I never would have seen coming… the grandiose opening track “Modern Fatigue” (which features a choir!), the boogie woogie saxophone on “Uncle Phil,” the spooky organ hooks on “Scum,” and the anthemic finish to the album-closer “Coast to Coast.” Not only are these moments causes for a stoke attack in and of themselves, but they sit atop a solid plinth of the fist-pumping, straightforward hardcore Long Knife has always excelled at creating. It’s one thing to create an album full of left turns that keeps you guessing about what’s coming next, and another to create a surprise-packed album that’s just as exciting on the 10th listen as the first. Curb Stomp Earth achieves that goal, and it’s undoubtedly one of the most exciting and invigorating punk albums we’ll hear this year.

Yambag: Strength in Nightmares 7” (11pm Records) I can’t get over how scorching this new EP from Cleveland’s Yambag is. Somehow I missed their first 12”, Posthumous Pounce, but after I saw Yambag rip it up at Something to Talk About Fest in Philly this summer I had an inkling their new EP would be up my alley. It turns out that’s an understatement! Yambag’s combination of snotty vocals and ripping fast hardcore with tight, dynamic changes brings to mind one of my all-time favorite records, DRI’s Dealing With It. Like DRI (and unlike so many bands who have attempted to emulate them over the years), Yambag’s music is snotty punk rock at its core, but sometimes the intensity gets ratcheted up to the point where there’s nowhere to go but the blast beat, which serves here as the ultimate gestalt. While the playing is tight, the abrupt tempo changes create an unhinged sound, climaxing with the closing track, “Lowlife.” At over two minutes, it’s Strength in Nightmares’ longest track, jolting you from an intro where the guitarist tremolo picks a single string with an almost rockabilly flair to a series of dramatic punches into a blast that feels ripped straight from DRI’s playbook, into a catchy as fuck mid-paced part that begs you to mosh for the 9 seconds it lasts. The whole thing feels like wandering into a Slayer mosh pit with your eyes taped shut. This one is a certified ripper.

Persona: Free Your Mind 12” (Iron Lung Records) Iron Lung Records brings us the debut 7-song 12” EP from this New York City punk band. While I can describe most of the bands I write about for Sorry State with a few words, summing up their sound with a couple of band comparisons or a subgenre tag, Persona’s music feels totally separate from that line of thinking. Their songs sound raw, immediate, and visceral, like they come from something deeper and more personal than just thinking a certain band or style is cool. It’s impossible for me to tell whether Persona avoids copycatting by meticulously purging their music of elements that feel too familiar, or whether they just sidestep those kinds of concerns by being clear and confident about who they are as musicians and people. What I can tell you, though, is that Free Your Mind feels fresh, particularly for a hardcore record as raging as it is. The rhythms are wild, the noisy textures are rich with detail, and the performances ooze with passion. On paper, moments like the sludgy intro for “Get F*****d,” the haunting, Part 1-esque second half of “Moment of Silence,” the triumphant mosh of “Race to the Bottom,” the acid-fried United Mutation-isms of “One Way Out,” and the blasting “Pure Evil” should should sound scattered, but it all hangs together on the strength of Persona’s gravitas and their power as musicians. I’m amazed by how much Persona can pack into these 11 minutes of wild and addictive hardcore punk.

Ignorantes: Parece Que Tuvimos Demasiados Hijitos 12” (Under the Gun Records) After nearly a decade releasing hard to find tapes and 7”s, Parece Que Tuvimos Demasiados Hijitos (“It seems we had too many little children”) is the first 12” vinyl from Chile’s Ignorantes. I’m not sure if the band considers it a full-length, since this 45rpm 12” consists mostly of re-recordings of songs that appeared on those earlier releases, but regardless of its discographical status, Parece Que Tuvimos Demasiados Hijitos distills everything that’s great about Ignorantes to its raw essence. The band’s name tells you all you need to know, Ignorantes’ primitive bashing sounding like the glue-damaged grandchildren of the first two Chaos UK 7”s. The drummer’s simple pogo beats stagger like they’ve just downed four drinks at last call, the tinny guitars are only decipherable when they’re playing wild, unstructured leads, very angry people yell at you in Spanish, and the bassist holds everything together with a sense of melody that sounds like it was honed in a child’s nursery. This framework stays consistent throughout Parece Que Tuvimos Demasiados Hijitos, but you’re not really coming to Ignorantes for subtle stylistic innovation… or subtle anything for that matter. This is bash-you-over-the-head shit, a temper tantrum set to the unrelenting metronome of humanity’s decline. You’re either going to think this record is the worst or the best thing you’ve ever heard. Give it a spin and find out which side of the fence you passed out on.

Horrendous 3D: S/T 7” (Black Water Records) I was looking forward to this EP since Horrendous 3D’s previous EP was one of my favorite records in recent memory. I played that record to death, and I would have been happy with something just as good, but these five tracks are even better. Horrendous 3D leans into their strengths here, pushing the dynamic noise textures I loved on the first EP to even further extremes. What feels new this time around is a similarly meticulous approach to rhythm, the songs twisting and turning with a knotty, staggering quality that reminds me of Gauze. The whole EP is killer, but one track stands out: “Utterly Fucking Useless” is Horrendous 3D’s magnum opus. Starting with a passage of pure noise, a bass riff emerges and you think the song is going to head in one direction, but then the drums and guitar come in and it goes in the opposite direction, knocking me off balance in the best way possible. I’m doing a terrible job of describing it, but this moment gives me chills every time I hear it, and I’ve moved the needle back to hear it again several times. Just like their first EP, this is going to be close to my turntable for a long time. Undoubtedly one of the best records we’ll hear in 2022.

Blemish: S/T 12” (Not for the Weak Records) Virginia’s Not for the Weak Records has made a name for themselves with a string of killer hardcore records, but this debut 12” from Montreal’s Blemish is a slight left turn for the label. By far the most melodic release on NFTW so far, Blemish reminds me of the anthemic, ’77-inspired punk of bands like Legal Weapon, UXA, the Avengers, and (more recently) Vexx. While they might sound more straightforward against the backdrop of the pure hardcore bands on NFTW, Blemish’s take on the style is powerful, with plenty of heft to the playing and the production. Blemish is blessed with both an outstanding vocalist and a great lead guitar player, each of whom vies for your attention throughout this all-killer, no-filler 7-song EP. While the stuttering vocal hook of “Paranoia” might get you one minute, it’s not long before a guitar line like the blistering intro for “You Look Like a Cop” pulls your attention in its direction. I also love the unexpected twists here, like the pulsating organ on “Paranoia” or the way “Reanimate” borrows part of its melody and chord structure from the Misfits’ “Cough/Cool.” If you’re a fan of melodic bands that appeal to hardcore punks—the aforementioned groups and bands like No Hope for the Kids or the Vicious—Blemish is bound to have you singing along after just one or two listens.

Delco MF’s: EP 7” (MF Records) Usually it’s records from the d-beat and noise-punk scene that test conventional standards of fidelity, but this EP from Delco MF’s assaults your ears with nary a stud in sight. On this recording, Delco MF’s is Jim from Loose Nukes and Dark Thoughts (among many other bands and projects) playing all the instruments, and while you can hear how Jim’s love of classic US hardcore shapes the Delco MF’s sound, what emerges on this EP couldn’t be further from a genre exercise. If you ever saw Loose Nukes live, you know Jim had an anarchic stage presence, often losing his mind stage diving, knocking drinks out of people’s hands, and smashing bottles while the all-star band held things down musically. For Delco MF’s, though, that sense of chaos forms the core of the music’s DNA. The riffs are fast and wild, like an even more extreme version of the Neos circa End All Discrimination, which perfectly complements Jim’s unhinged vocal style. It’s tough to say too much about the compositions, though, because they’re often obscured by the production. This EP sounds like a four-track recording with every channel way in the red; much of the record is a sheet of white noise where you can hardly tell what’s going on, with the occasional audible vocal, a couple of floor tom hits, or the odd guitar break emerging from the auditory morass. In the wrong hands, ultra-raw production can rob a recording of its dynamics, but for Delco MF’s it only adds to the wildness and intensity. After four tracks of pure gestalt, they throw us a bone with “Delco Stomp,” whose mid-paced intro riff transmits a subliminal message to punch someone in the face and grab anything that isn’t nailed down so you can heave it into the air. If that sounds like your idea of a good time, pick this one up… it’s bound to be one of the rawest, wildest, and most unique hardcore records in your collection.