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Neon Christ: 1984 12” (Southern Lord Records) I think this marks the first time Sorry State has chosen a Record Store Day exclusive release as our Record of the Week, but 1. I love this record and 2. as of right now we still have some stock, so it’s not like you have to stand in line for hours to lay your hands on this record. 1984 compiles two recording sessions by 80s Atlanta hardcore band Neon Christ. The driving force behind Neon Christ was guitarist William Duvall who, after Neon Christ’s demise, moved out to California to play second guitar in Bl’ast! and (after a bunch of stuff in between I’m sure, including a short-lived band with Mike Dean of C.O.C.) ended up as the singer in Alice In Chains, which is still his job today. Those connections are kind of wild, but I would love Neon Christ just as much if the members’ current resumes included little more than sitting on a couch and reminiscing about the good old days. Neon Christ’s Parental Suppression EP is a great slice of under the radar USHC with a unique sound. One thing I love about Neon Christ is that they had several different tricks up their sleeve. They were one of the fastest thrash bands around, rivaling bands like the Neos, DRI, and Deep Wound. However, they also made frequent forays into song-oriented punk. “The Draft Song” and “Neon Christ” have more in common with anthemic west coast punk bands like the Adolescents, and not only do these songs provide a welcome reprieve from the thrashing but also they’re great examples of the style. 1984 contains Neon Christ’s 1984 EP Parental Suppression on side A, while the b-side collects the songs the band recorded at a second session six months later. The latter tracks came out previously on a (semi-official?) double 7”. Being only six months later these tracks aren’t too different from the ones on the 7”, but “The Knife that Cuts So Deep” leans even harder into the pop thing than the songs on the 7”, with a kind of Homestead Records-type, “post-hardcore band trying to write songs that are a little more palatable” vibe. It was too much for me in my younger days, but I really like it now. That second recording isn’t as strong as the EP, with a muddier mix and some reverb obscuring the band’s power, but the songs are still killer. As for the packaging, while the cover art sticks out like a sore thumb, the rest of it is excellent. The LP-sized booklet full of photos, flyers, and a detailed oral history of the band is essential, and the sound is fantastic. According to the jacket, the release went through an all-analog process from the original tapes, and I can confirm it sounds great. Hopefully this is one of those Record Store Day releases that gets wider circulation, because this is an essential piece of American hardcore punk history that anyone with an interest in that style and era should get their hands on.

Reaksi:  Esok Hari Kepunyaan Kita EP 7” (La Vida Es Un Mus) La Vida Es Un Mus brings us the debut EP from this new band featuring Yeap from Pisschrist on guitar and vocals. Before I give you my take, I want to direct your attention to Fahmi Reza’s words on the EP. I didn’t read what Fahmi wrote until after I’d listened to  Esok Hari Kepunyaan Kita EP quite a bit, and I’m ashamed to say that most of what Fahmi said about the band and their lyrics went over this monolingual white American punk’s head. But that’s why we’re into this shit, right? The reason we search out records and bands from all over the globe is because we’re interested in those people’s perspectives… we want to understand better what the world looks like through their eyes. I was pretty fucking stoked on this record before I knew what the words meant. (To tell the whole truth, I wasn’t even sure what language they were in. They’re in Bahasa, an Indonesian language that Google Translate seems to have no trouble with. “Reaksi” means “reaction” and “Esok Hari Kepunyaan Kita” translates as “Tomorrow Is Ours.”) Reaksi cops a lot of moves from the No Future catalog (particularly the Partisans and Blitz), but they do it well, with the same anthemic sensibility of Rixe but with a tougher edge… I’d bet money these folks really appreciate the Ultra Violent EP. I also like the track “Awas” (“Watch Out”), which has a Ramones-y feel. Anyway, come for the music and the bad-ass alligator on the cover, stay for the education…

Electric Chair: Social Capital 7” (Iron Lung) This week we got a limited restock of the latest Electric Chair EP, Social Capital, which came out back in April but sold through its initial pressing instantaneously, before we even wrote about it for the Sorry State newsletter (though Rich gave it some love in his staff pick). While I didn’t try to sell you on this EP because I didn’t have any copies to sell you, it hit me hard when I took it home. At Sorry State we’ve been into Electric Chair since they released Public Apology back in 2018, and we’ve sung the praises of all of their records. Social Capital is different, though. As killer as Performative Justice was, Social Capital is even better. Why? Honestly, I’m struggling to articulate it. I have listened to this record so much in the past few months and I’ve been playing it on repeat to prepare for writing this description, but I just can’t put my finger on why it’s so great. Yeah, the riffs are killer, it has these wild guitar leads, the most epic drum fills, and vocals that are savage yet catchy, but their other records had those things too. Where Social Capital stands apart is in the subtle ways it owns Electric Chair’s voice as a hardcore band. It sounds totally unique, but it is 100% hardcore. I’ve often written about how truly great records pull you into their world and make you see it through a different lens, and Social Capital does just that. Through Electric Chair’s lens the world seems irrational, hypocritical, and maybe even pointless, and the only sane reaction is go wild and fuck shit up. For my money, Social Capital is the single best hardcore record we’ve seen in the 2020s so far, and if you only own one hardcore record from this young decade, this should be it.

R.I.P. / Eskorbuto: Zona Especial Norte 12” (Munster Records) One of my favorite Spanish punk records has a new pressing, and even though this is pretty much a straight repress of Munster’s 2009 reissue, I wanted to highlight this record in case anyone reading hadn’t heard it already. When I think of Spanish punk, I think of big choruses, big riffs, high energy, and a lot of influence from the early Clash catalog, and for my money there isn’t a record out there that captures that sound better than this one. Both bands are from Basque Country (the Zona Especial Norte to which the title refers), and both play anthemic, razor-sharp punk with one foot in the ’77 classics and the other in the high-energy hardcore that was well established by the time this came out in 1984. R.I.P. are the rougher, faster, and meaner of the pair here, with a sound that reminds me of ripping but catchy Finnish bands like Appendix and Lama. Their four tracks are a total adrenaline rush that hits as hard as any four-songer on Riot City. As for Eskorbuto, they’re the more presentable of the pair, and while they don’t have R.I.P.’s viciousness, they make up for it with a more refined sense of songcraft. I hear a lot of influence from bands like the Clash and Cockney Rejects, but with a rawness that’s more in line with the Raw Records catalog. Eskorbuto has a big catalog and a long career, but their four tracks here are my favorite material by them. Besides eight truly great punk tracks, this reissue also comes with an A4-sized, full color booklet that has a detailed history of the release (in Spanish and English) along with photos, flyers, and other ephemera. An essential document for fans of worldwide punk.

Illiterates: S/T 12” (Kill Enemy) I can’t think of the last time we named a restock the Record of the Week, but this LP from Illiterates is a special case. Kill Enemy Records hit me up when the record came out and asked if Sorry State wanted to carry it. I listened to it online, thought it ruled, and asked for 100 copies. It turns out they only pressed 100 copies total, so of course we got way less than that. The record hit our site and sold out instantly, and aside from Jeff writing about it for his staff pick we didn’t give it much attention since I hate teasing people with records they can’t buy. Fortunately, Kill Enemy did a repress (300 copies this time, so don’t expect this to appear in the Billboard charts), and now this beast is in stock and I’m ready to shout from the hilltops that this is one of my favorite punk records of the year. Illiterates’ fast and gritty hardcore grabbed me right away, but I’ve continued to put it on over the past few months, and I’ve grown to love it even more. It’s easy to get excited about a fast hardcore record when it’s blasting out of your speakers, but Illiterates has a subtle sense of song craft that sticks with you long after you pick up the needle. This reference might be lost on anyone under 30, but they remind me of Minneapolis’s Formaldehyde Junkies, whose songs were short, blistering fast, and extremely potent, but had a subtle pop sensibility at their core. And speaking of Minneapolis, I can’t resist mentioning the Replacements cover that closes this record, in which Illiterates take the finger-snapping, piano-led breakdown of “We’re Coming Out” and refashion it into the perfect pit-clearing breakdown to close out this record. The killer music is wrapped up in a killer recording and killer cover art. I can’t think of a single change that would make me like this record more.

Spike in Vain: Disease Is Relative 12” (Scat Records) Disease Is Relative is the only official, stand-alone Spike in Vain vinyl release that came out during the group’s original lifespan, appearing on the (band-operated?) Trans Dada label in 1984. Disease Is Relative is, for me, one of the great unheralded punk albums of the 80s. While its 1984 release date places it at the tail end of hardcore’s explosion, it sounds like the product of a brief moment when arty bands like Saccharine Trust and the Flesh Eaters made records that we can classify, at least broadly, as hardcore. The people in these bands seemed like they wrote poetry outside of school assignments, and these artist types saw hardcore’s loud, fast, and angry sound as an intriguing possibility or a color on their palette rather than a set of rules. Eventually the meatheads took over and these artists made their way into more open-minded scenes, but before that happened, many of them made records that sounded like hardcore records, but not just hardcore records, and Disease Is Relative is one of the best of those. On every level, it delivers more than I expect from a hardcore record, whether you’re talking about the brilliant, evocative lyrics (“God on Drugs?” Fuck!) or the music itself, which borrows the rhythmic inventiveness of post-punk bands like Gang of Four (“E.K.G.”) and the compositional complexity of 70s art rock. Somehow, it accomplishes all this without sacrificing the explosivity that is a strict requirement of hardcore. If you don’t have this record already and you love albums like Saccharine Trust’s Paganicons and the Minutemen’s What Makes a Man Start Fires?, you need to buy this now. You’ll thank me later, I promise.

Also, a note for the nerds: a blurb from the label mentions this reissue sports a superior mastering job from the original, and suggests that people who already own an original copy might want to pick up the reissue thanks to the improved sound. I A/B’d the reissue with my original pressing and the sound is less tinny, with the lower frequencies represented more clearly and powerfully than on the original. I loved this album so much already that I don’t know if these improvements added much to my experience, but if you want to have the best-sounding versions of these tracks, Scat’s reissue is it.

Assault & Battery: Complete Session, May 1981 12” (Alonas Dream Records) The early 80s Washington, DC hardcore scene is extraordinarily well documented compared to other scenes, but Assault & Battery might be the band that got away. They were only around for a few months in 1981, but they played shows with Dischord bands like SOA, Minor Threat, Youth Brigade and Government Issue. What’s more, their guitarist, Brian Gay, was also the bass player in the original lineup of the GIs. And in 1983, Assault & Battery bass player, Rob Moss, would go on to play in the GIs as well. They were probably a bit too early to appear on Flex Your Head because, by the end of 1981, their guitarist had moved to Chicago for college (he started the band Savage Beliefs there) and Assault & Battery joined up with the guitarist from the recently disbanded Red C and changed their name to Artificial Peace. Fortunately, Assault & Battery left behind this eight-song session recorded at Hit & Run studios, which has had a long life in the tape trading underground and appeared (miscredited to Artificial Peace) on a (bootleg?) 7” and CD on Lost & Found Records. This reissue, however, is the first time the source has come from the original studio master, and it is 100% essential for anyone into early 80s Washington, DC hardcore… which is to say, anyone into hardcore. Of the DC bands you probably know, Assault & Battery reminds me the most of SOA and Youth Brigade. While Teen Idles were punkier and Minor Threat a little more sophisticated as songwriters and players, Assault & Battery is pure ferocity with little concession to outdated concepts like melody. Still, though, the music is fucking great, building exciting, dynamic songs out of parts that are relentlessly intense, fast, and tough. The recording is also great, with a similar power and richness of texture to what was coming out of Inner Ear studios at the time. I know everyone and their mother is reissuing their long lost early 80s hardcore band, but this is the cream of the crop. If you love early 80s USHC, you need this.

Rudimentary Peni: The Great War 12” (Sealed Records) The new Rudimentary Peni album is upon us! It seems like no one knows quite what to think of that, and I’ve had a few people ask me if I think it’s any good. Here’s the TL;DR version: if you come to The Great War only knowing Rudimentary Peni’s first two EPs and/or Death Church, you are likely to be disappointed, but if you celebrate Peni’s entire catalog, you’re going to love it. Now for the “director’s cut” of my opinion. I first heard Rudimentary Peni in the mid-90s in the goofiest, most poseur-y circumstances you could imagine. I noticed all the cool punk kids had these screen printed patches on their backpacks, jackets, and jeans and I wanted some. I found an issue of Maximumrocknroll and saw an ad for a patch distro, so I ordered their catalog, which was a few sheets of copy paper adorned with dozens of logos, primarily from the classic crust and/or anarcho bands you’d expect. I ordered some patches so I could look like the cool kids, but I figured I should also try to hear these bands if I was going to be sporting their gear. So, I placed an ad in Maximumrocknroll’s classified section asking for pen pals who wanted to trade mix tapes. I think one taker eventually asked what I wanted to hear, and I wrote every band name from the patch catalog. I received two mix tapes (I still have them… they’re very important to me) with songs by bands like Subhumans, Crass, Flux of Pink Indians, and a few bands like Terveet Kadet whose names and song titles I couldn’t even read. (Side note: I have no recollection of what, if anything, I sent in return, but my best guess was that it was a tape full of the youth crew revival bands who played eastern Virginia, where I grew up. This dude, whose name I can’t even remember, gives me this master class on underground 80s punk and I’m dubbing him the fucking Time Flies demo… if my punk Yoda is out there somewhere, I apologize.) Among the tracks were several by Rudimentary Peni, and they immediately stood out. To this day, the intro to “Teenage Time Killer” is one of my favorite moments in the entire history of recorded music. I loved the Peni tracks on the mix, but it would be years before I heard the first Rudimentary Peni EP in its entirety. This was long before Discogs, and when you found a band you liked, you found out more by scouring the bins and picking up anything you saw. I’m pretty sure the first Peni record I owned was The Underclass, which I bought around the time it came out in 2000. I wouldn’t have had any idea where it fit in Rudimentary Peni’s discography, but I thought it was fucking awesome and I still do. Eventually, thanks to sites like eBay and Kill from the Heart I could get the lay of the Peni landscape and I dove down the rabbit hole. Of course I got copies of the EPs and Death Church and was transformed, but I also got Cacophony and Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric, which are tougher listens. Perhaps someone who listened to Rudimentary Peni’s chronologically (either because they were buying them when they came out or because they were doing so in the digital era, when exploring a discography logically like that is much easier) would have heard one of those two records, jumped off the bandwagon, and never returned. However, since I went into the catalog in this ass backwards way, I acquired the taste for the later Rudimentary Peni material early. And one thing you appreciate when you are familiar with Rudimentary Peni’s entire discography is that their early releases aren’t just great hardcore punk records; they’re great records informed (but not defined) by hardcore punk. Peni’s vision is singular, unique, and immersive. Yeah, maybe I love those early records a little more because they’re louder, faster, and noisier than the others, but there are plenty of loud, fast, and noisy records in my collection. But there is only Rudimentary Peni, and Rudimentary Peni has always been Rudimentary Peni. The Great War is a Rudimentary Peni through and through. As such, I can’t give you a thorough analysis after listening to it for only a few weeks. Like all of their records (as well as Nick Blinko’s drawings), The Great War is so dense with ideas and imagery that I’m going to be chewing on it for a long time. If you have enjoyed chewing on Rudimentary Peni’s later catalog, I am certain you will feel the same. A couple of other quick notes: the packaging, as you would expect, is astounding. I will stare at Blinko’s motorcycle and blimp illustrations for a long time to come. Second, I’ve been reading press about the album, and a few people have noted the recording is rather shrill and piercing, a bit like the tinny, trebly assault of some black metal. The vinyl version sounds noticeably different, warmer and more balanced than the digital version, and I strongly prefer the vinyl version.

Violent Christians: New Blood for a Dead City 7” (Roach Leg Records) This debut 7” from Texas’s Violent Christians has been toast of the hardcore town for a few months now, and with good reason; it fucking rips. Like several recent bands from Texas, Violent Christians wear their Koro influence on their sleeves (the track “Eat Your Shit” is as blatant a Koro homage as you’re ever likely to hear), but they occasionally hit the throttle even harder and end up in a Deep Wound-influenced space, which is fine by me. The riffs and songs here are great, and the only thing I could imagine a hardcore fan taking issue with is the recording. Whenever I listen to New Blood for a Dead City, I think about the fact that I often open the voice memos app on my iPhone and make practice recordings for my band and it sounds way better than this. You have to go well out of your way to make a recording that sounds this “bad” in 2021. A couple of things about that, though. First, the recording is “bad” in a very particular way, sounding like a very blown out tape recording, which is a lot better than a “bad” digital recording, which I can’t fucking stand. Second, despite any shade you can throw at the recording, this record’s power is undeniable. It just fucking goes. Would it rage differently or even better if it had a clearer recording? I’m not sure. But this is the record we have, and if you like ripping 80s USHC, it’s a record you should get.

Nervous SS / Rat Cage: Skopje vs Sheffield 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus) People have a prejudice against split records, and with good reason. They can be repositories for throwaway material, they can lead listeners into an unfavorable comparison between the two sides of the record in which no one wins, and with multiple bands collaborating they are often conceptually muddled. However, Skopje vs Sheffield has none of those problems. It is a perfect hardcore record that just happens also to be a split record. It’s telling that every single time I’ve played this record (which is a lot), I’ve listened to it all the way through. I don’t think you’ll see anyone calling this a one-sided 12”. Nervous SS (from Skopje, Macedonia) and Rat Cage (from Sheffield, UK) are two perfectly matched bands, both playing Totalitär-influenced d-beat hardcore with elements that push at the edges of that sound. Perhaps it’s because they knew people would compare them, but both bands are 100% relentless on Skopje vs Sheffield. This is full-on, pedal-to-the-metal hardcore that doesn’t give you one second to breathe. Listening to Skopje vs Sheffield reminds me of examining a Nick Blinko drawing in that, from a distance, it can seem monochromatic, but when you zoom in, each hatch mark (or, on the record, each riff) is its own magical little world, and these magical little worlds are woven seamlessly into a complex tapestry. Although each band contributes a side, Skopje vs Sheffield even has an arc like a great full-length, with a clear climax (Rat Cage’s track “Persecution”) and ending with an awesome comedown (the long, melodic guitar solo that closes Rat Cage’s UK Subs cover). Like the Impalers’  Psychedelic Snutskallar LP, this feels like an unequivocal high-water mark for current hardcore punk.

Dollhouse: The First Day of Spring 7” (Toxic State) Has Toxic State Records’ now-established routine—taking New York City punk bands, wrapping their music in rough-sounding recordings, then wrapping those inconspicuous-looking records in gallery-worthy packaging that grows increasingly elaborate over the years—started to go stale? FUCK NO! In fact, it’s been over a year since the last Toxic State vinyl release and I’m fiending for a fix. One thing I love about a new Toxic State release coming out is that you can expect the unexpected. One release might be a straightforward raw punk band, the next might be industrial, the one after that art pop… and plenty of them don’t fit into any category. So, when I dropped the needle on Dollhouse’s new 7” (following up the very popular demo they released in 2019), I was only mildly surprised at the melodic lead guitar that starts “The Shadow Baby.” It’s the kind of riff that could have gotten you a contract and a few thousand dollars of advance money from Jade Tree Records in the late 90s, but Dollhouse pair it with a vocalist who (I’m guessing) saw a lot of Crazy Spirit gigs and makes a sound I’d describe as a snotty squawk-scream. The second song is a full-on, Dawn of Humans-style buzzsaw, but then by the end of the record there are acoustic guitars. It’s a wild ride. But it rules, and it feels like a ride I’ve never been on before. This is why I buy every single Toxic State release.

Morbo: ¿A Quién Le Echamos La Culpa? 12" (Cintas Pepe) Let’s get this out of the way up front: this record RULES. Not just “year end list” rules, but like “sound of the summer” rules. These records come around every once in a while—the Exploding Hearts LP; the No Hope for the Kids LP; Inepsy’s first two LPs; Criminal Damage’s first two albums—and the entire scene seems to latch onto them at once. ¿A Quién Le Echamos La Culpa? isn’t one of those records yet because it just came out, but it deserves to be. Peru’s Morbo has been a band for 20 years (!!!) and we’ve carried several of their records. I might have missed ¿A Quién Le Echamos La Culpa?, but Paco at La Vida Es Un Mus tipped me off that it was a special record, and boy was he right. ¿A Quién Le Echamos La Culpa? draws from a lot of different things—first and second-wave punk from all over the world, 60s garage rock (particularly Peru’s Los Saicos), and raw South American hardcore—and melds them into something I’ve never heard put together in this way. Some tracks are melodic punk songs with a lot of Sex Pistols in their DNA, while there are also garage rock rave-ups that wouldn’t be out of place on a Billy Childish album and tougher-sounding tracks that remind me of UK Subs-influenced bands like Toxic Reasons. Despite the variations in style, every song overflows with great riffs and catchy melodies. The recording is perfect too, with a lot of grit but not sounding self-consciously retro like some kind of audio version of an Instagram filter. Every track is a hit, but no two tracks are alike. It’s just a fucking great punk album and if you like punk you should get it.