Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! After two weeks of running super late with this thing, I think I might hand over this week’s newsletter to Rachel for formatting before her shift ends. It’s amazing how much time you can open up when you neglect other tasks!

Tomorrow I’m heading to Asheville, North Carolina, to play what promises to be an epic gig with Warthog, Public Acid, Scarecrow, and new Asheville band Forever Peace & Charm. If you’re within driving distance of Asheville and you have a lick of damn sense, you’ll be there.

Other than that, enjoy all the goodies we cover in this week’s edition! The Algara record is great (as Jeff told you last week), and it’s proving to be one of the most infectious punk records I’ve heard this year. I’m also looking forward to digging into the Sistema En Decadencia LP that just showed up and you know I’m grabbing one of those Personal Damage flexis that just arrived. Keep reading and build your own stack to listen to!

Algara: Absortos En El Tedio Eterno 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus) Apologies for rewriting Jeff’s staff pick from last week as my description, but he hit the nail on the head. I was intrigued by Algara’s earlier releases, but their first LP, Absortos En El Tedio Eterno is where everything comes together, a fantastic record rich with great songs and a stylistic three-dimensionality that keeps me coming back for repeated listens. Without sounding like anyone but themselves, Absortos En El Tedio Eterno incorporates everything from surfy punk to icy darkwave and a lot in between. While the songs cover a lot of stylistic ground, a few core elements of Algara’s sound—like the sassy vocals and the laid-back, surf-inflected lead guitar—carry through all the sounds they experiment with. In other words, it sounds like Algara knows what their strengths are, yet rather than rehashing the same ideas, they push themselves to recontextualize and recast what worked while pushing into new vistas. Beyond being ambitious and exciting, it’s just a fun record to listen to, its laid-back grooves drawing you in without exhausting your attention. Also like Jeff, my poor facility with Spanish leaves me mystified by the band’s image, but it’s aesthetically compelling even if I’m not able to get much from it philosophically. I’m jealous of those of you who can engage with Absortos En El Tedio Eterno on that level, because the depth of thought they put into the photography and packaging here (particularly the insert booklet) is obvious. I see this one serving a long tour of duty in my “recently listened” pile.

Tomorrow, October 8, is the release for Cochonne’s Emergency EP on Sorry State! Woohoo! That means you’ll be able to listen to the record in its entirety on Bandcamp or your streaming service of choice.

We are also set to receive the Cochonne records and merch today, so we’ll begin shipping your preorders tomorrow! If you haven’t already ordered, you’d better get on it, as it’s looking like we’ll be sold out within the next few days, and we are not planning on repressing physical versions of this title.

If you haven’t already, check out the video for Cochonne’s track “Vampire” on the Sorry State site!

Our friends at Quality Control HQ in the UK have released a slew of great hardcore punk over the past several years… no doubt you have a few of them in your collection. If you’re a fan of the label, you’ll be excited to hear that they’ve just launched a US-based webstore that allows you to get their releases, including exclusive vinyl colors and merch, without paying that expensive overseas shipping. What does this have to do with Sorry State? We’re handling the logistics for QCHQ’s US shop, so if you order from that site, it’ll ship from here in North Carolina and you’ll receive the great service you get from Sorry State.

Right now the Quality Control HQ USA site features all the label’s in print catalog and some cool merch items like tote bags, longsleeves, and a sick new hoodie featuring a collab design from Spoiler and Nicky Rat.

Watch for an exciting preorder announcement from QCHQ coming tomorrow! We’ll have an exclusive US vinyl color available on the Quality Control HQ US website, so check back for that on Friday!

I know plenty of you have gotten the message about the new releases from Scalple and Lasso on Sorry State, but if not… what are you waiting for? Even though these are technically preorders with a release date of October 15, the vinyl for both records is shipping right now with zero waiting! The limited pressings of both releases are nearly gone, so if you care about that type of thing, you shouldn’t hold off too much longer.

Also, watch Sorry State’s social media as we’re dropping live videos by both bands during the preorder period. We’re also throwing stickers and promo posters in free with all orders. Get u some!

I’m not mad that Svart Framtid trounced Bannylst this week—after all, that Svart Framtid EP has gotta be one of the best hardcore records ever—but it also sucks that a record as great as Bannylst’s EP has to endure such an indignity. For a country with such a small output of hardcore records, Norway sure put out some fire.

Cast your vote in the next edition of Hardcore Knockouts on our Instagram stories next Tuesday!

My pick from Sorry State’s Discogs listings this week is this cheap copy of Udüsic’s self-titled EP. Udüsic were (are?) from Chicago, and I just loved them. While their style of hardcore was probably a little too quirky to get super popular, it pressed all the right buttons with me. One of the many nuggets of gold spread throughout Sorry State’s Discogs inventory.

Remember, you can always combine your order from Sorry State’s Discogs site with your order from our webstore and save on shipping!

October 9
Scarecrow in Asheville

October 9
Zorn in Philadelphia

October 15
Scalple in NYC

October 16
Scalple in Boston

October 21
Hüstler in NYC

October 30
Zorn in Philadelphia

1. Scalple: Skillful Butchers 12” (Sorry State)
2. Cochonne: Emergency 12” (Sorry State)
3. Lasso: S/T 7” (Sorry State)
4. Suffocating Madness: S/T 7” (Roach Leg / Active-8)
5. Chain Whip: Two Step to Hell 12” (Neon Taste)
6. Genetic Control: 4 Song EP 7” (Return to Analog)
7. Hated: 4 Song EP 7” (Meathouse Productions)
8. Hated: Pressure 7” (Meathouse Productions)
9. Straw Man Army: Age of Exile (Euro press) 12” (D4MT Labs)
10. Imploders: S/T 7” (Neon Taste)

Y’all are gobbling up the latest three Sorry State releases, launching them to the top of our list of biggest sellers for the past month. The rest of the list is pretty much the same as last week, though a few new titles like Strong Boys’ Homo 7” and Algara’s LP are lurking just outside the top 10.

Click here to see what the SSR Crew is into this week!

First up this week we have Nuestro Legado, the debut LP from Australia’s Sistema En Decadencia, on Hardcore Victim Records! This record is ferocious… we’ll give you more details in next week’s newsletter, I’m sure, but you can pick it up right now if you’re in the know.

This five-track demo from California’s Personal Damage lit up the internet when it dropped about a month ago, and now the physical version is here, pressed up on flexidisc with beautiful risographed packaging, including a big booklet. Fans of old California punk like early Bad Religion and Wasted Youth need to check this band out, ditto if you like the more Cali-leaning end of current hardcore like White Stains and Chain Whip.

The digital dropped a few weeks back, but we have the brand new LP from Chubby & the Gang, titled The Mutt’s Nuts, in stock now!

We received two new releases from Germany’s Erste Theke Tonträger this week: a split 7” from two of the label’s most popular bands, Prison Affair and Research Reactor Corp, as well as a new 12” from Dead Finks. We also restocked a bunch of older ETT titles, including perennial favorites from Coneheads and Powerplant.

Gerpfast Records just dropped a new EP from Indonesia’s Ravage and we have it in stock now!

If that’s not enough for you, revisit last week’s newsletter for killer new releases from labels like Foreign Legion (Dog Flashback, Komintern Sect), Earth Girl tapes (Judy & the Jerks, Burning Sword), Phobia Records (Warcollapse, Collapsed). Hopefully we’ll get you descriptions of some of those in next week’s newsletter too.