News

Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter. I’m a day late again this week… if you’ve been reading my staff picks, you can infer why, but I assure you that even if I’m having trouble keeping up with my SSR duties, the staff is continuing to kill it getting new stuff up on the website and your orders shipped out with the quickness. Speaking of new stuff coming in, it’s a big week for cool reissues, with a stone-cold classic and a deep cut banger from Sealed, some essential Japanese hardcore from General Speech, and some of that under-the-radar 80s USHC we love from the Spanish label B-core. We also have some killer 7”s—each in a very different style—in our Record of the Week and Featured Releases sections, and a bunch of the new international punk releases you expect in the new arrivals. So let’s get into it…

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State newsletter! We’re arriving in your inbox super late this week. Part of that is because this is a pretty darn massive issue of the newsletter. That tends to happen when we take a week off like we did last week, since there’s twice as much to cover in terms of new releases. But also it’s a busy and kind of difficult time for me (Daniel, who puts together this newsletter and writes most of it), so apologies if you’re waiting on me to reply to an email or get back to you about something. I’m doing my best to get on top of things, and I’m sure I’ll reply to everyone soon.

In the meantime, though, there’s SO much to tell you about this week. Our Record of the Week and both of our Featured Releases this week are all pretty unique, each of them super punk, but not in the early 80s hardcore way we focus most on here at Sorry State. They’re all worth checking out, so I hope you’ll read what we have to say and perhaps give them a listen. This week we also have news on some cool European imports, including a new distribution partnership with Spain’s Discos Enfermos that means just about all the label’s currently in print releases are now available from Sorry State, as well as two new releases on the almighty La Vida Es Un Mus from the UK. The new arrivals section is bursting with new and reissued punk music from all over the globe, and we also put a ton of fresh used stock on the website this week, with lots of great bargains to be had. We also have a fresh round of staff picks and other punk junk for you to read, so let’s get into it.

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! It’s a busy week with a ton to tell you about. We have a pre-order for a new release on Sorry State from Helsinki, Finland’s Yleiset Syyt. Record Store Day is this Saturday, and we’re carrying a couple hundred of the Record Store Day exclusive releases. Alongside helping us release the new Yleiset Syyt album, La Vida Es Un Mus brings us another new release of their own: the new album from Tokyo’s UK82 rippers Raw Distractions. We also have some tour news, a bunch of new pre-orders, new distro stock, some staff picks… all the stuff you come to Sorry State for. So let’s get to it!

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! Sorry the newsletter is a day late, but I didn’t manage to finish things up before the Indikator B / Totalna Tama gig in Raleigh last night. Both bands were great, and I strongly recommend catching the tour if you get a chance.

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with bated breath to hear about the results of last week’s big sale and I’m pleased to tell you it generated the money we needed! To say I am overwhelmed and humbled is a massive understatement. I wish I had the time to write personal thank-you notes to everyone who stepped up and bought something, but things are just too crazy right now. But seriously, thank you to everyone who helped us out. Many of you made some very big purchases and many also just gave us money rather than or in addition to buying something, which I never would have expected. The whole thing is not yet a done deal as we still have to get approved for the loan to cover the rest of the sale price, but hopefully my next message you to about this will be in a few months’ time when the sale has closed and Sorry State officially owns the shop. I hope everyone who helped us out gets a chance to visit the shop sometime and see what you helped to make happen.

I got a lot of really nice messages of encouragement, but in general I’m taking the huge response to the sale as an endorsement of what we’re doing, especially with this newsletter. It seems like y’all want us around for a long time, doing our best to stock the latest and greatest punk rock from across the globe and giving you our personal opinions and recommendations in your email every week. I’ll do my best to keep up my part of the bargain.

Speaking of which, we’re back to business as usual this week. The Shaved Ape LP is still up for pre-order, but if you want the limited color vinyl, you probably shouldn’t wait too much longer. We also have some big preorders that are now shipping and a heap of other new arrivals to tell you about. So let’s get back to doing what we do…

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Photo: Daniel, Seth, and Osamu (RIP) building fixtures before the store opened, fall 2013.

Before we get into the usual newsletter bits, I have something I wanted to talk to you about. The short version is that Sorry State is buying the space that houses our shop! This is kind of unexpected but very exciting and also extremely overwhelming and stressful. We could really use your help coming up with the cash for the down payment, so we’re having a big sale to generate some funds.

Now for the longer version:

A few months ago, Sorry State’s landlord informed us they had decided to sell the property that houses our downtown Raleigh shop. Sorry State has been in our current location since we opened in 2013—13 years!—and we really did not want to move. While I haven’t mentioned it to anyone but the people who work here and a few close friends, Sorry State’s future has felt pretty up in the air for the past few months. The landlord put our space on the market at the beginning of the year, so we’ve had potential buyers coming in for viewings for the last few months. That’s been enormously stressful, watching strangers poke around our closets and cabinets while our future hangs in the balance. No one who viewed the space seemed interested in providing cheap rent to a punk record shop, so I assumed we’d be facing either a huge rent increase or eviction. However, after a lot of ulcer-inducing back-and-forth, Sorry State is now under contract to purchase our space! (To be clear, we’re just talking about our retail space—the shop floor and our small back room—not the whole building.) I probably don’t need to tell you this is huge for us. Sorry State will have a permanent home, and we’ll gain many of the benefits homeowners enjoy, most importantly a monthly payment that isn’t subject to the whims of the market. We hope to continue doing Sorry State for many years to come, and owning our space will go a long way toward making that a reality.

Now that we’re under contract, our next hurdle is coming up with the money for the down payment. This is a huge amount of money for us. The down payment is equivalent to over TWENTY times our monthly rent. It’s not an insurmountable obstacle, but it’s a lot… especially at this time of year, when sales are typically slower and Record Store Day bills are starting to arrive. Of course, I’ll be emptying my meagre savings account and looking under every couch cushion in the vicinity, but those things alone won’t get us over the finish line.

We’re not asking for a handout… this isn’t a matter of life and death, and we wouldn’t want to take money or attention from charitable endeavors that need it. But, at the same time, we could really use your business right now. If you’ve been thinking about buying some records, we’d love it if you did that pretty soon! If there’s a recent release you’ve been meaning to pick up, a classic you don’t already own, or if you just wanna splurge… anything you could do would be awesome! Even if you only have a few bucks, you can always pick up some cheap new-to-you music in our clearance and used sections. We also have gift cards if you want to treat a friend or save your record splurge for later. Every dollar you spend with us moves us toward our goal.

We have a couple of enticements for you, too! First, today we’re launching a pre-order for the Shaved Ape LP on Sorry State, which we know a lot of you are going to want. Second, we have some discount codes for you. If you spend $100 or more, enter NOLANDLORDS to get 15% off your order. If you really want to put a dent in our down payment, spend $300 or more and enter NOMASTERS to get 25% off your entire order! (Note: gift cards ARE eligible for the discount.) If you’re local, we’re doing the same deal on everything in the shop. Both deals will last through this weekend, April 5.

Even if you can’t help right now, I want to thank everyone for your support over the years. Sorry State wouldn’t be here without our employees, customers, vendors, bands, and everyone else in our community. Thanks so much for all you’ve done and continue to do to keep us going.

Now, on to the newsletter…

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! Let’s start this week’s issue by wishing my dog Patti a happy 5th birthday!

My wife is at a ceramics conference in Detroit this week and I couldn’t bear to leave my little girl home alone on her birthday, so she’s hanging out at the SSR warehouse today, which I think everyone loves. Hopefully I can get this week’s newsletter out relatively quickly so I can hit the pet store before it closes and get her a big ‘ol bully stick and some freeze-dried chicken so she can celebrate her big day in style.

As for the world of recorded music, this week we once again have three hardcore rippers for our featured releases. What can I say? I like the stuff. And two of the three are from our neighbors just up the road in Richmond, where you can find one of the biggest and most vibrant punk scenes in the world. Though we currently have an epically long list of packages we’re expecting, our mail carrier’s loads have been light this week, so there isn’t a ton in the new arrivals section. But we make up for that with news on the next Sorry State release (the long-awaited return of Shaved Ape!), a new pre-order from Choncy on Feel It Records, a fresh round of pre-orders, and similarly fresh new batch of staff picks covering, as usual, a very broad range of music. We also have a first this week, with a staff member’s spouse taking over their pick… thanks so much to Danny’s wife Molly for her contribution! The whole of this week’s issue is well worth a read, if I say so myself.

So let’s get to it!

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Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! I hope everyone is doing well. We’re chilling here, dealing with the crazy weather we get in the springtime here in Raleigh. I love that this week our featured releases are three scorching new hardcore punk 7”s… it doesn’t get much better than that! And there’s plenty more to tell you about besides, including some cool new arrivals, a fresh batch of staff picks, and the usual stuff we flood your inbox with (most) every week. So, without further ado…

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Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State newsletter! Last week was a little thin, but this week we’re making up for it with a 7,000+ word monster that includes a full slate of staff picks, a killer batch of featured releases, and a ton of new releases and restocks to tell you about. Since the body of this week’s newsletter is so thicc, I’ll keep the preamble short and we’ll get right to it.

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Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! We have a slightly slimmer-than-usual issue this week. I have to go out of town for a few days, so my deadline is tighter than usual, and rather than making the crew put together their Staff Picks early, I gave them (and myself) the week off. Staff Picks will be back next week, but in the meantime I still tried to give you something worth perusing this week. We have some very cool featured releases this week and a heap of new arrivals, including the much-talked-about new Dissekerad album, the latest in the Descendents reissue series, and plenty more. Let’s get to it then, shall we?

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Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State newsletter! Once again the newsletter is hitting your inbox on Thursday rather than Wednesday. I just can’t seem to get it all wrapped up on Wednesday evening lately. It takes a shitload of time to put this thing together… I need to sit down and listen closely to everything I plan to write about, and of course sometimes the writing comes easily and sometimes it doesn’t. This week was tough. I deleted a whole giant intro section to my staff pick that, after I read it back, didn’t really say anything. I’m always revising and tweaking this thing until the moment I hit send. And of course, while I’m working on the newsletter I’m also temporarily putting aside all the other work I need to do, and there’s quite a lot of that at the moment, which is stressing me out! Sorry to complain, but it’s what’s on my mind at the moment.

As usual, there’s plenty to talk about this week. First up, the long-awaited new Psico Galera album is finally in stock now! We ran a preorder for this like three months ago, and since that seems like way too long ago, we’re relaunching the record this week (see also my goofy first attempt at an Instagram reel if you follow us on socials). Next, I finally got around to writing my magnum opus about this London Clay record I’ve been raving about for the past few months. I probably didn’t make it sound super appealing to the casual listener, but writing my brief Record of the Week blurb at least helped me clarify for myself why I like it so much. The new arrivals section is also full of scorchers like that new B.O.R.N. 12”, a very unexpected Huggy Bear reissue, a big batch of releases from the UK’s Crew Cuts records, and plenty more. Read all about it below. As well as the staff picks, which are the heart and soul of the newsletter. This week we cover 80s Yugoslavian punk, Uniform Choice, vintage dub reggae, seminal Athens, Georgia post-punk, and the new Angel Du$t album. Quite a spread.

So let’s get to it, shall we! Read on and enjoy!

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Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! Sorry we’re a day late this week. It’s been a busy one… Record Store Day orders were due yesterday, and we also had a massive batch of preorders to set up on the site (more on that below). The staff actually got their staff picks on time to me yesterday, but when it came time to write my bit the tank was just empty. But I’m back, baby!

Lots to tell you about this week. We have two hot new preorders from one of the best labels going, New York’s Roachleg Records (I can’t wait to hear that Pura Manía LP!), and as I mentioned there are a TON of other upcoming releases in the pre-order section. I’m particularly stoked to have Fipper’s Generic LP back on the shelves soon. In the “shipping now” department, we have a couple of very cool reissues on Spain’s B-Core, a live LP from Laughing Hyenas, and a new dispatch from Leeds’ Brainrotter Records, who have their finger on the pulse of what’s new and exciting in hardcore punk right now. And speaking of exciting labels, Sex Fiend Abomination brings us our Record of the Week, a 3-song demo from Charlotte, North Carolina’s System Maintains that I have listened to about 400 times since it came out.

There’s lots more to cover, plus some great staff picks this week (you’re a fool if you don’t take up Jeff on his Eppu Normaali recommendation!), so let’s get to it.

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Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! How y’all living? I’m OK, I guess. Actually, I’ve been experiencing a lot of anger lately. I’ve been really frustrated with the forces of enshittification constantly getting in the way of what I want to do and accomplish, and I’m really annoyed with a lot of large corporations at the moment for being bad at what they’re supposed to do. I’m sick of phone trees and AI customer service agents and other bullshit that pretends to be helpful but actually just gets in the fucking way. The world seems to have officially moved on without me. I hereby pronounce myself old and bitter.

Thankfully, there’s still music, and the flesh-and-blood humans at Sorry State are working our behinds off to bring that to you. We missed last week’s newsletter, and as usual when we miss a week, the first week back features a monstrously large stockpile of new stuff to tell you about. Extremely hot pre-orders, plenty of things in stock and shipping now, new groups, reissues of both lost and acknowledged classics… find it all here and more. And make sure to scroll to the staff picks section to read what some honest-to-god human beings are thinking about. At least until AI clones our voices and does a better job of it than we do (yeah right!).

Sorry for all the negativity, but it’s been a tough week around here. So let’s put that aside and get back to the shit we love: punk fucking rock.

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