News

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.

Read the full newsletter here

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.

Read the whole newsleter here!

Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! We kinda have two things going on this week. First, this is our Best of 2025 edition, so most of our Staff Picks this week are looking back on 2025. I imagine you’ll discover a bunch of intriguing releases you might have missed the first time around, so I’ve tried to be even more diligent than usual about including links to the webstore when we still have stock of the release in question. I’m also working on restocking a few key items that we hope to have back in soon, so if you still need the Ayucaba, Nisemono, or Haram albums (among several others), keep an eye on the Recently Restocked section of the website, as we expect them back in soon.

Even though we’re looking back in 2025, punk still keeps moving, so there are already a bunch of new 2026 releases to tell you about. Our Record of the Week is a ripping demo cassette from New Jersey’s Direct Order ’82; and speaking of restocks, I see we’re down to our last few copies on the webstore, but should have a restock landing any day now. We also have quite a lot of news about pre-orders this week, including new releases from Belgrado on La Vida Es Un Mus and Draümar on Static Shock Records, plus long-awaited official reissues of Danzig’s first two albums as part of the RSD Essentials program. I know lots of you have been waiting on those for some time. And since we’re talking pre-orders, I’ll give a quick plug to the new Pre-Orders section on the Sorry State website. I’m sure you’ve noticed we’ve been doing more and more with preorders lately, and since that trend seems destined to continue, we’re going all-in.

Finally, sorry this newsletter is a day late! We try to send it out on Wednesday, but I’ve been sick as hell and out of the office since last Friday. Thanks so much to SSR’s amazing staff for keeping the whole operation plugging along while I send countless annoying, steroid-and-antibiotic-fueled Slack messages.

Alright, this is a monster newsletter, so pour yourself a drink and dig in…

read the rest of the newsletter here!

Hi there and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! Not a huge week for new releases, but looking at the list of incoming orders we’re expecting, it’s merely the calm before the storm, and even this week there are several gems. And, of course, there’s always a reason to open the Sorry State newsletter, as our staff is always here to tell you about new and old music we’re passionate about whether or not it landed at the shop in the past week.

The other day I was talking with an old friend and they complimented me on my blog that I used to write 20-something years ago… I told him that nowadays my blog kinda lives in the Staff Picks section of the SSR newsletter, and he had no idea! He just followed Sorry State on social media and thought he was getting the whole story. Not so! I have been really annoyed with social media lately. What started as a fun way to keep up with friends has enshittified itself to where it’s barely even usable anymore… Instagram tries its damndest to avoid showing you any interesting hard posts, I can’t seem to watch stories without accidentally clicking an ad every 3 seconds, and fuck a damn reel. And that’s not even mentioning all the information these platforms are actively suppressing and censoring. We’ve been using social media less at Sorry State, which means the newsletter and website are more important than ever. Keep an eye on them, and if you have a friend who is a fellow music fanatic, do us a favor and let them know we’re here (nearly) every week doing our thing, trying our best to rise above the level of your typical label/shop spam email.

We hope you’ll order from us every once in a while, but if you check out the music we write about on Bandcamp or YouTube or buy it from your own local shop, that’s totally fine too. It’s not about making money (if it was, we would have quit a long time ago), but about keeping punk going. So, rant completed, let’s push the boulder uphill another couple of inches…

Read the rest of the newsletter here!

White Cross photo from Punk Wiki.

The sleeping giant that is the SSR newsletter is only just beginning to rouse from its winter slumber, and we’re taking it one step at a time. This week we have an incredible new release on the label for you—the demo tape from Raleigh, North Carolina’s Plastique Pigs—as well as a striking Record of the Week from the Apparition out of Leeds, England. We also have a bunch of news about new distributed titles and I also run through a handful of recent arrivals to the website. If you haven’t checked in with the site in a while, though, this is only a small fraction of what’s come in over the past several weeks. And of course there’s lots more to come too!

Click here to read the newsletter!