News

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…

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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…

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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!

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