News

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!

We are very stoked to announce that Mecht Mensch's Anthology LP is back in stock! Even bettter, No Coast hooked up Sorry State with our own exclusive pressing on transparent blue vinyl. And even better than THAT, this second pressing is a little cheaper than the first pressing (due to slightly scaled-back packaging). Order your copy below, but be quick... once they're gone, they're gone! Mecht Mensch are one of the best and most underrated US 80s hardcore punk bands, and their Anthology LP should be in any self-respecting 80s USHC aficionado's collection.

Good news! The Youth Avoiders (Destructure Records) and Draümar (Static Shock Records) titles we were running pre-orders for are now in stock! All pre-orders have shipped (unless your order includes another pre-order item that isn't in yet), and any new orders will ship right away. Draümar is still listed as a pre-order on the site, but that's only because its street date isn't until February 27.

Check these records out and order copies below if you haven't already!

We just put up a pre-order for the latest reissue on Sealed Records: a reissue of the two long-lost demos by obscure 80s UK anarcho-punk group Bikini Mutants! Read the description, listen to a couple tracks, and order your copy below! This is officially out on March 20 and vinyl should ship around that time.

It’s taken Sealed records more than five years to put this release together but finally it’s here. The one and only Bikini Mutants. The Bikini Mutants were from Yeovil, Somerset and part of the All the Madmen world. In their short life as a band they recorded two demos at Monitor Studios, Milborne Port in Somerset in 1982. Let's Mutate collects these two demos on one LP, along with a 20 page booklet featuring photos, lyrics, reviews, interviews and much more. The band played mostly in Yeovil and the West Country along with the Mob and the Review, and even though they were part of the West Country anarcho scene, the sound was a mix of scratchy post punk and indie pop. Members of the band went on to be in My Bloody Valentine and the Chesterfields. The songs are intricate, delicate and engaging with the drums and bass locked in, the fuzzed out guitar weaving on top and Criss Cole’s angelic voice taking each song to pop heaven. Think a mix of Girls at our Best, Au Pairs and the Marine Girls.

Sorry State is excited to partner with Arcane Dynamics to offer Powerplant's upcoming album Bridge of Sacrifice for sale in the US! The album is out on March 13 and we have several versions available: blue and white vinyl variants (each of them available with or without a large, 20" poster of the cover artwork), cassette (again, in blue and white variants) and CD. We expect to have these on or around the release date, and we'll ship your order as soon as it's in-house.

Alongside Bridge of Sacrifice, we also have pre-orders for a few other Powerplant items available that have been very hard to find in the US thus far: namely their recent singles Crashing Cars b/w Never Smile and Heat. We also have CD and cassette versions of Powerplant's first album People in the Sun, which has been unavailable for some time. All these items are up for pre-order now and will ship at the same time as Bridge of Sacrifice. If your Powerplant collection is anything less than complete, now is a great time to rectify that!

If you run a shop or distro, we also have these titles available for wholesale. Get in touch if you want to talk about that.

Listen to the title track from Bridge of Sacrifice below.

We just reduced prices on several hundred used items on our webstore! The discounts start on page 36 of the used section of the website and continue on from there... click here to check it out. Lots of great records to choose from, and if you saw something a while back and the price wasn't right, maybe it is now? And as you get deeper in the catalog there are some VERY cheap items that have been discounted multiple times. Deals galore!

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!

We just launched a pre-order for another new release on Static Shock Records: the self-titled debut LP from Oslo, Norway's Draümar! I don't think Draümar's debut 7" from a few years got much distribution stateside, but now's as a great a time as any to learn about them. Raging hardcore punk with some classic Norwegian flavor is the order of the day, and they even cover Bannlyst and get Bannlyst's singer to do a guest spot? Sick! You can listen to a track on the Static Shock Bandcamp now. Give it a listen, read Josh Nickel's excellent description below, pre-order your copy from Sorry State and it'll be on its way to you as soon as it's in stock. Easy peasy.

"Static Shock out here still pushing the finest in international punk and hardcore. This time with a smoking debut from Oslo’s Draümar. Their influences are from the same city block with groundwork laid by groups like So Much Hate and Svart Framtid. Unfortunately, the songs are blasting away at the same monumental enemies albeit with different faces. The never-ending nuclear question, societal unease, genocide, and a steadfast approach to not turn away from the constant horror of today’s world make up the tapestry of this 12”.

The intro and outro track nod and update John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13 setting the stage for a flurry of cold, desperate Norwegian punk - instantly identifiable and as potent as ever. Indeed, they’ve scraped the blood, sweat and victory off the floors of Blitz and distilled it into a Molotov aimed directly at a world in constant crisis. These are chords and context against a rising fascist world where screaming is not a limp response but also tactic, celebration and affirmation. Aside from the fury contained in the original tracks you get a bonus treat in the dual vocal attack on the Bannlyst song ‘Herrene’ which features original Bannlyst vocalist Finn Erik Tangen - instantly identifiable and still just as pissed."
(Josh Nickel)

We mentioned this a few days ago, but Sorry State is going to start rolling out a lot more pre-orders for upcoming releases in the coming weeks/months. Our first batch is live in our new Pre-Orders section now! These work just like pre-orders have always worked... place your order now and we'll ship it as soon as we have it in stock. Placing a pre-order helps us know how much stock to order and makes sure your copy is reserved for your no matter what happens!

This week we have a lot of cool titles up for pre-order, including a new pressing of Sacrilege's Behind the Realms of Madness on High Roller Records (generally regarded as the best-quality contemporary reissue of this classic), an official live LP from the almighty VOID, a long-awaited reissue of Alice in Chains' self-titled album (one of our most-requested titles in the shop), the debut from The S.E.T. (Brady from Turnstile's new band), new LPs from Converge, Final Gasp, and Mayhem, a new one from Ty Segall's band Fuzz, a reissue of Darkest Hour's Undoing Ruin, and LOTS more. Here's a list of highlights, but you can view even more in the pre-orders section.

We'll be back next week with more highlights!

Void: Live 1982 12" (clear vinyl) (PRE-ORDER)

Sacrilege: Behind The Realms Of Madness 12" (PRE-ORDER)

S.E.T.: Self Evident Truth 12" (purple vinyl) (PRE-ORDER)

Propagandhi: How To Clean Everything Reissue (PRE-ORDER)

Propagandhi: Today's Empires, Tomorrow's Ashes Reissue (PRE-ORDER)

Quicksand: Manic Compression Open Heart Red Vinyl (PRE-ORDER)

FUZZ: Fuzz's Fourth Dream 12" (PRE-ORDER)

Alice In Chains: Alice In Chains (30th Anniversary Reissue) Colored Vinyl (PRE-ORDER)

Deicide: Insineratehymn 12" (hellfire smoke vinyl) (PRE-ORDER)

Final Gasp: New Day Symptoms 12" (Sea Blue with Splatter vinyl) (PRE-ORDER)

Converge: Love Is Not Enough Indie Exclusive Golden God Vinyl (PRE-ORDER)

Mayhem: Liturgy Of Death Indie Exclusive Black Ice Ghost Colored Vinyl & LP-Booklet (PRE-ORDER)

Hellacopters: Cream Of The Crap Collected Non-Album Works Vol 3 12" (PRE-ORDER)

Darkest Hour: Undoing Ruin (Blk) (Brwn) Colored Vinyl (Aniv) Indie Exclusive (PRE-ORDER)

Gits: Frenching The Bully - White Colored Vinyl Limited Edition (Wht) (PRE-ORDER)

Unsane: Occupational Hazard (2026 Remaster) Remastered (PRE-ORDER)

Midnight: Satanic Royalty 12" (violet vinyl) (PRE-ORDER)

Mighty Mighty Bosstones: Let's Face It 12" (PRE-ORDER)

Obituary: Slowly We Rot (Blue) (Bonus Tracks) Colored Vinyl (Red) (PRE-ORDER)

Morbid Saint: Spectrum Of Death 12" (PRE-ORDER)

New Pornographers: Former Site Of 12" (red vinyl) (PRE-ORDER)

Bratmobile: Real Janelle & The Peel Session 12" (PRE-ORDER)

Finally! Today we're launching a pre-order for official reissues of Danzig's first two solo albums! These are part of the RSD Essential series, so you can trust they'll be executed to a high standard, which may or may not be the case for that bootleg you've been rocking for way too long. These are out on May 29, and if you pre-order now your copy will be reserved and we'll get it in your hands as soon as humanly possible.

And if you're reading this closely, maybe you want to know about the soft launch of Sorry State's new pre-orders section? We've been doing more and more pre-orders lately, and we're gonna take the plunge and offer a lot more items on pre-order. We have a small selection of upcoming releases available to order now, with lots more to come.

Also, I hate to be ungrateful, but where is Danzig III: How the Gods Kill? Hopefully coming soon, and you know we'll have it for you as soon as we can.

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.