News

La Vida Es Un Mus's first release of 2026 is up for pre-order, and it's a new 12" from long-running Spanish post-punk group Belgrado! As usual, we have a few copies of the limited color vinyl version available at Sorry State while supplies last. Watch the video for lead single "Bezsenność" below and order your copy now to ship as soon as it's in stock.

"At long last a chance to wander behind the sky. In the chaos of the momentary and the infinity of the image, the room hums among the countless reverberations of voice and body in which, for the most part, we remain unseen. BELGRADO, a ring of keys chiming through an empty prison hallway liberating every iron door as it approaches in countless careful celebrations of its passage. El Encuentro, meaning “The Meeting” or “The Encounter” pulses in cool kindness and high energy reverie, probing the same moment from a thousand angles as if Alain Resnais photographed their own private hallucinations and burnt them into song. That moment, THE moment is so elegantly woven into lyrical silk on “El Encuentro” as an exploration of dreams and reality, deep personal reflection, and acceptance of the end. It is the search, and the crossroads of the ethereal science of the imaginary. It sounds like being led into the back room of a tiny club in an imaginary city lost in time - intimidating whirring machinery drawing you in as if to lure you into wrecking on the rocks in a spume of Last Year at Hacienda-bad, dizzy on Righeira punch, and burnt by the Balearic sun.

15 years after their debut, Belgrado continue their journey of musical development from the immediacy and directness of their guitar driven post punk sounds all those years ago into an ever evolving musical project which has spanned four LPs ranging from minimal wave and dub influences all the way to this effort which is so heavily influenced by early dance music, and prime beachfront bacchanal. It is as much the cold sounds of SIEKIERA as it is CABARET VOLTAIRE bleeding into NEW ORDER. Packaged beautifully, hand crafted in an early modernist and constructivist style of artwork depicting the band in workers garb hinting at both the labour and ongoing service of the artist to the audience. This is a relationship they explore, in which the band declares a “celebration of the phenomenon of music as a meeting between people, both in the moment of its creation and in the energy of a live performance.” (Jonah Falco)

Golpe just announced a tour of South Korea and Japan for February. This will be the last big Golpe tour before the band goes on a writing hiatus, so come out to the gigs if you’re in this part of the world!

Hey! Exited to share our upcoming adventure, probably the last big one for the rest of 2026, since need some focus on writing new stuff and will stop playing shows for a while to be able to do that.

S. KOREA + JAPAN IN FEBRUARY!

Hope to see you there, we are stoked to be there for the first time!

Love you all,

S. Korea

07 Seoul @babydollseoul

08 Seoul @seendosi + SLANT

Japan

10 Yokohama @elpuentenishiyokohama

11 Tokyo @earthdom2006

12 Nagoya @imaikehuckfinn

13 Osaka @nambabears + @klonnsjp

14 Kyoto @poppizzakyoto + KLONNS

15 Tokyo @clubheavysick + KLONNS

Welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! I told you it’d be a slow ramp-up, and we have a little more for you this week than we did last week. First, we have pre-orders launching for two pretty killer records: a new 7” from Institute and the debut release for the Australian band Station Model Violence. We also have a scorching Record of the Week from Colombian punks Unidad Ideológica on La Vida Es Un Mus and a bunch of other new arrivals, comprising both new and old hardcore punk. And we have some of the content you really come to the SSR newsletter for, including a couple of new featured release descriptions and the much-anticipated return of the Staff Picks section. So let’s dive in…

Click here to read the full newsletter!

Here’s a very exciting pre-order announcement for you: long-running Texan punks Institute are releasing a new 3-song 7” on Anti-Fade Records in conjunction with their upcoming Australian tour and it’s up for pre-order at Sorry State now. I’ve heard the record (I wrote the official description below), and I think it is KILLER… absolutely some of Institute’s best songs. The record is out on Feb 20 and we have two versions available for pre-order: a regular black vinyl version and a limited version on blue vinyl with red print on the jacket (both the regular and limited versions feature hand-screened jackets). We’ll also be distributing this title in the US, so get at us if you need wholesale copies for your shop or distro. Here’s the official description, you can listen to the first track, “The Shooter” on the Anti-Fade Records Bandcamp site now, and if you’re interested, you can place your order on the Sorry State site now.

In conjunction with Institute’s first-ever Australian tour, Anti Fade Records presents a new three-song EP by these long-running and much-loved Texas punks. “The Shooter” instantly secures its spot on the list of Institute’s very best songs, carrying forward the melodic anarcho-punk influences (see: Zounds and Crisis) the band has explored since their infancy, but transforming them by leveraging the members’ accumulated decades of experience making potent, punk-informed music. The song’s lyrics are as straightforward and confrontational as any first-wave anarcho classic, but they attack a topic of the utmost relevance to the United States in 2026: the fiction of the “good guy with a gun.” Musically, “The Shooter” is an exquisitely layered fabric of jagged rhythms and plaintive melody, propelled into the aesthetic stratosphere when a chiming acoustic guitar breaks into the mix. The EP’s other two songs explore the remote poles of Institute’s intensity levels, with “A Privilege” edging toward hardcore—its jittery rhythm built around a short but infectious loop of lead guitar—while “Why Are These Men Still Alive” stretches out, its lumbering rhythm recalling longer story-songs like the Velvet Underground’s “The Gift,” while the eastern-tinged fuzz guitar echoes the moment when Indian raga collided with psychedelic pop in the mid-1960s. Though this EP only offers three tracks, it’s as essential as anything Institute has released thus far; if you’re lucky enough to be down under for the gigs, I’m sure it’ll make a great souvenir, but it’s still an essential grip for punks worldwide. - Daniel Lupton

Insitute’s new self-titled 7” is out February 20th via Anti Fade Records, ahead of their Australian tour commencing March 18th. 

We also have another unexpected and very exciting pre-order announcement for you today: the debut LP from Sydney, Australia’s Station Model Violence on Static Shock Records. This is Station Model Violence’s first release, and while there are members of a few key Australian bands present (notably Buz Clatworthy from R.M.F.C.), I’d argue the most relevant “member of” is DX from Total Control. I’d all but given up hope of hearing a new Total Control album, but this album definitely scratches the itch, and feels like the logical follow-up to Typical System and Laughing at the System. You can listen to a track on the Static Shock Records Bandcamp site right now, and you can pre-order your copy from Sorry State now ahead of the February 27 release date. And here’s DX’s description of the record, which goes into a good amount of detail about the project’s origins:

There is a scene in the BBC Krautrock documentary that made a great impression on me. Iggy Pop sits spread eagle in some beachside location drilling holes in coconuts and ruminating on the sound of Neu. The clash of the visual spectacle and the subject matter infected my dreams. At one point he describes Neu as "pastoral psychedelicism".

I thought of that moment when Buz first played me the demo for the song which would become 'Heat', when first he asked me to play music with him. I heard it, smelled the fresh coconut juice and the sour sweat on Iggy's leathery hide. I knew that we would do it right.

I moved to Sydney at the end of 2022. It was toward the end of two years of Melbourne lockdown that started in the immediate wake of the Total Control tour of Japan at the end of 2019 and was the longest time in 20 years that I had not travelled overseas or played music.

After moving to Sydney I had an overwhelming need to start a new band and sing again. Total Control and Straightjacket Nation would be difficult to gather any momentum with my living interstate, and also I wanted to settle here and start something new and try and obliterate some of the stasis that entered my veins from the lockdown.

Low Life asked me to play a solo show with Iceage at the opera house, but I had no ambitions for solo performance and had no songs, so I formed a band called KX Aminal with Greta, Michael and Micky from Den, and Josh from Diat.

KX Aminal are an important part of the Station Model Violence story. When we were writing songs for KX Aminal, Josh and Greta and I were drunk on fine chablis and playing a guitar line that sounded very much like Crisis, and Josh turned to me and looked me in the eye and mumbled "it smells like Kwisis". Later Buz acknowledged this was something he would always want to hear when writing songs with a band, and on this point it was destined. We would write songs together to smell like Kwisis.

Anyway, KX Aminal went into stasis and I got the itch again. Buz had written a few demos that didn't work as R.M.F.C. songs and he asked me to have a listen to hear if I could sing something on it, and over the winter of 2024 I visited his home studio and we recorded some vocal ideas with his demos.

We released a demo for 'Learn To Hate' "recorded after eating mushrooms on fabulous winter evening" and formed a lineup for a one off show in late 2024 with Micky (Den), Yuta (The Lewers) and Georgia (G2g). This was the final Idiota Civilisaaaztatatanini show, so a nice loop back with Josh who is my spiritual aminal and guide.

After this show, Yuta and Georgia left, and Michael (Den), Alan (R.M.F.C.) and Kuceli (Gaud) joined. Seeing as Micky, Michael, Kuceli and I played in KX Aminal and we never got to record those songs, we decided to absorb some of them into Station Model Violence.

We combined some of those KX songs with the demos Buz wrote and wrote a couple of new songs together and played a couple of shows, and then recorded an LP with Mikey in Melbourne and Micky in Sydney at the start of 2025.

The album was mixed over the course of the year as we had created this incredibly dense beast and much credit is due to the patience and persistence of Mikey Young.

This is the first single, 'Heat'. Revisit that image of the coconuts and the drill and pastoral psychedelicism and the smell of KWISIS.

DX, Summer 2026