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It’s rare for a hardcore punk band to make four full-length albums, and rarer still for the fourth album to be the band’s masterpiece. Yet Paratiisi, the fourth album from Helsinki punks Kohti Tuhoa, stands as the undeniable coup de grâce of a catalog overflowing with classic hardcore punk. If you’re already a fan, it’ll comfort you to know Paratiisi leans heavily on the strengths Kohti Tuhoa has possessed since their earliest releases: a timeless sound that combines UK82 drive and hooks with dramatic metal flourishes; a captivating vocalist with the perfect balance of grit and clarity, who can both howl like a banshee and carry a tune; and a particularly Finnish way with a driving, medium-fast tempo. But for all the continuities with Kohti Tuhoa’s excellent previous records, Paratiisi almost feels like the work of a new band. The riffs and choruses that anchor the album are impossibly catchy; Paratiisi bulges with huge moments that practically force you to air guitar and sing along (even if you don’t speak a word of Finnish), the band’s peerless chops and the rich and clear recording driving these climaxes to dizzying highs. But while the hooks are memorable, there isn’t a moment on Paratiisi that feels dumbed-down or overly familiar. In fact, the album feels notably ambitious, pulling influences from across punk’s historical and aesthetic breadth and digesting them seamlessly into Kohti Tuhoa’s distinctive sound. The lyrics (don’t worry: English translations are included!) meet the same high bar as the music. They’re direct, assertive, and punk, but they’re also subtle and insightful, whether they’re tackling huge issues like microplastics or sharing a very personal account of a sexual assault and its aftermath. And then there’s Paratiisi’s most unexpected moment, “Eliitin Psykopatia,” a free punk freakout in the tradition of “Why (Reprise)” and “L.A. Blues.” If Kohti Tuhoa’s brief foray into free jazz tries your patience, though, don’t worry, because after three minutes of building tension, they reward you with what is bound to be the best riff of 2026, a clash of chords potent enough to blow holes through walls the world over. Paratiisi is the sound of one hardcore punk’s most exciting bands at the height of their powers.
- Daniel Lupton, Sorry State Records
Our take: I wrote La Vida Es Un Mus’s official blurb for this album, so consult that if you want the belabored, wordy version of why this record rules. I have a habit of lapsing into overly adjectival / adverbial music journo prose when I’m addressing an audience larger than Sorry State’s, but for the newsletter faithful, I’ll level with you: Paratiisi is my favorite album of 2026, and I don’t see anything knocking it off that pedestal in the last two months of the year. How do I choose my favorite album of the year? The number one criterion is how much I listen to it, and I just can’t get enough of Paratiisi. Sometimes after I write about a record, I’ve kind of wrung it dry for myself and I end up putting it away for a long while, but Paratiisi keeps calling me back. When I’m flipping through my recent arrivals to decide what to listen to, it beckons me louder than any other record, and when it pops up on shuffle I am elated to hear it again. Like the Steroid LP from last year, throwing on Paratiisi is a guaranteed rush of joy and excitement. Alongside just loving to listen to a record, another factor that goes into naming something my favorite record of the year is whether the record feels fresh and original. Does it have a sense of importance or gravitas about it? Does it scratch an itch that nothing else will? For me, Paratiisi does all that. Certainly within the context of Kohti Tuhoa’s discography it’s a considerable leap, but the album is so ambitious and so well-executed that I think it sets a new bar for what a contemporary hardcore record can be. People whose tastes in hardcore lean toward the ambitious and/or maximalist (think Long Knife, mid-period Poison Idea, earlier Paintbox, and their brethren) will get the most out of Paratiisi, but it’s not so out there and genre-bending as to alienate hardcore traditionalists (well, maybe traditionalists will hate the free jazz interlude “Eliitin Psykopatia,” but fuck ‘em). If all this sounds like something that might tickle your fancy, give Paratiisi a try. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to stop listening it and you’ll love it more each time you put it on.