Featured Releases

Bikini Mutants: Let’s Mutate 12” (Sealed Records) Sealed Records once again dips into the 80s UK anarcho scene’s sub-underground and comes up with this obscurity from Yeovil, Somerset’s Bikini Mutants. Having only released a cassette during their original run, Bikini Mutants’ music was previously known only to the deepest 80s anarcho heads, though they have a pretty big claim to fame in that their bass player, Deb Googe, went on to play in My Bloody Valentine. While Bikini Mutants mostly gigged around the anarcho-punk scene (they were good friends with the Mob), as Sealed’s description notes, their music owes less to heavy punk and more to the post-punk, UKDIY, and indie pop worlds, with a delicate, ethereal sound, scrappy execution, and a healthy reggae influence. It’s a mix of influences tailor-made to my taste, but beyond just having a cool style, Bikini Mutants also has a lot of personality as a band. The bassist leans on repetitive, reggae-tinged grooves of the type I could listen to literally all day. The guitarist plays with a very light touch, leaving a lot of space and silence in their lines, and when they do come in, the playing is often abstract and textural in a way that, I imagine, owes a lot to Keith Levene of Public Image, Ltd. The drummer sounds like the most musically accomplished member of the band, playing grooves that are repetitive but dense with syncopated accents… very cool stuff. And the vocals are unique too: breathy, ethereal, and strangely introverted. While the vocals are quite melodic, the singer often holds notes for a long time in a way that makes the vocal lines fade into the rest of the song rather than demanding your focus. Tonally, songs range from the delicate and ethereal (fans of Marine Girls or Young Marble Giants will love this side of the band) to more abstract and heavier moments that remind me of a less produced, more feminine version of PiL’s Metal Box. While the basement-level production quality means Bikini Mutants weren’t likely to trouble the charts, their music remains a testament to what an explosion of creativity that UK anarcho-punk scene was, nurturing brilliantly idiosyncratic groups like Bikini Mutants whose music feels miles away from punk stereotypes. As usual, Sealed’s packaging and presentation here are top-notch, with a beautiful sleeve design and a thick booklet that seems to compile every scrap of paper ephemera featuring the band. Let’s Mutate is a deep cut, but well worth your time, particularly if you have a well-developed taste for the sounds of the 80s UK underground.

Powerplant: Bridge of Sacrifice 12" (Arcane Dynamics) Powerplant finally brings us the follow-up to their much-loved 2019 LP People in the Sun, and they swing for the fences, delivering one of the most exciting, original, and challenging punk records I’ve heard in some time. While Powerplant didn’t disappear in the years since People in the Sun, the EPs they released didn’t exactly mark a clear trajectory to the second album, so I didn’t know what to expect from Bridge of Sacrifice. It turns out it’s an album full of surprises, smashing genres and moods together in a way that feels bold and inspiring. The first thing you’ll notice is that black metal is a big part of the mix. Maybe that’s always been in the background of Powerplant’s sound, but it’s a big part of Bridge of Sacrifice, which features lots of blasting drums and vocals that are both growled and demonically hissed. Sometimes these elements appear together in straightforward black metal part, but more often black metal’s corpse is raided for parts, with these tropes re-contextualized within Powerplant’s swirling, psychedelic blend. One thing I really love about Bridge of Sacrifice is that you never know what’s coming at you next. There’s the black metal stuff, the plaintive, emotional punk we know from People in the Sun, but also quirky, Wall of Voodoo-esque new wave, huge vocal hooks that wouldn’t be out of place on a New Order record, touches of alternative rock, blissed-out space rock, and a big helping of gothic metal that’s like some strange, distant cousin of Type O Negative or Danzig (listen to the a-side closer “Transactions” and tell me it’s not chock full of Danzig III!). But while Bridge of Sacrifice is thrillingly diverse, it never seems scattered or schizophrenic to me. I think that’s partly because Powerplant has such a distinctive voice that, no matter what they do, they’re always gonna sound like Powerplant. But I think there’s also some low-key musical genius / mad scientist shit going on that allows them to weave all these crazy parts into songs that feel epic and sprawling, yet unified. Not that it’s an easy listen. The combination of abrasive and tuneful elements can jar, and if you’re just not on board with one of the many genres Powerplant flirts with, there will be moments on the record you simply don’t like. But for the wide-eared listener with a craving for novelty and a love of brilliant pop hooks, Bridge of Sacrifice delivers thrills you won’t find anywhere else.

Schimmel Über Berlin: Eisenmund 12” (Static Age Musik) While continuing to release a steady drip of punk and hardcore, over the past few years Berlin’s Static Age Musik has established a productive sideline releasing some of the most interesting (and German-sounding!) post-punk music around from artists like Cosey Mueller, Aus, and Die Letzten Ecken, all of whom have been big favorites around Sorry State HQ. Now they’ve added to that list with this excellent debut from Schimmel Über Berlin. Working with a similar set of post-punk influences as many other bands—Killing Joke, Bauhaus, Siouxsie & the Banshees, the Cure—Schimmel Über Berlin distinguish themselves from this crowded field with genuinely first-rate songwriting, playing, and production. The first thing that leapt out at me was the brilliant guitar-playing, which walks the line perfectly between being catchy and inventive. I hear a lot of PiL’s Keith Levene in the playing, with the guitarist exploring every aspect of the instrument’s expressiveness, melodically, rhythmically, and texturally. My favorite is when the guitarist takes a very odd, almost Devo-esque sequence of notes and, through sheer repetition, turns them into a hook, which works beautifully on “Der Gute Sohn.” If that’s a little too out there for you, though, they’re just as good at rock bombast, which you hear on another standout track, “Schreck,” which proves that even when Schimmel Über Berlin is at their least adventurous, they’re still exciting. The rhythm section is also very strong, capably weaving between upbeat, driving songs like “Schattenriss” (which has a similar riff and groove to Killing Joke’s “The Wait”) and moodier, tom-drenched pieces like “Eisenmund” and “Weise Fee,” which are in that early Banshees / Faith / Seventeen Seconds kind of space, like the soundtrack to a very slow-moving ritual sacrifice. I also love that while the rhythm section is super heavy, the mix leaves a lot of space in the middle register, giving the recording a cavernous, haunted vibe which works beautifully with these songs. As for the vocals, you’ll love them if—like me—you’re a big fan of Cosey Mueller or Die Letzten Ecken, as they lean on a similar style of speak-singing that feels cold, distant, and very German, though Schimmel Über Berlin’s singer can also drift into simple and serene melodies… even better is when the two approaches are overdubbed on top of one another, as on “Eisenmund.” I have to admit this lane of post-punk-inspired music is so crowded that I’m leery of new bands in this style, but Eisenmund is so well-rounded, so expertly conceived, and so rich with depth that it’ll grab you from the first listen and keep you spinning.

Life Expectancy: Sold cassette (Iron Lung Records) Liverpool’s Life Expectancy returns with their second cassette on Iron Lung Records, and it is a howling morass of blackened d-beat bleakness unlike anything I’ve ever heard. While there’s a fairly straight up, Doom / Discharge-style hardcore band at the core of Sold, what separates Life Expectancy’s music is their ability to evoke the uncanny through their production choices, which sculpt the noisy detritus of your typical raw-ass d-beat recording into a Goya-esque blurred nightmare vision. While you can usually pick out a riff and a (d-) beat somewhere in the onslaught, those elements are way, way in the backseat… it’s like you’re looking through a pane of dirty, frosted glass, down a long, dark hallway, and way down at the end of it there’s a blackened d-beat band practicing by candlelight. But the draw isn’t just, “oh, this is raw and fucked-up sounding;” the noise textures are a thing of beauty in themselves. I find myself straining my ears to figure out what I’m hearing. Is that a human voice? A squeal of feedback? Part of the riff? A demon sucking the world into a hellish oblivion? I can’t figure any of it out, but I love the process of trying as this whirlwind of noise swirls around me. I understand, though, that there’s a lot here not to like. Many of you will say, “you can’t even hear the drums! (or the guitars, vocals, etc.)” and dismiss it outright. Others will be looking for a Physique / D-Clone style attack with harsh tones but precision dynamics. But for those of us who appreciate—even crave—the drone, who will submit and let these waves of noise carry us off into a black, violent sea… nothing is going to scratch that itch like this.

Reek Minds: Eternal Reek 7” (Black Water Records) We named Reek Minds’ last record—their Malignant Existence LP on Iron Lung—Record of the Week, and this new EP (which finds them moving to their hometown label Black Water) is even better! If you’re already a Reek Minds fan, this is a no-brainer since everything you loved about the band is still here: the performance is super energetic, the production is heavy and crisp, the riffs and guitar leads are blazing, and the vocalist still oozes charisma, with an articulated growl that sounds like a death metal-informed Jerry A. Where I think Eternal Reek bests Reek Minds’ previous records is in the increased variety of tempos and rhythms. They’re still pretty much always ripping fast, but they really shake things up with these crazy whiplash changes in rhythm. They’ll be charging along at a groovy, Poison Idea-esque tempo, then out of nowhere they’ll drop into their trademark super fast scissor beat / blast, or vice versa, and every time they execute one of these changes I swear I feel weightless for a split-second. Those scissor beat parts are so wild… the drummer lays into the snare so hard that it almost sounds like the beat is turned around backwards, which makes it even more thrilling when they snap back into the pocket with a groovier punk beat. With six songs in nine minutes, the thrill ride doesn’t let up for a single second.

Pura Manía: La Banda Es La Ley 12" (Roachleg Records) If you’ve been paying attention to the Sorry State newsletter for a while, you know we are fanatics about Pura Manía. I think everything the band has released so far has gotten Record of the Week, and their latest album, La Banda Es La Ley (“The gang is the law”) continues the streak. What do I love so much about Pura Manía? For starters, I love the way they balance their musical ambition with being dirty, grimy, and fucking punk; they’ve got both feet planted in the gutter, but they’re looking at the stars! As an aging punk whose tastes have grown (arguably) more sophisticated over the years, yet remains addicted to punk’s rawness and energy, it’s like Pura Manía gets me. Their music is dense, each song a maze of criss-crossing melodies and rhythms, but thoughtfully—perhaps even obsessively—arranged, moving from part to part in ways that feel natural but not obvious. These are songs that reward close, attentive listening, yet they don’t demand that kind of listening—they’re not precious or pretentious, and they have the energy and directness to tickle the pleasure centers of my punk brain from the very first listen. The individual components of each song—the melodic lead guitar lines, the driving but hooky bass lines, the vocals that move from searing and punk to kinda silly and cartoonish (those rolled R’s!), the infrequent but thrilling eruptions of synth—are so exciting on their own (and frequently have me saying, “whoa! that part was sick!” when I’m listening), but they’re supercharged when they’re stitched together into these miniature punk symphonies. Ditto for the album as a whole, which climaxes with the closing track, “Amor de Coladera (Veneno Y Glam).” This song sounds like nothing Pura Manía has attempted thus far, with a kind of woozy, sun-bleached rhythm and a lead guitar line huge enough to power a hit Oasis single. It might have been too much, but vocalist Cabeza balances it out with his most outrageous and punk performance on the record (really taking the rolled R’s to the next level LOL). The song also has a climactic bridge that almost brings a tear to my eye. You might call it a guitar solo because the guitarist takes center stage and it’s in the spot where a guitar solo usually sits, but it’s not just a bunch of wanky, show-y bullshit… it builds upon and elaborates the song’s central melody in a thrillingly sophisticated way. Pura Manía’s guitarist has the chops to be a classical composer, yet instead of wearing a tuxedo, he’s pouring all that thought and feeling into these grimy-ass punk songs. I fucking love it. And just like with the band’s last record on Roachleg, the artwork is as exciting, innovative, and completely fucking punk as the music, with a stunning jacket hand-screened on chipboard and a risographed lyric insert. Another brilliant and essential record from this band that never repeats themselves and always finds new ways to raise the bar.

Institute: S/T 7” (Anti-Fade Records) I wrote the official label blurb for this release, and while I hate writing about the same record twice, I wanted to send up the bat signal and make sure the Sorry State faithful know the new Institute is straight fire and should not be missed. If you missed their recent 12” Ragdoll Dance on Roachleg Records, you might not know that Institute sounds wholly revitalized at the moment. Not that they ever sounded less than vital, but nowadays they sound almost like a new band—hungry, like they’ve got something to prove. And if the three tracks that appear on this 7”—each of which has its own vibe, groove, instrumental palette, and structure (see my official blurb for more details on that)—are any sign, the band is still chock full of fresh and exciting ideas. And while the music here is brilliant, the lyrics are just as noteworthy. I’ve seen a lot of hand-wringing lately about whether and how punk will meet the current political moment, and I can think of few bands writing about the current political climate as compellingly as Institute. Rather than cosplay songs about long-dead politicians or retreads of the same topics Discharge made it safe to write about four decades ago, on these three tracks, Institute writes about things happening right now, and they write about them in a way that’s as direct, confrontational, and powerful as the 80s political punk bands that inspire them. For me, this 7” has it all. I’m not sure how long it’ll stick around since it’s billed as an Australian tour EP, but if you’re one of us who believe contemporary punk can rise to the level of the genre’s classics, you’re gonna want this record.

London Clay: Private View 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus) La Vida Es Un Mus released this full-length debut from London Clay late in 2025, but it seemed to fly under many people’s radars. Which makes sense, I suppose, because Private View is a wallflower of a record. While most records burst into the room screaming “LOOK HOW COOL I AM! LIKE ME!,” Private View sulks in the corner intriguingly, reading a book that’s too smart for you, daring you to engage. I contend that Private View is a beautiful, fascinating record, but it reveals itself slowly. The notes I made while listening to Private View are full of words like “smudged,” “smeared,” and “blurred,” and when you compare London Clay with the crispness of groups like Modem or Fatamorgana (ostensibly similar bands, in that they feature feminine vocals and primarily electronic instruments), the difference is striking. With those artists, the beats are insistent and the melodies are crystalline, so clear it’s like they beamed them straight into your brain. But there’s something tantalizing about the way London Clay buries their melodies in distortion and delay and the way the singer murmurs into the microphone like she’s afraid of being overheard. The object of my desire—that glorious pop nugget that lies just below the surface of these songs—drifts in and out of focus, but lives mostly in a space that’s just out of reach. On “Faraday” it’s right there, while “Clifton Rise” teases you for nearly five minutes before it delivers its blissed-out, shoegaze-y crescendo. And then there’s “The Obelisk,” a patience-testing eight-minute track (song? piece of musique concrète?) whose rhythm track loops a screeching 70s/80s-era dot matrix printer… the song makes me feel like I’m trapped in an office that doubles as an outer circle of hell. The handful of similar records I can think of—the Fall’s Dragnet, SPK’s early singles, the new Puppet Wipes album from last year—also have their difficult moments, and those moments are important. By pushing you away with “The Obelisk,” “Clifton Rise” shines that much brighter. The packaging extends this aesthetic beautifully, particularly the half-size zine that accompanies the vinyl. Page after page of mostly text-less collages grounded in the Crass / Poison Girls aesthetic (and similarly beautiful), but with a Situationist-like inscrutability. So, if you’re the kind of uncomplicated person who can get out of your own head and just enjoy a dumb pop tune, then maybe Private Viewisn’t for you. But if you’re a worrier, if you like arty films, and if your most valued experiences with art tend to start with disorientation, then maybe it’s worth making space in your life for London Clay.

System Maintains: 3 Song Demo cassette (Sex Field Abomination) One of the most exciting new labels in recent memory—Richmond’s Sex Fiend Abomination—brings us a short but brilliant 3-song demo by this punky metal band from Charlotte, North Carolina. This tape dropped digitally a couple of months ago, and from the moment I hit play I was enthralled. I mean, the band says it all when they describe themselves as “your sketchy uncle’s Metallica and Bathory tapes played through a wrecked boombox,” but that pithy description doesn’t get at how unique that combination is and how great System Maintains is at throwing the right ingredients into the cauldron to create this poisonous brew. Regarding the “broken boombox” part, the production here is a perfectly vintage-sounding, fuzzy scrawl akin to what contemporary punk bands who record on 4-track are producing… imagine the blown-out roar of Cicada or Shaved Ape, but metal. When the whole band plays at full intensity, it bleeds together into a wall of fuzz, but there’s enough room in the production for the key riffs and vocal lines to stand out, particularly since the songs are often arranged so those parts get highlighted as instrumental breaks. As for the songs and riffs themselves, they are fucking killer. I had an epiphany at the gym after listening to this tape like 5 times in a row and pondering how they can write such great riffs… then it hit me: the killer riff that starts “Final War,” the first song on the tape, is just a slightly reworked version of the intro to Metallica’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” And then the riff they play immediately after that—which also totally shreds—I’m pretty sure I recognize from a D.R.I. song. Some people might worry about this, but not me. As I like to say, there are only 12 notes, and I don’t need every band to reinvent the wheel. Even if there is source material for some of these riffs, the way System Maintains absorbs them into their neck-deep vibe—and creating that vibe is, I think, the real standout strength of this demo—completely transforms them. This is just thrilling, and by the time its 5-minute runtime is up, I’m so stoked that the only thing I can think to do is play it again… and again, and again…

Nightfeeder / Verdict: Död Åt Tyranner 12" (Phobia Records) When I saw this split announced, I was immediately like, “oh fuck… this is going to be really good.” The recipe here is promising: two veteran bands operating at the height of their powers, playing music that’s very much in the same vein, but each band having their respective idiosyncrasies that give them a signature style. The pairing is inspired, but do the tracks live up to expectations? Yes, my friend, they do. In fact, I can’t get over how fucking great this split is. I should probably buy two copies because I can see right now I’m going to wear a hole in this thing, and if it doesn’t land near the top of my “Best of 2026” list, it will have been a very good year for hardcore punk indeed. First up, the Nightfeeder side. I have loved every single Nightfeeder release thus far, but I’m tempted to say the eight tracks they contribute to this split are the best thing they’ve done yet. It’s not as if they shake up the formula. As ever, their presentation is super unpretentious, the songs light on bells and whistles and with the focus firmly on the rock-solid, meat-and-potatoes riffing. Those riffs are so perfectly constructed that it feels like they have existed for a million years, and were they arranged in the simplest possible fashion—four of the verse riff, four of the chorus riff, repeat and stop—the songs would already be stellar. (Especially given the absolutely perfect d-beat drumming here, which varies the tempo to keep things interesting yet never stops dripping with groove.) Nightfeeder is way, way too good to half-ass things, though. They know the meat and potatoes are the stars of the show, but the flavor can be maximized with a subtle mix of spices. I have a feeling I’ll be noticing the little touches in these songs for many months and years to come, but off the top of my head there’s: the way the vocals sometimes devolve into inchoate scream on tracks like “Climbing the Walls;” the noisy, Discharge-style chorus on “Cursed Ruins;” the “you-think-you’re-gonna-slam-but-you’re-not” mosh riff teases in “Dragged Beneath” and “Born to Suffer;” the huge vocal hook in the chorus to “Born to Suffer;” the thrashy riffing in “Life’s Fool Pit” (a complex song by Nightfeeder standards with a lot more parts than usual, but they fit together perfectly); the outro of “Launch Codes” when the drums start playing backward. Man, this shit is just PERFECT. Verdict has a lot to live up to on their side of the split, but they meet the moment and deliver what might be their best material too. While Nightfeeder’s tracks lean more restrained and groovy, Verdict emphasizes speed, their tracks generally faster than Nightfeeder’s, with rhythms that are unimpeachably tight, yet slightly ahead of the beat, thrillingly riding that line between chaos and control. The more crowded mix places the focus on the manic speed, but when you listen closely, you realize Verdict are also masters of the riff… in fact, the riffs in songs like “War on the Streets” and “Never Ending Struggle” are so prototypical that you could imagine them as Nightfeeder songs just as easily as Verdict songs. One area where Verdict is unmatched, though, is their talent for crafting breakdowns and mid-paced parts. It’s so hard to work a breakdown into a d-beat song without sounding cheesy, but “I’m Not Built to Last” and “End All This Crap” are textbook examples of how to do it right. And the fully mid-paced track “Narcissistic Piece of Shit?” GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. I’m dead. I really can’t get over how great this split is. Every time I finish a side, I think, “this side rules!” Then I play the other side and think, “this side rules!” Then I go back to the first side and think, “this side rules!” It’s an infinite loop I wouldn’t mind getting lost in forever.

Direct Order ‘82: Demo cassette (Crosshair Records) New Jersey’s Direct Order ’82 lay it all out there for you with their band name on this demo cassette, and those of you looking for a circa-1982 USHC rush won’t be disappointed. 12 songs in 12 minutes, though as with the shining monument of ultra-clipped, minimalist hardcore punk—the Circle Jerks’ Group Sex—there’s a lot more to these sub-minute blasts that initially meets the ear. D.O. ’82 has a couple of ringers in the band—you might know guitarist P.J. from his years in Night Birds, while the singer Tim fronted 90s New Jersey straight edge band Ensign (apologies to the other members whose resumes I don’t know as well)—and they know that a simple verse and chorus is typically not all you need for a compelling song. However, they also know that hardcore punk is all about keeping things to the point, and they toe that line brilliantly here. The riffing is on the hookier end of USHC—I find myself thinking of bands like Social Circkle or even Kid Dynamite—but the songs are so compressed and jagged and the parts come at you so quickly and relentlessly that it’s almost overwhelming… by the time you’re a couple of tracks in, your heart is definitely racing. But, like I said, despite the brevity, the songs are fully fleshed-out… there are a lot of intros that are literally like 1.5 seconds long, and bridges, outros, and other accoutrements that are nearly as brief. (Another highlight is “Leave Me Alone,” which features guitar solos before both verses, and hence reminds me of Bad Religion’s “I Want to Conquer the World,” yet still clocks in at only 59 seconds.) For fans of We Got Power: Party or Go Home, Short Music for Short People, and other hymns for the hyperactive.