Featured Releases: April 30, 2024

Welly Artcore: Nefarious Artists book (Earth Island Book) In this reference-style book, Welly from Artcore fanzine examines “the evolution and art of the punk rock, post-punk, new wave, hardcore punk and alternative rock compilation record.” Rather than a narrative history of the compilation, Nefarious Artists examines each compilation one by one, devoting half a page of description and analysis to each, letting the larger story of the compilation record—and the genres they cover—emerge through that lens. Theoretically, much of the information in this book is available on Discogs, but the consistency and thoroughness of Welly’s approach reveals the limitations of crowd-sourcing information, which applies attention very unevenly across large data sets like this. Cover art is a great example. Images of cover artwork are all over the place on Discogs; while major records probably have pretty good ones, once you get into the weeds you’ll find plenty of blurry, cropped, low-res, or otherwise substandard images on Discogs. For Nefarious Artists, however, Welly has meticulously scanned each compilation’s cover art himself, and while the images in the book are small, they’re of uniformly high quality. The same with the half-page descriptions of each compilation. Welly always provides a list of bands on the compilation and a brief description of what the record and bands sound like, as well as a short analysis of its artwork and packaging. Nefarious Artists will be a valuable reference tool for punk nerds, but there are freaks like me who will read it from beginning to end like it’s a novel (I did the same with the Flex discography books). If you do this, you will learn a TON, no matter how much of an expert you are. I’ve learned about dozens of compilations I’d never heard of, plus a mountain of other factoids. For instance, I learned about a band featuring a young Frankie Stubbs from Leatherface that released a single track on a regional compilation in 1981 (you’ll have to get the book to find the name of the band and the record). After searching the internet in an attempt to learn more, this information appears to exist only in Welly’s book and in the brains of old punks like him, so cheers to him for getting so much of this down. If you’re as big a nerd as I am, you’ll love going through Nefarious Artists systematically like this, listening to things on YouTube where possible and watching your want list swell. For me, there’s no higher praise for a book about punk rock than that.

Ultimate Disaster: Demo 2024 cassette (Acute Noise Manufacture) Debut 5-song demo from this new raw punk band from Richmond. This came out a few months ago, but our first batch of copies sold out instantly. Thankfully, Acute Noise Manufacture pressed more for the band’s recent tour with Deletär, which not only gives you a second chance to pick it up but also gives me an opportunity to tell you how much I like it. Disclose seems like an obvious reference point for Ultimate Disaster’s sound because they play in the Discharge style and the singer’s vocal inflections have a hint of Kawakami, but I really think they have their own thing going on. Unlike a lot of recordings by bands who draw inspiration from Disclose, the production here isn’t super fried. Instead, it’s rich and clear, unafraid to show the band’s powerful playing in the clear light of day. And god damn, are they powerful players… the drumming is heavy and driving, the bass playing is locked into the groove rather than a chaotic mess, and the riffs are broad and classic-sounding, the elements melding together into a unified roar. While their songs are dynamic and full of exciting crescendos, I love that Ultimate Disaster lets you get a good head-bang going, riding riffs and grooves long enough for you to sink into them. Critics will say there’s nothing new here, but I like that Ultimate Disaster doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, offering us a self-assured sound from a band who clearly knows who they are.

Cicada: S/T 7” flexi (Total Peace Records) Here’s another repress of a Richmond band’s demo that sold out instantly the first time around, thankfully upgraded to a red vinyl flexi courtesy of Total Peace Records. While there are fewer than 4 minutes of music on this disc, Cicada packs a lot in a small space. Starting with the buzz of the band’s namesake insect, feedback swells and the full band enters with a mid-paced stomp, the tempo building until a dramatic pause, the guitar player quickly signaling the riff before the full band throws you in the meat grinder. Cicada’s brand of hardcore is sinister and moody, the vocals in the demonic United Mutation school while the riffs dance around dark, complex chords that give Cicada a richly textured sound. The rhythms, often frantic, are similarly ornate, weaving a couple nods to Poison Idea into their darting lunges. Then you’re out before you know it, the band leaving us with a brief outro that sounds like a 4-track version of Goblin. There’s so much here that I’d love to see Cicada expand on, but there’s something magical about everything that’s captured in this brief tornado of sound.

Slender: Learn to Die 12” (Digital Regress Records) After two records on La Vida Es Un Mus, this New York project moves to Digital Regress Records for their second album. It seems like an appropriate move given the defiantly eclectic and experimental direction they’re moving in, which seems to have as much to say to the worlds of chamber music and fine art as DIY punk shows and limited edition 7”s. I could spend a couple thousand words touching on all the different styles and sounds Slender tackles over the course of Learn to Die and still come nowhere near doing it justice. Suffice to say there’s a lot of music here, and you never know what the next moment—much less the next song—will hold, with drastic changes in genre, tone, production methods, and just about everything else keeping Learn to Die in constant flux. Yet it doesn’t sound scattered. The label’s lengthy but evocative description puts it really well when they note it has a “polyvocal quality,” like it was created by a village full of artists rather than just a small group. Fans of strange and eclectic albums like Comus’s First Utterance, Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium, or Royal Trux’s Twin Infinitives will get the most out of this dense and demanding but exciting musical journey.

Lysol: Down the Street 7” (Feel It Records) New 4-song EP from this long-running hardcore punk band from Seattle. If you’ve checked out Lysol’s previous releases, you know broadly what to expect… hardcore with a seedy rock and roll edge that leans into the Iggy-isms that informed the Germs and early Black Flag. It’s a sound that’s strongly associated with the Pacific Northwest, with the Lewd, Poison Idea, and Mudhoney all cooking with a similar recipe. After the straightforward punker “Sonic Thrill,” Lysol lays down a slinky, vaguely Stones-y riff in “Grease Paint.” The b-side shows the band pulling at the edges of their sound, with the slide guitar (I think?) and loose guitar work in “15mg” drawing from 60s garage, only for “Padded Cell” to close record with a fast and tightly arranged hardcore tune that could slot right into the middle of Group Sex. If your cup of tea is actually a warm PBR, there’s a good chance you’re gonna like this.

Ikhras: Jahanam Btistana cassette (Quality Control HQ) Quality Control HQ brings us the debut cassette from this new UK band whose lyrics move seamlessly between Arabic and English. I think there’s a strong interest in the punk scene right now in hearing voices from Arabic-speaking and Muslim communities, and Ikhras melds that perspective to some walloping music. Ikhras is on the tougher side of the hardcore we cover at Sorry State, with a sound that’s inventive and eclectic, the powerful drummer seamlessly weaving together Cro-Mags gallop, Victim in Pain-inspired thrash, groovy I Against I-influenced parts, a touch of d-beat, and the all-important huge mosh parts. The lyrics shift between Arabic and English—not just from song to song, but sometimes line to line—and they’re super memorable, with “Enlighten Me” calling out people who wear liberal / leftist values like a cloak that hides their self-centeredness. The last track, “El Nahr,” is a climactic end to the tape, culminating in this part where the singer shouts “from the river to the sea for you I bleed” before the band drops into a huge mosh part. It’s easy to imagine a packed room full of sweaty hardcore kids all screaming that line in unison. While Ikhras’ music is a little outside Sorry State’s wheelhouse, their perspective and message make them interesting to more than just people who follow their particular style of music. I’m stoked that not only is Ikhras sharing their world with the rest of the punk scene, but that punk rock is alive and vital enough that it’s bringing new people under its tent, with those people inspired to contribute to punk’s social, aesthetic, and musical evolution.