Featured Releases: August 12, 2024

Excess Blood: self-titled cassette (Impotent Fetus) Excess Blood is a new death rock band featuring members of Electric Chair, and their debut cassette comes to us courtesy Impotent Fetus, a sub-label of Stucco, who originally introduced Electric Chair to the world with their Public Apology EP (which we need in print on vinyl, by the way!) back in 2018. I think death rock is a tough style to do well, but I loved this tape from the minute I heard it. Part of that is that it’s definitely hardcore adjacent, more like the gloomy hardcore of TSOL, False Confession, first LP Christian Death, and other hardcore bands who you might catch sporting all back and maybe even some eyeliner. As with Electric Chair, the music is all excitement and the playing is top-notch, and these songs’ breathable tempos allow the hooks to shine through even more. There’s also a touch of camp, which I think is an often overlooked ingredient in this stew... there are some straight up Dracula vocals, and I’m totally here for it. I’m curious to see where this project goes, but even if this tape is just a one-off, you really need to hear it.

Assistert Sjølmord: S/T 7" (Static Shock Records) Seven-song debut EP from this Norwegian hardcore punk band featuring members of Draümar and Indre Krig (among many others, I’m sure). Assistert Sjølmord’s style is the kind of 80s hardcore throwback we love at Sorry State, and while there’s some of the combination of hooks and speed that makes 80s Norwegian hardcore so special, I have to think there’s a strong 2000s Danish / Swedish influence at work here too. Maybe it’s that scratchy guitar sound, but these songs make me think of Regulations, Amde Petersen’s Armé, UX Vileheads, and the like, taking the big hooks of early west coast punk and melding them to DC-style rippage. “Toxicity,” on the other hand, is all UK-82 with its pounding 1-2 beat and cheeky police siren guitar intro. Fans of everything from Government Warning to Chain Whip should definitely check this out.

Bad Breeding: Contempt 12" (Iron Lung Records) One thing I really love about collecting old anarcho-punk records (and some well-done reissues) is how intensely local to particular times and places they can be. Sometimes reading those dense, text-heavy inserts and poster sleeves can feel like flipping through yesterday’s newspapers, and while that might seem like a bad thing on the surface, I love it. By contrast, in today’s increasingly globalized punk scene, even the most political bands tend to focus on concerns that are more abstract and universal, reflecting the more homogenous, globalized world most of us inhabit. Bad Breeding has always been an exception to this rule. While their anarchist, anti-capitalist philosophy might be abstract, they’ve always pushed their music and the materials that accompany their records to find the point where the rubber meets the road and these ideals get put into practice. For instance, there’s an essay in Contempt’s insert about badger culling in the UK. It just so happens that I have a habit of tuning in to BBC4 as I’m going to sleep, which often falls at precisely the time the program Farming Today airs. So I am (improbably) familiar with badger culling, which many farmers support in order to curb the spread of bovine tuberculosis. I’ve listened to a few stories about the topic, but none of them even hinted at animal rights activists’ efforts to disrupt these culls. The essay in Contempt is from the perspective of one of these activists, writing vividly and concretely about the work they do, often in dangerous circumstances. While badger culling might seem like a niche interest for a North Carolinian punk, I love that Bad Breeding has taken me out of my world and transported me somewhere completely different, giving me the opportunity to reflect on those differences. While different camps within Bad Breeding’s fanbase might get more or less out of the political element of their output, their music continues to grow and evolve. In some ways, Bad Breeding is the quintessential Iron Lung Records band, a near-personification of the label’s aesthetic of thoughtful, forward-thinking (but still maximally intense) hardcore punk. Another thing I’ve always loved about Bad Breeding (this is their fifth 12" record by the way, and I have loved them all) is that they aren’t constrained by the retro sensibilities that limit so many bands inspired by the politics and the aesthetics of 80s UK anarcho-punk. While there are a lot of sounds on Contempt that fit that mold, there are a lot more that don’t, including the scorching metal guitar solos (a new wrinkle on Contempt), the harsh industrial / power electronics production choices (Ben Greenberg from Uniform recorded and mixed Contempt, and there’s a lot of “studio-as-instrument” stuff going on), surprising flashes of melody, and plenty more. I’ve always thought many anarcho-punk bands took musical inspiration from Killing Joke’s early records, and Contempt makes it sound like Bad Breeding took the whole journey with Killing Joke, with the more bombastic moments recalling that band’s self-titled record from 2003 with Dave Grohl on drums. As with every Bad Breeding record, there’s so much here, from the music to the politics to the production to the lyrics to the supplementary materials, and it’s all thoughtful, exciting, and bitingly relevant in 2024. It can be fun to flip through yesterday’s newspapers, but it’s even more gratifying to get real insight into what’s happening in the here and now.

Thought Control: Sick and Tired of the Talking Heads 7" (Crew Cuts Records) The UK label Crew Cuts Records brings us the 3rd EP from this New Jersey band, and these eight new tracks continue along the same pummeling path as their earlier records. This is basically hardcore punk with a slight street punk influence, along the lines of S.O.A., Negative Approach, Negative FX, and all the bands they inspired. Thought Control particularly reminds me of the bands from the No Way Years who leaned into those influences: Dead Stop, Violent Minds, 86 Mentality, etc. Like those bands, Thought Control has the aesthetic down pat, from the songs to the performance to the perfectly gritty recording. I particularly love the anthemic title track, the mid-paced banger that really leans into the oi! / UK82 influences. It’s a timeless sound, and Thought Control does it proud here.

The Drin: Elude the Torch 12" (Feel It Records) Feel It Records brings us the fourth record in as many years from this great band from Cincinnati. The Drin had a distinctive sound right from the jump, weaving post-Velvet Underground art rock together with dub reggae, noise and electronic music, and god knows what other influences, and they’ve both honed and expanded their sound with each subsequent release. The Drin is currently operating as a sextet, and as you might expect the sound here is dense, reminding me of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Phil Spector through a transistor radio” aesthetic, but shot through with American indie rock like Pavement, Guided by Voices, and all their associated influences like Krautrock, psych, Kiwi pop, etc. It’s a whole damn wild world of sound, and the Drin wanders through it all over the course of Elude the Torch’s 46-minute runtime (which, to be honest, goes by way too quickly). Any art rocker will appreciate this iteration of the Drin, but it’s even better if you’re here for the band’s whole journey, so god bless Feel It Records for supporting prolific yet consistently brilliant bands like Class, Why Bother?, the Cowboys, and the Drin.

Faucheuse: Rêve Électrique 12" (Symphony of Destruction Records) We carried an earlier cassette from this French hardcore band and while I really liked it, Faucheuse has created something special with their debut vinyl. You could describe it simply as käng hardcore with melodic vocals, but that would imply Faucheuse is a one-trick pony, which is definitely not the case. Maybe a better way to describe Rêve Électrique is hardcore punk that’s not afraid of melody, and there’s definitely something that warrants a Paintbox reference in the way Faucheuse opens up hardcore’s traditionally narrow boundaries. And as with Paintbox, you really don’t know what the next track is going to bring. I love the brief electronic interludes, for instance, but the songs are adventurous on their own, the band often nimbly changing up grooves in ways that make these songs develop in surprising ways. I worry I’m describing this as pretentious, but really it’s just hardcore punk that’s not boxed in by the rules of any microgenre, happy to pull from the best aspects of several of them. The label’s description sums it perfectly: “who said d-beat hardcore was bound to be unoriginal?”