Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! There’s some big news this week as we have both the official reissue of Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church in stock and a fresh pressing of Golpe’s La Colpe É Solo Tua LP on two different colors of vinyl. We’ve been packing orders like crazy all week, but we’re ready for more! Besides all that, we have this scorching demo tape from Alienator and a bunch of other goodies too, so read on for all the details!

Alienator: demo cassette (self-released) Alienator is a new hardcore band from Portland springing from the same well as Suck Lords and Reek Minds. This won’t surprise you if you’re familiar with those bands, but this tape is a total scorcher. Stylistically, Alienator lives at the intersection of fast, Discharge-inspired hardcore and thrash metal, with former’s density and ferocity and the latter’s technicality. They sound kind of like Within the Prophecy-era Sacrilege or Forward Into Battle-era English Dogs, but at Shitlickers speed and with a level of meanness that’ll remind you of Siege or YDI. It’s brutal shit, to where it’s easy to get lost in the intensity and miss how fast and technical the playing is. I’m generally wary of breakdowns, but Alienator are masters of the art, and that holds true whether they’re doing a pretty traditional-sounding thrash metal mosh part (as in “You Wish”) or one of their sludgier breakdowns, like in the crushing opening track, “Born to Die,” whose mosh part has a Sabbathian swing that brings to mind Corrosion of Conformity’s classic Eye for an Eye. Those C.O.C. vibes might cause some people to put Alienator in the same bucket as Tower 7 (admittedly, a pretty good bucket to be in), but Alienator’s speed and viciousness place them in a league of their own.

Golpe’s La Colpe É Solo Tua is back in stock! This pressing is 400 copies on clear red vinyl and 100 copies on clear red and black swirl that are only available from Sorry State. The first pressing sold out so quickly that we weren’t able to devote many copies to wholesale, so if you have a store or a distro and want wholesale copies please get in touch! And if you haven’t heard the record yet, what are you waiting for? Get over to the Sorry State Records Bandcamp and check it out.

The mystery release we teased in last week’s newsletter is a new 7” by Brazil’s Lasso! We’ll be co-releasing this new EP with our good buddies in the UK, Static Shock Records, and we’re hoping to have the vinyl in time for the March 18 street date. Lasso will also tour Europe in May, so watch for info on that soon!

Read the description for the record below and check the Sorry State Bandcamp site to hear a track now!

Less than a year after their debut, Brazil’s Lasso returns with their second EP. While Lasso’s razor-sharp riffing and songwriting remain intact, this time around the sound is thicker and meaner, as if what was presaged in the first EP’s foreboding, ominous sound has finally come to pass. Indeed, as the world has slid into previously unthinkable depths of darkness and brutality, Lasso’s sound has evolved to match, a hard-won sense of steadiness now augmenting the anguish so palpable on their first record. Lasso also introduces a few new musical wrinkles here. A surf-y, Dead Kennedys-esque lead guitar elevates tracks like “Fechado Em Copas” and “Atarantado” to even higher levels of catchiness than their already-infectious debut, while “Mendaz” closes the record with an apocalyptic, mid-paced stomp. Desperate times call for desperate music, which makes Lasso the perfect soundtrack for 2022.

We approved test pressings for two upcoming Sorry State 12”s: the debut from Pittsburgh’s Invalid and the vinyl collection of Hüstler’s two sold out cassettes! Both test pressings sound great. We hope they’ll be out soon, but as you know that’s hard to predict these days. As we firm up a release date, we’ll share artwork and preview tracks with you, so keep an eye out for that.

Our longtime pals at Social Napalm Records asked Sorry State to be the main distributor for their label’s releases, and we couldn’t say yes fast enough! Going forward, Sorry State is going to be the source for releases on Social Napalm and their sister label for reissues, Negative Insight Records. If you run a store or distro, you can also hit up Sorry State for wholesale copies of these label’s releases.

The first release under this new arrangement is the long-awaited debut LP from Savageheads, titled Service To Your Country. We don’t have a firm release date yet, but the vinyl is in now (as you can see in the above pic) with the jackets and other print coming soon. After that, Social Napalm will release a 12” by Isolant, an industrial crust project featuring a member of Morne. There are a few more very exciting projects on deck after that, but we’re not quite ready to take the lid off them. Keep an eye out for more info.

This week is a rare oi! edition of Hardcore Knockouts. I guess I understand why Cock Sparrer dominated this, but it bums me out that there isn’t more love for the Rejects. I fuckin’ love ‘em, though I’ve always insisted that Volume 2 is better than its predecessor. How fucking sick is it, though, to name all of your albums “Greatest Hits?”

Cast your vote in the next edition of Hardcore Knockouts on our Instagram stories next Tuesday!

My pick from Sorry State’s Discogs listings this week is the Bonfire box set from AC/DC. I remember when this came out… it was a pretty big deal. The star of this box is the complete Back in Black album with Bon Scott’s vocal takes rather than Brian Johnson’s. Which makes me realize I’m not sure I’ve ever listened to those. Maybe I should get on that before someone scoops this set.

Remember, you can always combine your order from Sorry State’s Discogs site with your order from our webstore and save on shipping!

1. Rudimentary Peni: Death Church 12” (Sealed Records)
2. Necro Heads: Mindless 7” (Kill Enemy Records)
3. Reckoning Force: Broken State 12” (Not for the Weak)
4. Dissekerad: Inre Strid 12” (Desolate Records)
5. Insect Warfare: World Extermination 12” (Iron Lung Records)
6. Tempter: S/T 12” (Quality Control HQ)
7. Axe Rash: Contemporary Ass 7” (Not for the Weak)
8. Game: Legerdemain 12” (Quality Control HQ)
9. Nag: Observer 12” (Drunken Sailor Records)
10. Personal Damage: Ambush EP cassette (1753 Recordings)

Lots of shake-ups on the list of best sellers at Sorry State this week! As expected, after we placed our oh-so-important seal of approval on Necro Heads by naming their EP Record of the Week it got a big bump, but not enough to compete with Rudimentary Peni’s legendary Death Church LP.

The big news this week is the reissue of Rudimentary Peni’s Death Church LP on the almighty Sealed Records. We list this on our site as a preorder because the official street date is Monday, February 14, but our copies are in stock and shipping now, so no need to worry about those pesky manufacturing delays. This is one of those records that should be in every punk’s collection, and if you’re not trying to pony up for an original, Sealed’s version is the next best thing, reproducing the amazing original fold-out poster sleeve and cut from the original tapes.

While we were getting a big stack of Death Church, we also restocked a bunch of titles from La Vida Es Un Mus, so grab your Disclose, your Chisel 7” (new pressing with yellow cover), your Kohti Tuhoa, and your Karma Sutra (we even have some white vinyl this time!) from the site now.

We just got in two new releases on Denmark’s great Adult Crash Records: the new LP from Planet Y and a new 7” from The War Goes On, which as you know features former members of No Hope for the Kids and Hjerte Stop.

Chain Whip’s Two Step to Hell 12” was one of the most popular releases in our distro in 2021, but if you missed out, it’s back in stock now, this time on grey vinyl.

Pittsburgh’s Kill Enemy Records is back with more hardcore punk, this time from God Plutonium. They also just repressed Illiterates’ LP, and we grabbed more of those, too.

We also got in cool new demo tapes this week from Canada’s Barren Soil (Amebix-influenced stenchcore) and LA’s Traumer (ripping hardcore).

Esos Malditos Punks has a couple of new items: a new reissue from 80s Argentine punks Todos Tus Muertos featuring rawer versions of songs that appeared on their first album and a double 7” from 80s Spanish hardcore band IV Reich. These are dead stock copies of a release from 2007… these copies sat without covers all that time, so Esos Malditos Punks printed up some new sleeves and hooked us up!

We also got in a few fresh represses of titles on the great reissue label Radio Raheem. Agnostic Front’s No One Rules demo collection has been out of stock for way too long, so we’re glad to have that one back. Antidote hasn’t been sold out for too long, but we’re always happy to have that classic on the shelves. We also grabbed a few more copies of Radio Raheem’s book of Detroit Punk ephemera, so grab that if you missed it the first time.

Last but not least, we have copies of the latest 7” from Nashville’s Snooper, which comes to us via the Australian label Computer Human Records.