Jeff's Staff Pick: January 19, 2023

What’s up Sorry Staters?

How’s everyone doing? Lately, I’ve been feeling alright. I go through bouts where my spirits are up and down, but for whatever reason maybe 2023 is off to a good start. Last week’s shows that Scarecrow played along with Flower and Destruct were really great. I’m not sure if any of them would be reading this or are even aware of Sorry State, but there was a whole new crop of kids that came to the show at The Fruit here in NC. Tall, skinny teenage dudes with foot-tall mohicans. I love to see it. I was them once. I loved street punk and bands like A Global Threat (honestly, I still like AGT haha). Gives me hope that more younger people will start coming out to punk gigs in town. Maybe they’ll even start a killer band! Who knows?

Speaking of it now being 2023, we’re almost 3 weeks into the year and Sorry State is finally talking about “year-end lists” for 2022. It’s so hard for me to pick favorites. Shit, it’s hard enough to even remember what records came out in the last year. A record that I’ve seen appear on many people’s “Best of 2022” lists is the latest LP from Long Knife, Curb Stomp Earth. And I would agree! I definitely spun that record a lot this year.

Probably planned to coincide with the release of their new LP, Black Water just reissued the first 2 LPs by Long Knife. With all the people of the internets hyping Curb Stomp Earth, I wonder how many people are familiar with their earlier material. I will admit that it’s been many years since I’ve revisited those records. I bought both of them when they came out. I was thinking back, and I remember I bought Wilderness around the time my old band Mercy Killings played with Long Knife. If I remember correctly, I think we played their shows in NC and in Richmond on that tour. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but Richmond for sure. I had to check back and see when Wilderness came out, and I was shocked to see that it came out in 2013. 10 YEARS AGO! I was trippin’ on that. I had a brief moment of feeling like an old man and that I’ve been doing this punk shit for too long. But I then I threw on this LP and that feeling subsided pretty quickly haha.

This first LP holds up super well. Before I’d heard Long Knife back those many years ago, they were billed to me as, “Dude, they sound like Poison Idea.” Which, sure, I get it. They’re from Portland. They got those riffs. And yeah, the singer Colin’s snarling vocals do kinda recall Jerry A. But I think simply calling them a Poison Idea rip off is selling them short. Clear influence or not, I think Long Knife has their own stamp with the way they write songs. I would say when comparing it to Curb Stomp Earth, the first record is definitely less dense and ambitious with the arrangements and whacky instrumentation. Wilderness is obviously a more straight ahead hardcore record. That said, it’s clear within just a couple minutes that these dudes are seasoned and can really play. The record starts off a bit slow, with this pounding intro heavy on the toms on the drums. Then the first song “Artificial Heart Recall” is like this frantic, octane-driven mid-paced song. But then a song like “Ghost in the Hall” really stands out, kicking off with this sort of moody, minor chord style riff and sing-along chorus. It really caught me off guard. But I remember even back in the day when I first got this record, I was totally just blown away by the B-side. The one-two punch of “Reptile Smile” into “Back To Blackout” is like hardcore mastery to me. The B-side is just heater after heater. The last track “Move It Creep” comes in with this drum intro that has a kinda like phaser or flange effect. So really, even on the first record, they were experimenting with some cool ideas in the production. There’s like blazing harmonized guitar leads, ripping bass fills… some good musicianship sneaks its way into Long Knife’s songwriting. My only complaint about this record is that it feels short. It’s basically 9 songs played on a 45 RPM 12”, but it flies right by. As I’m writing this, I flipped the disc like 6 times. I guess it’s clear that I still like it!

So yeah, I’ve been gushing about Wilderness the whole time, but Long Knife’s 2nd 12”, Meditations on Self Destruction, is also back in print. Sorry State just stocked a bunch of copies of each record. So, if you missed out on these earlier releases in the Long Knife catalog, make sure you remedy that ASAP.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got this week. As always, thanks for reading.

‘Til next week,

-Jeff