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New releases from Skemäta, Gay Kiss, and Excessive Cruelty out now on Sorry State!
Sorry State has three new releases ready for mass consumption! We haven't put out a batch of releases that are this straight up hardcore in a while, so we're hoping everyone is going to be really excited about these! Here's the info:
First up is the brand new LP from Raleigh's Skemäta, A Bright Shining Hell. Here's the description:
Raleigh, North Carolina’s Skemäta are back with their second 12”, A Bright Shining Hell. While you can still expect the same furious, explosive d-beat hardcore you found on their debut, this time around they’ve dispensed with a lot of the fiddly bits and delivered something a bit more direct and concise, much as Sorry State favorites Sickoids honed and streamlined their sound when they moved from their first LP to their second 12”. It’s not so much that the music is any less complex, but the intricate riffs and rhythms are packed into a smaller space, delivered with a dizzying degree of speed, precision, and power. The result is a pressure cooker of a record that takes the apocalyptic fury of a band like Framtid and fuses it with the catchy songwriting of Totalitär. In a world of flash-in-the-pan d-beat bands that rip off a couple of Cimex riffs and then vanish into the ether, Skemäta stands alone as one of the most distinctive, original, and memorable bands in the genre.
Full-color jacket with a cover illustration by Raf the Might.
Next up is the new 4-song 7" from Arizona's Gay Kiss!
Brand new 4-song 7” from this Arizona powerhouse. Every time I listen to Gay Kiss my mind is boggled that a band can sound so uniformly heavy and aggressive, yet simultaneously so original. While their previous LP on Sorry State, Preservation Measures, was a real achievement, these four new songs take things even further into the depths, fusing hardcore, riff-driven noise rock, and a hint of industrial music into one of the most distinctive and gripping sounds out there. While their intricate songwriting can take a handful of listens to decode, once your ear is acclimated you quickly realize that each one contains enough memorable parts to sustain an entire record by your typical hardcore band. However, Gay Kiss won’t just hand it to you, they’ll make you work for it, pushing yourself as a listener in the same way they’ve continued to press forward relentlessly as a band. If you like the heavy, intense, and forward-thinking hardcore of bands like Bad Breeding, the Lowest Form, or Nasa Space Universe you’ll want to check this EP immediately, then acquaint yourself with Gay Kiss’s equally impressive back catalog.
This is a split release with Blast House Records.
Last but not least we have the debut 12" from California's Excessive Cruelty!
Excessive Cruelty is a new band featuring key players from the Bay Area’s Strung Up, who were simultaneously one of the best-regarded and most underrated bands of the explosion of early 80s-style US hardcore in the early 2000s. If you’re smart enough to be familiar with Strung Up’s catalog (and if you’re not… do your homework!), you’ll be pleased to know that the blisteringly fast rhythms, complex riffing, gruff vocals and literate, socially aware lyrics are still very much present in Excessive Cruelty’s sound. You can also hear a touch of thrash and crossover influence here—which makes sense given that guitarist Dan Randall spent many of the intervening years since Strung Up disbanded playing in Ghoul—but like Dealing with It-era DRI or American Paranoia-era Attitude Adjustment, this is hardcore with metallic elements and not the other way around. Any way you slice it, though, this 12” delivers 6 blistering dispatches of pure rage and energy.
Full-color jacket with a cover illustration by Digestor of Ghoul, and the vinyl is a 1-sided 12” with a screen printed b-side.
Since these releases are, rather fortuitously, dropping at precisely the same time, we're once again offering a limited number of bundles that allow you to pick up all three at once for a discounted price. Click here for the bundle. And, if you're a Sorry State die-hard and you haven't picked up our previous three releases from Mind Dweller, Natural Causes, and Joint D≠, we still have a VERY limited number of those bundles available here.