Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sorry State Records newsletter! A jam-packed to do list today has me back to my old ways, getting the newsletter out pretty late in the evening (well, east coast US time, anyway). I had to grab some new bass strings ahead of Scarecrow’s recording session on Saturday, pick up the new Sorry State t-shirts, have a Zoom meeting with a friend in Sweden about a cool upcoming project, and of course finish writing the newsletter. Somehow I accomplished all that, though there’s still plenty more on the agenda after I hand this beast over to Rachel for formatting. As usual, we have a ton of new goodies to refresh your playlist, so read on!

Anti-Machine: S/T 7” (Toxic State Records) The latest and greatest from Toxic State is the debut EP by Brooklyn, NY’s Anti-Machine. As we’ve come to learn about Toxic State releases, you can always expect the unexpected. Records on the label can range from noisy raw punk to peculiar arthouse pop, but are always presented with captivating and elaborate packaging. Anti-Machine isn’t antithetical to the Toxic State milieu, but this EP is about as close as they’ve come to releasing a bare-bones, street-level US hardcore band, and the feel is different. Sure, there’s a beautifully screen-printed poster included, but no artsy graphic design. Instead, you get a photo of the band looking cool in leather with beers in hand. Anti-Machine features seasoned veterans from the NY scene, with familiar faces from bands like Sister Anne, Crazy Spirit, Extended Hell, and a lengthy list of others. It sounds like the band walked into the studio already dialed and ready to play at their hardest and meanest. Each track is a cold and venomous powerhouse of wall-to-wall energy. The chaotic intensity, frantic but rocked out riffs, and Walker’s snarling vocals remind me of early Accüsed—not to mention their grindhouse, “driller killer attacked by demons” aesthetic. The bonehead punk on the cover with brains being decimated by a drill is a pretty spot on depiction of how listeners will feel after blasting this EP. If you’re looking to rage full-on Splatterhead style, look no further than Anti-Machine.

We just got in a brand new batch of Sorry State t-shirts! This season we’re revisiting the awesome design Thomas Sara made for us a while back, this time with red discharge ink on black shirts. This will probably be the last run of this shirt design, so grab one now if you want one, because when they’re gone, they’re gone! Also, I forgot to mention it, but a while back we also restocked our black canvas tote bags featuring the same design, so grab one of those too while you’re at it!

As we mentioned last week, Hüstler’s new EP is now streaming in its entirety on Sorry State’s Bandcamp site, and it looks like the release has also made it to streaming services too. We’re still waiting on the finished cassettes, but we’ll ship everyone’s pre-orders as soon as they arrive. While the cassette is already sold out, we have a 12” record compiling both of Hüstler’s sold-out cassette releases at the plant right now.

Confuse or Gai was the question for this week’s edition of Hardcore Knockouts. The obvious answer is BOTH! Shout out to my homie Nick Goode, who I believe coined the phrase “Confuse(d) Gai hardcore.” “Mysterious Guy Hardcore” (a term coined by Brace Belden if I remember correctly) was on the tip of everyone’s tongues a few years earlier, and Nick’s term cleverly referenced that while describing the then-emergent early 2010s wave of noise-punk bands taking cues from Kyushu. Gotta love some punk wordsmithery.

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 this CD reissue of Neu!’s first album. We’re getting toward the end of the big CD collection we’ve been listing, but there are still plenty more cool titles to come. Neu! is a huge favorite around Sorry State HQ… when we need to focus on some work, we throw on either of Neu!’s first two albums and the time flies by.

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

OCTOBER 30
ZORN IN PHILLY

NOVEMBER 12
SCARECROW IN PHILLY

NOVEMBER 19
MUTANT STRAIN IN CHARLOTTE

NOVEMBER 19
SCARECROW IN CARRBORO

NOVEMBER 20
MUTANT STRAIN IN CHARLOTTE

1. Cochonne: S/T 12” (Sorry State)
2. Scalple: Skillful Butchers 12” (Sorry State)
3. Straw Man Army: Age of Exile 12” (D4MT Labs)
4. Quarantine: Agony 12” (Damage United)
5. Hologram: No Longer Human 12” (Iron Lung)
6. Sistema En Decadencia: Nuestro Legado 12” (Hardcore Victim)
7. Algara: Absortos En El Tedio Eterna 12” (La Vida Es Un Mus)
8. Lasso: S/T 7” (Sorry State)
9. Zero Magazine photo book
10. Chubby & the Gang: The Mutt’s Nuts 12” (Partisan)

Here’s your weekly peek into what’s been selling at Sorry State. Interesting to see we’re moving so many Chubby & the Gang LPs, and I was also surprised how quickly we blew through our copies of the Zero Magazine photo book.

Click here to see what the SSR Crew is into this week!

La Vida Es Un Mus is back with three brand new releases from Kohti Tuhua, Stingray, and Unidad Ideológica. We even have limited color vinyl available for all three! While we were at it, we also restocked a bunch of LVEUM and Sealed Records titles, including the ever-popular debut single from The Chisel (watch for their LP coming next month), the brilliant singles collection from anarcho punks Zounds, and many others.

You can read about the Languid LP in this week’s Featured Releases section, but we also got new records from Anti-Metafor and Nukke on Sweden’s D-Takt & Rapunk Records. We’re blowing through these, so while I hope the other two stick around long enough for me to write descriptions next week, I wouldn’t count on it!

We just got in this curious bootleg of the soundtrack to 90s skateboard video Sorry by Flip Skateboards. If you’re around 30 years old and grew up skateboarding, this video probably looms large in your consciousness. If that’s the case, pick up this well-done boot and relive your glory days of shredding from the safety of the comfortable seat in your record room!

Feel It Records continues their string of excellent recent releases with the new LP by Cleveland’s The Cowboy, Riddles from the Universe. We even have a few copies of the limited “cosmic swirl” vinyl, so grab that while you can!

We just got in a few cool new (old) punk titles from Havoc Records: a comp of early material by Varukers, a retrospective from UK82 punks Dead Wretched, and an archival release from Minneapolis punk band Murderers.

Vinyl Conflict Records released the debut full-length from Richmond metal-punks Loud Night a while back and it blew through its first two pressings pretty much instantly. We have the 3rd pressing in stock now, so if you missed it the first two times, you know what to do!

No Label brings us a compilation cassette, Between the Coasts, featuring 12 brand new underground punk bands from the Midwest US. More on this one next week, I’m sure!

The long-running Spanish hardcore band R.O.B.O. is back with a new 7”, Contaminas, holding us over until their third album drops sometime in the near future.

Photographer Jack Pitt brings us this monstrous, 230-page hardcover book, Forever Punk. Forever Punk documents gigs in the UK, Canada, and the US, and features a broad swath of artists from the past decade or so of punk. There’s a heavy focus on the kinds of artists Sorry State carries, and if you’re involved in the scene, odds are good that you’ll see yourself or some of your close friends in this giant tome.

We had an earlier cassette from Kansas City hardcore band D.Y.E., and now they’re back with a new tape called Rules. We also nabbed a few copies of the excellent In the Beginning cassette by fellow KC punks The Freak.