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Naked Roommate: Pass the Loofah 12” (Trouble in Mind Records) Pass the Loofah is the second proper album from this Bay Area group. Naked Roommate originally spun off from a band called the World, whose 2019 record Reddish remains one of my most-played records of the 2010s. While the World was an earthy, organic-sounding group with deep sonic roots in the early Rough Trade Records discography, Naked Roommate’s sound leans into early 80s electronic beats and synthesizer pulses, albeit still laced with the irreverent lyricism, forward-thinking artistry, and comfy DIY aesthetic the World leaned on. But what strikes me most about Pass the Loofah isn’t the aesthetic, but the craftsmanship and artistry I hear on the album. So much music today is made for short attention spans and instant disposal, focusing too much on surface-level aesthetics rather than crafting songs with strong bones. Pass the Loofah bucks this trend with a substantial 41-minute runtime that takes the listener through a range of unique landscapes, an epic journey rather than a toe dipped into a diluted, lukewarm bath. For me, one of Naked Roommate’s strengths is that they never decide whether they’re a dance band, a pop group, or an art project. Tracks like “No Kicker” and “Bus” have tough, danceable rhythms from the 99 Records / ESG school, but while the beats take center stage, the songs are stacked with memorable hooks, like the chorus refrain of “we take the bus” or “Reasons Why,” where the chorus of “that’s whyyyyyyyyy… I looooooove you” cleverly subverts the unromantic mundanity in the verse imagery. And these pop moments go down all the more smoothly because they’re cut with so much art school roughage. A standout in this vein is “Successful Friend,” a funky, Talking Heads-esque track with great lyrics, my favorite being “among your many successes (…) is having your designs printed on pajamas across the world!,” a line that’s bound to bring a smile to the face of any Uranium Club or Cool Greenhouse fan. Even further out are the album’s three instrumental tracks—including the Neu!-ish “Ducky & Viv” and the electric-era Miles Davis-channeling “G-Y pt. 2”—which are among my favorite on the album. There’s so much variety on Pass the Loofah, and not only does nothing feel redundant, but as you’re listening the record seems to spiral ever-upward, each song reaching new heights. The experience culminates with “I Can’t Be Found,” a soft landing that reminds me of the way Eno’s Here Come the Warm Jets closes with its title track. Typically, a good record is one I want to play again as soon as it’s over, but Pass the Loofah’s wider scope and ambition leave me wanting to sit in silence and process what I’ve heard, a sign that I’ve consumed a substantial piece of art rather than just a bunch of instantly gratifying empty musical calories.

State Manufactured Terror: The US Government Is a Kleptocratic Doomsday Cult 7” (Autsajder Produkcija) The Croatian label Autsajder Produkcija brings us the debut vinyl from this New York metallic / crusty punk band featuring members of Pobreza Mental, Headsplitters and Porvenir Oscuro. While The US Government Is a Kleptocratic Doomsday Cult is bathed in the magical sonic mud that D4MT Labs has such a knack for capturing on record, State Manufactured Terror’s sound is more in line with recent west coast groups like Horrendous 3D and Global Thermonuclear War who draw inspiration from the music happening in the UK in the late 80s. I’m thinking specifically of bands like Extreme Noise Terror, pre-From Enslavement to Obliteration Napalm Death, Deviated Instinct, Hellbastard, and Axegrinder. Much like today, many of the underground’s most interesting bands of that moment were operating at the intersection of punk and metal, drawing from Amebix’s bleak world view, Discharge’s intensity, and the ever-escalating tempos of the emerging death metal and grind scenes. I hear all that in S.M.T.’s music (along with, on tracks like “Biometricks” and “Dead Homie Song Reprise,” the bouncy, Nausea-influenced rhythms their friends Flower use), those influences smashed together to make the most extreme, jagged, and difficult to digest sounds they can conjure. State Manufactured Terror isn’t willing to meet you halfway aesthetically or politically (another revealing song title: “No Compromise With Genocidal Ethnostates”), but unlike most other modern “extreme” music, their sound is warm and organic, and while it’s often difficult to tell what any particular instrument is doing, the entire recording heaves with this unified breath that’s ugly but unmistakably alive. The US Government Is a Kleptocratic Doomsday Cult is some of the rawest music I’ve heard in recent memory, and whether you’re a dyed in the wool “noise not music” person or you just want a soundtrack that reflects the ugliness of the present world, these five tracks are going to move you.

Class: A Healthy Alternative 12” (Feel It Records) Tucson, Arizona’s Class is back with a brand new album and their second Record of the Week nod from Sorry State, though all four of Class’s previous releases have been worthy of said honor. From the jump, Class has sounded to me like a band out of time, a relic from a bygone era where crafting a perfect pop song was way higher on a band’s to-do list than getting their look right or perfectly replicating the guitar tone on whatever collector scum 7” whose sound they’re trying to replicate. This is probably why people have trouble describing Class’s music succinctly, because their sense of style is amorphous and flexible, able to shift to serve the song, which is Class’s true master. Class’s raw, high-energy productions and big guitar sounds mark them as punk, but they’ve always reminded me most of the ’77-era UK bands who were unwilling or unable to fully embrace punk’s year zero mentality. I’m thinking of the Lurkers, the early Stranglers, 999… The “power-pop” tag also gets thrown around, but Class’s songs generally lack the saccharine immediacy of bands like the Exploding Hearts or the Number Ones (though fans of the latter will fall pretty quickly for the magical pre-chorus in “Not an Idiot”). This means it might take you a spin or two longer to sing along, but it also means Class’s songs don’t wear out your ear or grow stale with repetition… I can listen (and have listened) to A Healthy Alternative over and over and its hooks just sink in deeper. If, like me, you’re too old and cranky for straight bubblegum, but can’t fully get rid of your pop sweet tooth, A Healthy Alternative has the perfect balance of sugar and salt.

Yellowcake: A Fragmented Truth 7” (Total Peace Records / Not for the Weak Records) Phoenix, Arizona’s Yellowcake returns with their second 6-song EP, once again a split release with their hometown label Total Peace Records and east coast powerhouses Not for the Weak Records. As much as I loved Yellowcake’s first EP, Can You See the Future? (which we named Record of the Week in November 2023), when I saw the band play live I thought they were even better than the record, and I hoped their follow-up would reach the bar they set at that gig. Now that A Fragmented Truth has arrived, it exceeds all expectations. While very much the same band, Yellowcake takes a gnarlier turn on A Fragmented Truth, shifting the focus from the driving, fist-pumping rhythms of Can You See the Future? to something more jagged. The sound on A Fragmented Truth is slightly murkier and denser than the debut, and it’s altogether more punishing, de-emphasizing the agile stops and starts in favor of sheer, pummeling force. Yet, as the label’s description astutely notes, there’s a strong emphasis on textural variation here… frequently, Yellowcake is pounding away at what appears to be maximum intensity when a guitar track blindsides you with an attack from a frequency range that didn’t seem to exist a moment earlier. Similarly, the vocals sound even more dialed in here, taking the same approach as the first EP, but with a sound that’s both coarser and richer in tone. A must for fans of the noisiest, nastiest hardcore, A Fragmented Truth captures an already great band getting even better.

The Carp: Knock Your Block Off 12” (Total Punk Records) When I first heard about Cleveland’s the Carp, they were pitched to me as an oi! / street punk band from the Cruelster camp, a proposition that immediately intrigued me. As a big fan of the Cruelster universe, I wondered how on earth those two things might go together, and that they don’t really, but exist in an unstable tension across Knock Your Block Off’s ten tracks, makes it one of the most interesting records to emerge from this crew of musicians and one of my favorite punk records of 2024. For anyone with only a passing familiarity with this group of interconnected bands—the aforementioned Cruelster, Knowso, Perverts Again, Smooth Brain, and probably more I’m forgetting / don’t know about—this will probably just sound like another one of those bands with their knotty rhythms, deadpan vocals, and obtuse lyrics. Knowso vocalist and lyricist Nathan Ward is at the helm and sounds very much like himself here, and even though he’s on guitar rather than his usual bass, it turns out his guitar lines sound a lot like his bass lines, angular but hooky, not as exaggeratedly stiff as Knowso, but still coming with a big dollop of homegrown, Devo-esque robotic rhythm. If you’re not interested in what Nathan and his crew does, you can probably stop reading here, but those of us who are in for a pound on this lot are treated to an entirely new musical landscape, albeit one viewed through Ward’s distinctively cracked perspective. As I mentioned, I wondered how the whole oi! / street punk thing would manifest itself in the Carp’s music, and it turns out that it does so in fascinatingly idiosyncratic ways. It’s certainly not a parody or homage; there’s nothing so obvious as a gang chorus, and the exclamation “oi!” appears nowhere on the record as far as I can remember, but those (the few?) of us with a deep appreciation for street punk aesthetics and Nathan Ward’s artistry will love following the faint through-line. There’s work and labor as a lyrical theme (which, admittedly, flows through much of Nathan’s work, including the latest Knowso album we released on Sorry State), the nightmarish skinhead costumes in the video for “Toxic Peace” (which you should most definitely check out on YouTube), and a cover of “Cut Ups” by A Global Threat, a band close to the heart of many a 30-something former street punk. There’s also the odd Blitz-esque guitar hook or (potentially) anthemic chorus (see: “Servitude! You feed on it like breast milk”), but mostly these references are so thoroughly annihilated by Nathan Ward’s mental meat grinder that they’re barely recognizable. A standout track is “Fairview Park Skins,” whose title makes it seem like it’ll be some sort of suburban Dropkick Murphys homage, but when you actually pay attention to the lyrics, it’s not really about skinheads, but a shirts versus skins basketball game in which, appropriately, the skins annihilate the shirts. (Side note: I also love how this song slyly appropriates Rancid’s habit of littering their songs with the names of streets and bus routes.) It’s difficult for me to imagine how any of this will play to a newcomer to this group of bands… it’s so throughly drenched in their peculiar aesthetic, and I get so much pleasure from peeling the onion’s layers that I feel like I can’t access what this might look like from the outside. But for those of us neck deep in this world and loving it, Knock Your Block Off is as great as anything else we’ve heard from this crew, one of the most original and interesting voices in contemporary punk.

Homemade Speed: Faster Is Better 7” (Not for the Weak Records) Those of us in the mid-Atlantic hardcore scene have been aware of this group of young miscreants making noise in the Norfolk / Virginia Beach area for some time, and I’m stoked the rest of the world now gets to acquaint themselves with this group’s fresh take on raw, fast hardcore punk. As befitting the band’s name and the record’s title, the A side of Faster Is Better is a blistering sprint inspired by bands like early D.R.I., Septic Death, and Deep Wound who pressed against the limits of their drummers’ right hands and their listener’s processing capacity. The short instrumental—which sounds like they plucked it from a long-lost Mystic Records 7”—makes it clear Homemade Speed isn’t afraid to squeeze in a hook here and there, then the other three tracks are off to the races. While hardcore this fast probably all sounds the same to many people, I think Homemade Speed has a unique sound on their blistering parts, anchored by a drummer with a unique swing to his fast beat and a habit of punctuating bars with Minor Threat-esque compact snare rolls. The four songs on the B side slow things down just a hair, but the grooves are similarly slinky, allowing the chaos to shine through on moments like the climactic double-tracked guitar solo in “Nothing Left.” If you’re a fan of the blisteringly fast, raw, and wild hardcore punk we like to push here at Sorry State—particularly if bands like Shaved Ape, Meat House, and G.U.N. have been on your playlist—Homemade Speed’s debut EP is essential listening.

Savage Pleasure: S/T 12” (Toxic State Records) After a demo cassette a few years ago, Toxic State Records unleashes the debut vinyl from New York’s Savage Pleasure into the world. If you haven’t heard Savage Pleasure, the first thing you might think when you listen is “whoa, this band really sounds like Amebix,” and while that’s a fine thing, I worry that belaboring the comparison will get in the way of appreciating what a fantastic album this is. There’s something about the way Savage Pleasure deploys dynamics that keeps me flipping this record over and over. While they pack the LP with hooky metal riffs, Savage Pleasure largely avoids the grand gestures—breakdowns, flashy guitar solos, big chord changes—that form the highlight reels of most hardcore punk records. Instead, their sound churns (a verb I come back to whenever I try to describe their sound), seemingly as regularly as the tides, but like the ocean, possessing an undeniable power. Tempos shift gradually in a Celtic Frost-ian way, with just enough variation to ensure the music never gets stale or repetitive. As the record’s synth and acoustic guitar intro sets the scene, Savage Pleasure pulls you into their world with “The Sickening Fear,” and it’s like a fog has descended, blocking out the rest of the world and saying “you’re with Savage Pleasure now.” The album is quite short—only 20 minutes, which feels brief given the cinematic scope—but there isn’t a moment that feels redundant or half-baked. When you’re in Savage Pleasure’s world, you’re there completely. There has been a lot of creative energy in this UK crust-influenced corner of the underground lately, and certainly if you’ve been enjoying recent records by Industry, Rigorous Institution, and Subdued, check out Savage Pleasure. But I think this is more than just a RIYL record, so try following Savage Pleasure into their world, and if you’re anything like me, you’re going to want to stay for a while.

Muro: Nueva Dogma 12" (Fuerza Ingobernable Discos) Bogota, Colombia’s Muro returns with their long-awaited 3rd album, Nueva Dogma. I think everyone who encounters Muro, whether it’s live or through their recordings, agrees they are a special band. The most striking aspect of their music for me remains the passion and intensity they capture on their recordings. As thousands of lackluster albums across the history of recorded music prove, even a great band can have trouble capturing their energy on tape, but that has never been an issue for Muro, whose electricity transmits even through the very raw recordings they favor. Nueva Dogma continues that pattern, but while the presentation is primitive, the songs themselves are anything but. Sure, there are plenty of short, frantic riffs that will tickle the fancy of anyone who knows the rewards of exploring the 80s international hardcore canon, but Nueva Dogma is also a notably musically progressive record, with Muro exploring a wide range of riffs, styles, grooves, and textures across its ten songs. In particular, the lead guitarist brings a lot to Nueva Dogma, which is spiced with a thrilling mix of catchy, sometimes quite melodic licks. While the grimy presentation and chaotic performance disguise it, some of these tracks would probably even qualify as melodic hardcore, at least on the level of the musical composition. That griminess of presentation is an important part of Muro’s trip they don’t want you to miss, though. As you may have noticed, Nueva Dogma’s music is nowhere to be found online. Instead, in order to hear this remarkable record, you need to access the punk DIY network that has propagated this self-made artifact across the world. With multiple inserts, a ton of cool illustrations, and packaging handmade in the band’s home country of Colombia, Muro’s effort to bring something of their world into the homes of everyone who buys Nueva Dogma makes for an engrossing experience that elevates what would have been, under any circumstances, a truly noteworthy hardcore punk record.

Subdued: Abbatoir 12" (La Vida Es Un Mus) I was a huge fan of Subdued’s first full-length, Over the Hills and Far Away, but this follow-up is a major leveling up, and it’s without a doubt one of the most exciting and essential underground punk records of 2024. While Subdued’s sound is still based on the heavy, chugging anarcho-punk of early Amebix and Exit-Stance, they lean into their strengths on Abattoir, crafting a sound that is distinctly their own. Rhythmically, the band has a unique command of dynamics, every song imbued with cycles of push and pull that seem so natural and organic as to be almost imperceptible, but keep the songs consistently interesting. Atop this foundation, two guitarists weave spiderwebs of dark and delicate arpeggios and sinewy melodic lines, occasionally locking into the heavy underlying rhythms for a bulldozing chug-fest. The lyrics and vocals are fantastic too, and while they give you all the sloganeering you’d want from a dyed-in-the-wool anarcho band, they’re not cliches but compelling, poetic assessments of society’s ills. Abbatoir is dense with memorable lyrics, but you’d be hard-pressed to disbelieve anything Subdued’s singer says, because he delivers every line with a force that makes it feel like truth is being wrenched violently from his guts. Clocking in at a brisk 22 minutes, Abbatoir has no room for moments that are anything short of thrilling. If you like the music we like here at Sorry State, this record should be on your radar.

The Massacred: Death March 7” (Active-8 Records) Death March is the second EP from this Boston band, and holy fuck is it a powerful hardcore onslaught. While the Massacred’s sound and presentation are steeped in early 80s international punk, those influences feel digested and synthesized here, cooked down to a dense and ultra-potent concentrate. Jeff always mentions Headcleaners when the Massacred comes up, and I definitely hear that on Death March, particularly in the guitar playing, the way the riffs bounce around while the guitarist’s right hand barely ever deviates from this inhuman buzzsaw rhythm, the relentless pick attack captured perfectly in this raw but nuanced recording. While the riffs move around a lot, there’s straightforward pop songwriting at the core of these songs, which often build to harmonically satisfying crescendos that make me feel almost weightless. While the Massacred has made sure the bones of these songs are strong, they keep the focus on ferocity in the performance, with the bludgeoning rhythm section and caustic vocals coming from the Shitlickers school of all-out intensity. Like the music, the lyrics are grounded in convention (Discharge-style meditations on war and human savagery), but find room for subtle innovations that make them come alive, whether that’s an arresting image (“Hang them up on chains / rectal fed and bludgeoned / shine your boots sloshed in rotting green puke”) or an interesting metaphor (“Septic Appendix” casts political and military leaders as diseased organs infecting everything around them). Every second of music here, every square millimeter of artwork and packaging, feels considered and optimized for maximum intensity and impact. Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good pummeling.

The Dark: Sinking Into Madness 12" (Toxic State Records) Jeff did a great write-up on Sinking into Madness for his staff pick last week and you should consult that for a more in-depth history lesson and analysis on the Dark’s debut LP, but I still wanted to throw in my two cents on how exceptional this is. Featuring members of recent favorites Tozcos and Personal Damage (among many others), the pedigree here is strong, and it does not disappoint. As Jeff noted, the riffs are in the Randy Uchida school (I even hear a bit of Motley Crue sleaze on “Heartless”), but the record’s pace and tempos remind me of G-Zet’s restrained gallop. Rather than the guttural vocals you might expect from a band in that style, though, the vocals here sound like 80s LA death rock, using screams, shouts, and even some slightly Dracula-sounding croons. It’s a unique combination, and if you like the intense but dark vibes of False Confession, 45 Grave, or mid-period Execute (Jeff’s Blunt Sleazy comparison was dead-on), the Dark might hit you similarly. Sinking into Madness was a bit of a grower for me… the record is so restrained and the sound is so unique that it took me a minute to adjust, but once it hit, it hit hard. And it goes without saying that the Toxic State packaging is on point as always. Sinking Into Madness is one of the most singular and interesting punk LPs in recent memory.

Yambag: Mindfuck Ultra 12” (11PM Records) Cleveland’s Yambag returns with another highly pressurized blast of manic, faster-than-fast hardcore. If you’ve seen Yambag live, you’re doubtless already a fan, as they are one of the most explosive live bands in contemporary punk. I can think of few other bands that command a room the way they do, and when I’m watching them play I feel like their music is a massive ocean wave that’s obliterating me physically and psychically. Their records, of which I think Mindfuck Ultra is the best yet, are similarly powerful. With a blisteringly fast sound that lies somewhere between DRI’s Dealing with It and Napalm Death’s From Enslavement to Obliteration, Yambag shows all the budget power violence and fastcore bands how a truly great band deploys the blastbeat. When Yambag is blasting, it feels like you’re being run over by a truck (case in point: the first track, “Ancient Relics”), but there’s just as much thought put into the non-blasting sections, and if you took blast parts out, you’d still have a great (if very short) US-style hardcore record. And while all the parts work in and of themselves, when Yambag constructs one of their Rube Goldberg machines of whiplash tempo changes (like on “Huff N Puff”), the effect is singular and outstanding. While so much contemporary hardcore feels trapped in a prison of context where you really need to understand the band’s influences and where they’re coming from socially, aesthetically, and politically in order to appreciate them, Yambag delivers visceral gut-punch hardcore punk that makes it feel like you’re hearing this music for the first time.