[engl] Skillful Butchers is the new album from New York City’s Scalple, their first for Sorry State. Since Scalple’s 2018 12” on Roach Leg Records, they’ve expanded to a five-piece and changed their sound, moving toward the thrash-and-mosh dynamics of late 80s UK hardcore bands like Heresy, Ripcord, and Concrete Sox. Those bands took their inspiration from early 80s US hardcore, and just as the sound changed when those bands carried it across the pond, Scalple infuses this style with the filth, grime, and frustration they soak up walking New York City’s streets. More than just a well-timed throwback, Skillful Butchers ups their inspirations’ ante in terms of intensity and precision, and adds new wrinkles like the blistering metallic lead guitars and the crunching industrial interludes courtesy Maggot Champagne, aka Pharmakon. However you categorize it, Skillful Butchers is a great hardcore record, packed with memorable songs and riffs destined to get the pit moving as the world remembers how to mosh.

[engl] Kuluttava Kone, the 2020 cassette from Sirkka, has been in constant rotation at Sorry State since it came out, and when the opportunity arose to release Sirkka’s debut record, we couldn’t say yes fast enough. While Sirkka began as a two-person recording project based in New York, on Viivyttely they’ve expanded to a four-piece lineup, albeit one whose members are spread across the US east coast and Leipzig, Germany. Vocalist Sanja’s commanding snarl serves as further evidence that Finnish is the best language for hardcore punk, while the band draws from their roots in early 80s New England hardcore and their fascination with 80s Finnish punk, creating a unique sound that fuses the former’s brute force to the latter’s subtle sense of melody. It’s like Jerry’s Kids, SSD, Rattus, and Kaaos in one giant pigpile. Five tracks of hardcore punk that crackle with intensity.

[engl] 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.

[engl] Tørsö caught our attention with their debut 7”, Community Psychosis, but when we heard Sono Pronta A Morire we really flipped out. Originally a project band started by a group of worldwide hardcore all-stars, Tørsö adopts the best parts of members’ previous projects--the energy of Neo-Cons, the precision of Punch, the heaviness of Holy and the ferocity of Ritual Control—while simultaneously breaking new ground. Easily one of the tightest and most explosive bands in hardcore today, on their debut LP Tørsö combine the catchy, crusty riffs and rhythms of Swedish hardcore like Totalitär and Herätys with pit-clearing mid-paced parts, wrapping it up in a bruisingly thick recording that doesn’t skimp on the bottom end. While they’re very much fast, loud, and hard, Tørsö are a comfortable fit with Sorry State’s pattern of releasing thoughtful, well-developed, and well-written hardcore.

[engl] Following up their Lukko cassette from 2021, Sorry State presents the debut vinyl from Joensuu, Finland’s Valtatyhjiö. While Valtatyhjiö takes inspiration from furious 80s Finnish hardcore punk, they don’t allow reverence for the classics to box in their sound, crafting a unique and instantly identifiable blend of hardcore, punk, metal, and rock and roll. The title track leads off Kuristusleikki by going straight for the jugular, but by the second song, “Petoksen Messias,” the scope widens, bringing in black metal touches and double bass drumming, the creative and tasteful deployment of which is a hallmark of Valtatyhjiö’s sound. On the b-side, “Viilto Kerrallaan” has a big riff and a rock-and-roll swing, while “Riite” closes the EP on an ominous note, sounding like a more hateful version of label-mates Zorn. Like Zorn, Valtatyhjiö’s music floats between hardcore, punk, and metal seamlessly and organically. While those genres can feel like they’ve been done to death, Valtatyhjiö finds their voice in the spaces between and across them, their originality granting them direct access to the intensity at this music’s core.

[engl] Summer is here, so that means it's time for a new LP from Raleigh, North Carolina's Whatever Brains! Like their previous two LPs for Sorry State, this new album both gives us the fix of jittery, nervous punk we've come to expect from the Brains while subtly expanding the band's sound in a number of non-obvious directions. In particular, there's a discernible dark synth-pop influence on tracks like "Yellow Death 2000" and "New Drop," and big, Brit-pop-style choruses on songs like (my personal favorite) "Bellied Up." This LP also has the band's most ambitious, layered production to date, the bright and clear mastering job from Josh Bonati giving you equal pleasure whether you plan to blast this from your car speakers with all the windows down or take the headphone route down the Brains' sonic rabbit-hole.

[engl] On this, the Whatever Brains' fourth and final full-length, the band continues tilting at the windmills of punk’s aesthetic myopia and the United States’ gradual political unraveling, and it’s as musically and lyrically brilliant as ever. The Brains continue to exploit their knack for combining rhythmic complexity with big, melodic hooks, but the vibe here is less frantic than their previous releases. They are now able to ride an EDM-influenced groove or wallow in a sax-drenched psych jam for much longer than the ADD-addled songwriting style of their earlier records would have allowed. There’s no small degree of provocation in the fact that the Brains take their most ambitious work and plaster the word “PUNK” across it in giant letters. I still haven’t figured out whether this gesture is an homage or an indictment, but forcing myself to square my definition of punk with Whatever Brains’ combination of lyrical sincerity and musical nihilism has been one of the chief pleasures of following this band.

[engl] Woodstock 99 follows up 2022’s Super Gremlin with another deep dive into Cleveland’s hallucinogen-soaked hardcore underbelly. While Woodstock 99 typically delights in obliterating your expectations, you could get through almost the whole A side of 99 Ta Life thinking they’ve made a conventional (for them, at least) hardcore punk record. And their hardcore chops have only sharpened since Super Gremlin, with brilliant, memorable riffs, powerful and confident playing, and uniquely demented vocals. However, even at their most straightforward, you never know where Woodstock 99’s songs will go, darting between parts in ways that surprise you on the first listen, but sound perfectly natural once you’ve acclimated to the group’s cracked logic. While that logic colors the hardcore tracks on the A side, on the B side, Woodstock 99 charges headlong into the void. “99 Problems” is a psychedelic ramble that wanders through a succession of modes before a sudden explosion brings the track to an abrupt end. Closer “Za Rat King” is the masterpiece, though, an eight-minute journey composed and performed with the assistance of artificial intelligence where a hooky four-bar phrase haunts a glitched-out universe encompassing a dizzying parade of genres and musical traditions. Like a lot of Woodstock 99’s music, it really interrogates the boundary between genius and idiocy. So strap in, grab Woodstock 99’s hand, and follow as they lead us even further down the rabbit hole.

[engl] Everyone has to swallow the world’s shit, but Cleveland’s Woodstock 99 regurgitates it in technicolor. Their nihilistic and antagonistic take on hardcore punk can recall the Kings of Punk in their prime, but this band is too fucked up to focus on their rage… sometimes they’d rather wander away after a psychedelic riff or poke around in the trash for scraps of 90s pop culture. On Super Gremlin, Woodstock 99 examines the void from all angles, and while it might look frightening or intimidating from some vantage points, from other angles all you can do is laugh. One pill turns you into Jerry A (“La Casa De Fuck You”), and one pill lands you at the denouement of a French noir film (“Budget Inn”), and another one summons DJ Lethal to lay down some sick scratches (“Beatboxing in Viet… Nam!!”). Down them all, chase them with a couple shots of cheap whiskey, and follow Woodstock 99 down the rabbit hole.

[engl] 500 copies on black vinyl. Includes pocket sleeve and a die-cut sticker.

[engl] Finally, the long-awaited debut album from Philadelphia’s Zorn. While Zorn’s theatrical, (literally) scorching live shows are the stuff of legend, it would be a grave mistake to think the chaos they summon is all about the flaming swords, makeup, and leather corsets. Like Alice Cooper and David Bowie before them, Zorn knows you gotta have the songs to back up the image. Zorn’s metal-punk draws on death rock melody, intricate thrash riffing, and the bulldozing power of Discharge-inspired hardcore bands, but the songs are as infectious as they are intense. As with early Metallica, tracks like “Already Dead” and “Delco Devil Mosh” are built on memorable melodies that, in another time and place, might have formed the backbone of a killer glam rock single. I’m happy with my current reality, though, where Zorn is the kind of band who puts a devil standing atop a pile of flaming skulls on the cover of their album.