[engl] It seems that every time you turn around, there’s another Oh Sees slab. Long ago we lost all capacity to be surprised that this sturdy unit keeps putting out records and that they’re really good. You can now add the Metamorphosed 12” to your ever deeper shelf sagging row of John Dwyer & Co.’s seemingly no sleep release schedule. The five tracks were taken from the sessions that formed 2019’s Face Stabber album, a 17 track/80+ minute jammified four-sider. Metamorphosed would have been the perfect third LP to fit in with the other two. The very existence of Metamorphosed asks any number of questions. Speculation is for pundits and amateurs. Let’s go to John Dwyer and see if he’ll kick loose some information. As to the Metamorphosed coming out so long after Face Stabber: This is just how the release landed. We are trying to stagger the releases a bit this year and we have a salvo coming down the pipe, so that’s how the cookie crumbled. Metamorphosed would’ve been out sooner but with the virus restrictions, shipping of LPs has obviously slowed down and so has manufacturing, so here we are. It’s worthwhile to note the Face Stabber sessions also resulted in The 12” Synth, a two track deal released in November of 2019. So, what was happening in the studio that rendered almost three hours of finished music? Just the usual run with ideas. Usually this takes place at the end of the planned recording. We have extra time and tape to lay down some deep cuts and long jams, etc., the fun part, really. It’s a test to keep up with Dwyer and his extraordinarily able bandmates. It seems like there’s always something on the way to the pressing plant. When and how did Metamorphosed come together? Basically, I found myself with a 12"'s worth of material in the new year and things were starting to grind to a halt, so it was the perfect time to sew it all up. People need some tunes right now and I think the artist's community is making a good run of it. So much great shit is seeing light right now. John and Matt Jones run the Castle Face label with full autonomy, so it would make sense that Metamorphosed, like The 12” Synth, would have been a CF release. Yet, it’s on the very cool Rock Is Hell Records label, which has put out some great Dwyer related jams in the past. The OCS Live In San Francisco album was not only great musically but all the vinyl and sleeve variants made the collectors break out in a fan sweat they’re probably still recovering from. Being able to do all this yourself, it’s obviously cool to still work with Jochen and Rock Is Hell. Yes. I’ve worked with Jochen a few times over the past decade or more (so he is grandfathered in. :) It’s pretty rare these days that I work outside my own label but his stuff is so well done and usually its own work of art. Last question. The fan cannot resist! At any time, were you thinking of making Face Stabber a 3LP set? Hell no. But now maybe I am. Metamorphosed isn’t just some barrel scrape for those who can’t get enough. All of the five tracks stand up to anything on Face Stabber. The record’s 23+ minute I Got A Lot is one of the coolest songs the band has ever done. As it is with a full on Rock Is Hell roll out, there’s a lot of details. Metamorphosed is no exception. This is what the release schedule looks like: In October, there will be a silkscreened cover limited to 300 copies with four sleeve variants. A larger press run will follow in January with four or five color variants. Whew! Something to look forward to! Henry Rollins clear w/ blue & green splatter exclusiv distributed by Sounds Of Subterrania, Ger

[engl] Transmission incoming… Alien sound waves have been bouncing off the side of our ship. We’ve managed to capture some of them on plastic. They seem to appear suddenly out of the vacuum. Projected by planets Beamed through stars Reflected off debris Hanging in space like dust motes Witch egg is a improvised set of songs by John Dwyer, Nick Murray, Brad Caulkins, Greg Coates & Tom Dolas. Another fired expedition out in the wilds. Recorded and mixed at Stu-Stu-Studio by John Dwyer This one is a burner designed optimally for your eco-pod sound system. When you’ve left the world behind, you will need a soundtrack while you lay in dream stasis This is it!

[engl] Debut 12" from this San Francisco punk band that first caught my ear on their split 7" with Mexico's Los Monjo. Like Los Monjo (and like singer Jose's old band, Peligro Social), Ruleta Rusa take the big, anthemic riffs of old Spanish punk like Eskorbuto and inject them with the wild energy of 80s US hardcore, sealing the deal with a sprinkling of infectious, rocked-out lead guitar. Whether they're bashing out an upbeat singalong like "La Ley" or a darker, more downbeat song like the title track, Ruleta Rusa fill every moment with maximum power and energy. Recommended for punks who like punk.

[engl] After a scorching demo and three standout contributions to the American Idylls compilation, Sorry State is proud to present the debut release from Raleigh, North Carolina’s Das Drip. When Das Drip went to record with Kris Hilbert at Legitimate Business studio in Greensboro, North Carolina, they told him they wanted their record to sound like Government Issue’s Legless Bull EP. While it does sound a lot like the explosive snot-punk of early GI’s (as well as hormone overdoses like Gang Green’s This is Boston Not LA tracks or Negazione’s Tutti Pazzi EP), no one will mistake this for retro rehash. Most of Das Drip is double the age of your typical Teen Idle, and they’ve spent those years listening to and playing a lot more than just hardcore. Which isn’t to say this is “mature” either; after all, how can you call a record “mature” when its catchiest lyrics are “tapeworm hanging out your butt?” Most hardcore bands’ attempts to articulate rage and angst look like a three year old’s temper tantrum next to Das Drip’s debut, which is wilder, faster, crazier, and more intense than pretty much anything you can toss at it. Maybe Das Drip is for people who don’t like hardcore anymore because of the macho attitudes, unimaginative tunes, uninspired playing, or any number of other valid reasons. Really, though this record is perfect for anyone who wants the opposite of a Spotify playlist with the word “chill” in the title.

[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] It's been nearly five years since Ruleta Rusa released Aqui No Es, their debut LP for Sorry State, but if you think they've slowed, mellowed, or otherwise slipped off their game you are sorely mistaken. If anything, they're harder, faster, and punker on Viviendo Una Maldicion than they were on Aqui No Es, as perfectly exhibited on Viviendo's furious opening track, "No Hay Paz." Elsewhere on the album you get a similar mixture of classic Spanish punk, US hardcore, and second-wave UK punk that you heard on the band's previous releases, but everything feels a little more direct and a little rougher around the edges. Oh, and dig the show-stopping pair of Paralisis Permanente covers that close the album! In a word, Ruleta Rusa have gotten better... the tougher parts are tougher, the catchy parts are catchier, and they've delivered what is (to date, at least) the crowning achievement of their discography.

[engl] The first two singles from North Carolina's Brain FäŠæ left a lot of people scratching their heads: Is it garage? Is it hardcore? (It's definitely punk.) How did they write such catchy riffs? How do you pronounce "FäŠæ?" Brain FäŠæ's debut long player, Sleep Rough, will force you to ponder those same questions and may breed even more (and we mean that in the best way possible). Everything has been amped up for this release... the hard stuff is harder, the catchy stuff is catchier (oh, is it catchy!), and the weird stuff is weirder. There's no need for band comparisons, but if you're into that sort of thing then imagine the SAINTS' minds in TEENGENERATE and the AVENGERS' bodies sent to a dystopian future. Really, though, this sounds like the year 2011; if you like huge guitars, endless vocal hooks, and a turbo-charged rhythm section (you do), then you need to hear this record.

[engl] 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.

[engl] at you could hear on the earlier 12”. We tend to love bands that fall in the cracks between subgenres here at Sorry State, and the way Natural Causes combine the atmospheric arrangements and angular riffing of post-punk with the energy of garage-punk, all the while sprinkling the whole thing liberally with big pop melodies, makes them a perfect fit for the label. Recommended if you like your punk loud and aggressive, but still forward-thinking and adventurous.

[engl] Raleigh, North Carolina's Devour were born from the ashes of Cross Laws, but rather than simply picking up where that band left off, the remaining members expanded to a 5-piece and followed the long southern tradition of adding traces of metal into our hardcore. What emerged was a record that is remarkably dense and complex, recalling the very best of the mid-80s trend of hardcore bands "going metal;" think Corrosion of Conformity's Animosity LP, Final Conflict's Ashes to Ashes and Septic Death's Need So Much Attention. There's also a heavy Japanese influence; people who have seen Devour live have compared them to Judgment, Lip Cream and Bastard, a connection only made clearer by this record's astonishingly heavy and powerful recording. In a scene where so many bands simply want to replicate something that has already happened, Devour sound remarkably fresh and progressive, and without losing a single thing you loved about hardcore in the first place.

[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] 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.

[engl] With Slippy When Wet, Pittsburgh’s S.L.I.P. go after that rarest of white whales: the all-killer, no filler 33RPM 12” hardcore record. If you’d only heard their earlier stuff, I could see worrying that the lurching, deep-in-the-pocket, Black Flag/Bl’ast!-style rhythms that are at the core of the band’s sound might wear on the ear after a while (god knows some of those later ‘Flag records can be tough to get through in one sitting), but Slippy When Wet reveals that, much like the Adolescents or the Zero Boys, S.L.I.P. are pretty much just writing great pop songs and delivering them with the energy and power of hardcore punk. In addition to being jam-packed with memorable tunes, the playing here is just phenomenal… the “members-of” list for this band is both long and deep, and the experience shows whether they're playing full-tilt hardcore punk like “Not Your Prey” or a Judas Priest-style riff-rock sing-along like “Fast Living.” S.L.I.P. have that Annihilation Time-esque way of using their phenomenal technical proficiency in the service of making music that is fun and energetic rather than dense and pretentious, and like those great A.T. releases, Slippy When Wet is a record that won’t leave your turntable for a very long time.

[engl] After two 7”s (one on Deranged and one on Sorry State), Raleigh, North Carolina's Davidians deliver their first 12” record. Realizing the sound hinted at on their previous two-song single, City Trends combines elements of art-punk and hardcore into one of the freshest and most distinctive sounds in contemporary punk. While Davidians pick up on various threads in punk’s 40-year history—the pulse and heaviness of 90s noise rock, the quirky rhythms of the Wire branch of post-punk’s family tree, the brooding atmosphere of goth, and the velocity and concision of early 80s US hardcore—these elements are fully digested, growing organically out of the sound of four people of varying ages and backgrounds playing in a room together. Rather than just referencing other parts of my record collection, for me listening to City Trends reminds me of a time of discovery, when every new band I found was a universe unto themselves ripe for exploring. With this record, the RIYL is rendered obsolete… you either like Davidians, or you don’t. But if you like smart, dense, and original punk rock then I’m pretty sure you’re going to like it a lot.