June 2020 New Arrivals

Posted by Kamikaze Dan on 6/21/2020
Hello world, 

Well we all know the USA has been a pretty exciting and stressful place since last month's big mass e-mail. This month's e-mail is late getting out because I've been so busy with protest stuff and busier than ever at work, anything relating to punk has simply been pushed out of my brain until this week.

I don't want to write a lengthy ramble about all this stuff at this moment. But I do want to express how totally thrilling it is that police abolishment is now a hot topic in mainstream political discussion. From my perspective, this is practically unthinkable even 6 months ago, and I think it's a victory of the current round of protest movement that this is now a meaningful topic of conversation on mainstream news and such.

Because it's in the news, I've been talking with friends, acquaintances, family about police abolishment and while I have no idea where the many people on this mailing list register this, I know for most people it's a pretty radical idea. But it's not a new idea by any means, and there's a lot of literature about it floating around in the world.
If this is a topic you're grappling with or interested in, I think this FAQ is an easily understood primer to open your mind to why so many people think this is a good idea: https://www.mpd150.com/wp-content/themes/mpd150/assets/faq_zine.pdf. And if you really want to dig deeper into this topic, this great book about it can be downloaded for free: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2426-the-end-of-policing.

Personally I want to see police defunded and dismantled and I think this is not just a reasonable option, but a necessary step forward in our society. And if you're not equally convinced, I encourage you to at least read the FAQ and open yourself to the idea; it's not as "crazy" as you might think.

But while the current protest movement has brought this idea to the forefront of our thoughts, real change requires ongoing and sustained pressure and action.

Along these lines, for all of June, Believe in Punk is donating 50% of every order to BlackVisions and Reclaim The Block, two local Minneapolis organizations that have been, are, and will continue the fight for police dismantling and community strength past the moment, past the spectacle. And, depending on how things pan out, this money will get donated farther down the line to other community organizations endorsed by these two.

Thus far, I've just been donating money as orders come and attaching the donation information to the shipping e-mails. So, thank you to everyone that's ordered thus far, and sorry I'm so late into June for announcing something we're doing in June lol.

Okay, thanks for listening. Now onto what you're actually here for:

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JUNE NEW ARRIVALS

This month, we accumulated a metric shitload of crazy Russian and Polish punk reissues.

             
Reissues, sometimes on vinyl for the first time, of all the legendary Siberian punk: ??????????? ???????, ???, ???? ? ????????????. Some of the best music ever. Soulful, raw, wild, transcending 'punk' as we typically think about it. This is real rebel music. And also very obscure here in the USA. But there's soooo much fable and legend about this crew, it's worth reading up about, very cool shit.

               
Reissues of other classic Russian punk stuff too: the absolutely legendary ?????? ????????????, Russia's most storied anarcho-punk band ????? ???????????????, the stone-cold classic first Purgen LP, and a reissue of the third ???? LP whom you may remember from the their first LP that Maximum Rock n Roll released in 1990.

                
A big pile of Polish reissues and archival releases from classic bands like Abaddon and Deuter. I will spare the lengthy commentary for now, but I will say, this time and place produced what I consider to be some of the best music of all time, any genre, and this kinda stuff is extremely near and dear to my heart and brings back a lot of memories for me. Any good recording from this era, I'm ecstatic to hear it. I was particularly chuffed on We Are the Flowers in the Red Zone comp LP because of the crazy raw Dezerter tracks, shows a side of one of my favorite bands that I wasn't so familiar with.

    
But of course June was not limited to merely these reissues. From brutal shit like Butcher ABC new LP and Brainbombs new LP to more pogo-inducing catchy punk chaos like Scapegoats reissue LP and SS/Block debut EP to wild intense hardcore attack like Suck Lords flexi and Sin Ritmo EP, we got you covered for whatever you're into.

For more commentary on this stuff and more, please scope our Instagram page, where we review choice new arrivals as they come. If it sounds cool when we talk about it, it'll sound even cooler when you hear it streaming on the online store, and even cooler still when you buy the record and slap it on your turntable. 

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currently stuck in the corona postal vortex so keep checking back:
-the cream of the crop of classic Polish punk reissues, still sorting out getting copies since it's on a major label in Poland but I think we got this....
-a bunch of 80's/90's Euro crust reissues and collections (including a big stack of the previously unreleased Homomilitia LP, fuckin PUMPED for that!!)
-a few new Japanese hardcore and crust records and CDs
-yes, we are getting copies of the latest FOAD Records releases, thanks.
-3 new releases on SPHC Records
-tapes capturing the scenes of the Middle East

and more more more

Thanks and talk more in July.

-Dan