Note: Our remaining copies have some noticeable seam wear / partial splitting on the top edge from shipping.

Five years since their previous EP, NYC punks Kaleidoscope return with Cities of Fear—an 8 song 12” of dark utopian hardcore punk written and recorded at D4MT Labs by the band in only a few days. Rougher and more chaotic than their previous records, like a crazed, spontaneous live offering from seasoned veterans, Cities of Fear sounds like a band returning to their roots, with the heavy, mid 80’s anarcho-punk of Wretched, Crucifix, and Iconoclast serving as their North Star. This record is a surprising and seething document from a group that, after a decade together, continues to experiment with their anger.

Our take: New York’s Kaleidoscope returns triumphantly from a five-year slumber with their new 12”, Cities of Fear, on La Vida Es Un Mus. Here at Sorry State we have been huge fans of Kaleidoscope since they started, and while I think they were criminally underrated during their original run, it seems like more people are interested in Cities of Fear, and with good reason. Kaleidoscope hasn’t changed all that much in the intervening years, but the world has, and their brand of earnest, organic, and defiantly political hardcore punk feels even more potent and relevant in 2025. Musically, Kaleidoscope has always stood out from other contemporary hardcore punk bands with their intuitive, ensemble-based way of playing and composing. Kaleidoscope’s songs feel loose and improvisational, the band not so much reciting the parts they have composed as actively discovering and exploring them as they’re recording. Not that Kaleidoscope is a jam band… despite this organic quality, they pack their songs with killer riffs and choruses. See, for instance, “Controlled Opposition,” whose elastic, Sabbath-by-way-of-Flag riffing sounds straight off COC’s Eye for an Eye, and “Blood Minerals,” whose shouted chorus is as memorable as anything in the Crass Records catalog. But where Kaleidoscope does resemble a jam band (or, for a more relevant comparison, Fugazi) is how every bar feels unique, each moment suffused with discovery, intensity, and expression. The closing instrumental, “Dirge for the Disappeared,” is a great example, the song’s fade-in and fade-out implying it’s a fragment of a jam, the 3 members winding around this loping, waltz-y musical phrase for a minute and a half. It feels like the musical articulation of a walk in the woods, but by naming it “Dirge for the Disappeared” and overlaying a cryptic, muffled sound sample, Kaleidoscope injects the song with a striking poignancy, which serves as a great counterpoint to the more direct and confrontational, anarcho-punk inspired lyrics on the rest of the album. Either of these aspects of Kaleidoscope’s music would be great on its own—their channeling of the directness and intensity of 80 hardcore punk and their telepathic brilliance as a musical ensemble—but together they make Cities of Fear an utterly unique and powerful musical statement.