Slugger - Dead State

Slugger’s Dead State (released in 2024) hit me like a brick wall the first time I put the cd on. It’s got that kind of raw, desperate urgency. People have compared the vocals to early Henry Rollins, and I get it. There’s that same bark he had in State of Alert, the way every line sounded like it had to be shouted or he’d choke on it. Rollins was the first frontman I really followed, starting when I was twelve, trying to survive the zoo called high school. His voice gave me a way out, or maybe a way through—it told me it was okay to be furious, to not fit in, to carry your scars like armor. When I listen to Dead State, I feel echoes of that same fire, and it’s the best reminder of why I’ve stuck with this scene for so long.

The album itself is pure collision—Oi! with a hardcore backbone, layered with the swagger of street rock ’n’ roll. You can hear bits of Iron Cross or The Bruisers in the grit, even some Slaughter and the Dogs in the basslines, but Slugger aren’t copycats. They’ve found their stride, bulldozing forward with “brickwall Oi!” anthems that have weight and groove, even a faint reggae sway under all the concrete. Lyrically, it’s straight from the working-class heart: everyday struggle, frustration with the state of the world, the kind of truth that makes you nod along because you’ve lived it too.

For me, Dead State feels like part of a bigger lineage. It plugs straight into the bloodline of the records that carried me through my teenage years. Back then, it was Damaged, The truth the whole truth albums spinning late at night while I tried to make sense of the world. Now, years later, here comes a record that gives me the same jolt. That reminder that Oi! still has teeth, still has something to say, and still belongs to the misfits, the angry kids, the working-class lifers.

Dead State is tough, fast, unashamedly real. It’s the sound of carrying on, fists clenched, heart intact. Just like Rollins taught me when I was twelve—sometimes the loudest, roughest voices are the ones that save you.