Social Distortion‘s 1983 debut album, Mommy’s Little Monsteris getting a 40th anniversary reissue on November 10 via Bicycle Music / CONCORD. Including punk classics like “Another State of Mind”, “The Creeps,” and “Telling Them,” the album has been newly mastered from the original analog tapes and pressed on 180-gram vinyl, and comes in a gatefold sleeve matching its original release.
BrooklynVegan is excited to offer an exclusive variant of the album, pressed on grey vinyl to match the album’s iconic artwork and limited to 500 copies. Preorder yours now.
Mommy’s Little Monster made our list of 15 ’80s punk albums that shaped the ’90s/’00s pop punk boom. Here’s what we wrote:
Social Distortion initially came out of the same Orange County hardcore scene as Adolescents, Agent Orange, and D.I. (and shared members with all of those bands), and on their early singles (which are now readily available on the Mainliner: Wreckage from the Past compilation), they more or less sounded like a straight-up hardcore band. But by their 1983 debut full-length Mommy’s Little Monster, they took a more melodic turn that would prove to be highly influential. Mommy’s Little Monster didn’t fully embrace the country-punk sound that Social Distortion would develop on 1988’s Prison Bound and really dive into on their breakthrough 1990 major label debut, but it hinted at a love of Americana and helped create a blend of punk energy and “traditional songwriting” that would reverberate through the music of Rancid and The Offspring to Against Me! and Hot Water Music to The Gaslight Anthem to The Menzingers. It’s also worth noting that Social D themselves infiltrated the mainstream a good four years before the “punk revival.” Their aforementioned major label debut scored a few alt-rock hits and 1992’s “Bad Luck” was an even bigger one. But before any of that, there was Mommy’s Little Monster, a punk record that gracefully balanced raw power and melody and that was so clearly ahead of its time it’s almost hard to believe how old it actually is.
Check out the mock up of our variant’s artwork, the album’s tracklist, and classic single “Another State of Mind” below.
MOMMY’S LITTLE MONSTER:
Side A
The Creeps
Another State Of Mind
It Wasn’t A Pretty Picture
Telling Them
Side B
Hour Of Darkness
Mommy’s Little Monster
Anti-Fashion
All The Answers
Moral Threat
