Last year, California punks Militarie Gun released their tunefully muscular full-length debut Life Under The Gun, and it’s one of the best albums of 2023. (I had it at #1 on my personal list.) Earlier this week, Militarie Gun announced plans for Life Under The Sun, a new companion-piece EP of reworked and prettified tracks from that album. Today, Life Under The Sun arrives.

We’ve already posted three of the five tracks from the new EP: “Very High (Under The Sun),” “Never Fucked Up Twice” with Bully, “My Friends Are Having A Hard Time” with Manchester Orchestra. Today, we get to post the other two. The other big reworking from the new EP is a much softer and prettier take on “Will Logic” with Mannequin Pussy, another band that does great work on the fringes of the hardcore world.

And then there’s the cover. I knew this one was coming. Militarie Gun’s Ian Shelton DM’ed me about their version of NOFX’s 2003 track “Whoops I OD’d” a couple of months ago, and he got me to jump into The War On Errorism, a NOFX record that I’d never bothered to process. (I had a NOFX phase, but it ended sometime after Heavy Petting Zoo.) Good album! Militarie Gun turn “Whoops, I OD’d,” a highlight of that record, into a vulnerable acoustic campfire thing, and it’s enough to make me wonder if MG are planning to move in a much-softer direction on future records. I love their stagedive songs, but they’re good at this stuff, too. Check out the new tracks below.

The Life Under The Sun EP is out now on Loma Vista. Mannequin Pussy’s new album I Got Heaven is out 3/1 on Epitaph.