Sarah Herrera, The Chaotic Voice of Punk Returns With New Compilation
by Thomas Bedward June 24, 2025
Hailing from The Bronx, NYC, Sarah Herrera is an artist renowned for her uncompromising sound, controversial approach, and unshakable passion for music. In a world where the music industry often celebrates polish over purpose, Sarah has always marched off-key, carving out her own, defiant and often chaotic path.
Over the years, her voice, both literal and metaphorical, has cut through the noise with jagged sincerity, biting satire, and an unapologetic disdain for the systems that commodify creativity. With bands like Pancreatic Cancer and The Tommy Lasorda Experience, and a discography that veers from hilarious to harrowing (often within the same song), Herrera has long stood as a chaotic but necessary presence in the underground punk world.
We recently caught up with her again to talk about her new compilation album, ‘Taking It Too Far’, and the often-surprising true stories behind some of her most infamous tracks.
Last time we spoke, you were setting your sights on a live album? How did that go, and where can we check it out?
“Hey, thanks for having me. The live album, ‘I Never Make Mistakes Because I Never Do Anything’, was on Spotify for about 20 minutes before I yanked down our entire catalogue, so it probably only got a few hundred thousand streams, haha. Right now, if you want to check it out, you have to hack my phone. The PIN is 1356. Samsung Galaxy S25 if that helps. Please ignore the folder in there of what would be considered … um, artistic photos of myself, I don’t need these ones leaked too. But expect it to be available as a free digital download soon.”
“It is very faithful to attending one of our shows, and it’s actually really good, but don’t take my word for it – ask my parents. Just go to one of those crappy data broker sites online and put in Tomas or Mikaela Herrera in The Bronx, their numbers are probably on there along with their social security numbers and blood types.”
You’ve moved from a live album to a compilation album, the classic best of. What was the driving force behind that? Especially after you stepped away from the limelight and took all your music offline.
“Hmm. Well, a number of reasons. First and foremost, I believe art is a public good, I refuse to monetise, and you have to with paid streaming services. That’s a deal breaker for me. Second, I want something out there that you can listen from start to finish without hitting the skip button, and oh boy were there some skips on our albums. I don’t want someone to hear about me, go to Spotify, and pull up a song like ‘No Anesthesia’ or ‘Sarah Throws A Socialist Hissy Fit’ and be like ‘WTF? Yeah, this is a hard no’. What’s the phrase – ‘all killer, no filler' I’m shooting for ‘all tolerable, no filler’.”
“The compilation album is called ‘Taking It Too Far’, and we tried to run the gamut from new songs to old songs, from serious songs to the ones that should only be played over loudspeakers in poorly-run state psychiatric hospitals. So, you’ll hear the standards, ‘This Is My Jam!’, ‘Song For My Niece’, ‘My First Trip To A Whorehouse Didn’t Go So Well’, ‘Is It Really A Stereotype If It’s Actually True?’, ‘Being On The Sex Offender Registry Sucks’, ‘These Things Happen’ and so forth.”
“We also included some old ones like ‘The Sex Pistols Were Terrible’ (which I wrote when I was 14) and ‘California 1978’. But there’s some also interesting stuff on there too – we included ‘Die Die My Friend’, which was recorded in a basement in Queens when I was 11, I played guitar (I went by Noodle Girl at the time, all I ate was Ramen Noodles), that was B-Stylez on lead and background vocals and Señor Bonez on drums.”
“We also included the songs ‘I’m Not Answering That’ and ‘Aloha Spicoli’ just to make sure we get sued. I mean, we do have a reputation to uphold. All three songs from ‘The Ungodly Trilogy’ are on there – ‘A Collect Call From Nowhere’, ‘What’s Yours Is Mine’, and ‘I Drink And Drive Because I Want To Be A Giant Pinball Going Down The Road’. Probably the only issue is that ‘I Know They’re Not Felt They’re Silk I Felt Silk And I Felt Felt And I Felt More Silk Than I Felt Felt’ is kind of a long song title and throws off the alignment on the back of the CD.”
What was the curation process like for this collection, how did you pick the tracks and are there any really significant inclusions for you?
“Wasn’t hard, really kind of went by songs requested at shows, songs played on the radio or podcasts, or just our own ears. Jimmy Cullen (guitar), Miguel Estrada (drums), Carl Horneaux (horns), Jackson Dawes of Insurrectionary Records NYC and I sat down and we really were mostly in agreement, in a few cases we settled it by playing our standard game of “rock, paper, punch you in the genitals”, which I usually win at. I certainly don’t cry like they do.”
“So, it’s 23 studio songs followed by one raw demo (‘I’m Never Going Back To Jail’) and one live track (‘The Blacks And Blues’). Again, there were a lot of no-brainers. ‘I Guess That’s What It All Came Back To, Didn’t It?’, ‘Me Me Me Me More More More Mine Mine Mine’, ‘I Think They’re Making Porn In The Office Down The Hall’, ‘I Like Your Afro’, ‘The Hot Chocolate Urine Of Shame’, ‘Look Out Utility Poles!’.”
“A CD, at least through our manufacturer, holds 25 songs max if you’re a punk band that can keep things under 3 minutes. So there were some unfortunate cuts that had to be made from the album – ‘What’s Happening!’, ‘We Sucked A Lot Of Cock To Get Where We Are Today’, ‘Please Sign Us To A Major Label’, ‘Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Or Your Night One)’, ‘Failure Is The Best Success’, ‘What The Hell Happened To Times Square?’, ‘I’ll Quit Smoking When You Quit Breathing’, ‘Lo Que Es Tuyo Es Mio’ – hated to make those cuts. But they will all be on the digital download once I can figure out how to make a zip file, haha. Probably need to right-click or something.”
You’ve spoken in the past about self-destructive acts within your music. Is the compilation a way to reclaim or rebuild after some of those acts?
“Short answer: no. Long answer: fuck no. You pull eight albums and eleven singles without the permission of your record label; there is no coming back from that. No label in the world would touch me with a ten-foot penis. This is strictly for the fans. And to my way of thinking, if you listen to our music and don’t throw up in your mouth, that makes you a fan. Sorry, my music, my rules.”
Titles like 'The Hot Chocolate Urine Of Shame' and 'My First Visit To A Whorehouse Didn’t Go So Well” are sure to raise an eyebrow or two. Are there stories behind those tracks?
“Oh yeah, there’s a story behind everything. A lot of weird stuff happens to me, and most of our songs are true stories. ‘The Hot Chocolate Urine Of Shame’ is about me drinking like 8 cups of coffee and a hot chocolate while driving to visit a friend in Kentucky. It was in the middle of hailstorm, I had to pee so bad, and I didn’t feel like pulling over. Dropped the jeans and panties and filled a one quarter full cup of hot chocolate with Grade A urine, steering with my knees (yeah, New York City driver). Surprised I didn’t get killed, but God looks over babies and drunks, I believe is the saying. I then tried to dump the contents out the window while doing 70 on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and you can probably guess what happened. I think more pee came back at me than I actually threw out the window. I ended up cleaning my face and hair with some Armor All wipes I found in the backseat.”
“’My First Visit’ sounds like a goofy song, but it’s probably the saddest song I ever wrote. You can probably find the lyrics online. I was good friends with a gang member named José, I won’t name the gang obviously. He was an absolute lunatic, would drive drunk doing 90 on the BQE, passing people on the shoulder, it was terrifying. One night, he took me to a whorehouse in Jackson Heights. I still don’t know why, he probably thought it was funny. While he was in a back room putting his sting down low into some poor girl, I sat there talking with the women in Spanish. One was from Colombia, she was very young, and she was doing this to send money back home for her daughter. I asked her how much this place charged for sex, and she told me. I asked how much she got to keep, she just smiled sadly and said nothing. I asked if I could pay her for our conversation, she said ok, and I gave her every cent I had on me. Eventually he dropped me off at home and I cried myself to sleep. This is not in the song, but José was shot to death a few months later. Musically it’s one of our best songs. Lyrically, I often wish I had never written it. If we play it live and you see my eyes are a little red afterwards, I’m not high. Well, I am high, of course I am, but that won’t be the reason.”
When we spoke before, you mentioned some songs like ‘Is It Really A Stereotype If It's Actually True?’ which led to anonymous death threats. What was it like revisiting that track and putting it out there in the compilation?
“My therapist says songs like that, or ‘Song For My Niece’, are evidence of self-destructive behaviour, and possibly even a passive death wish. Yes, I do see a therapist, if you started three bands in junior high school called vomitsemen, RAPE! and Death By A Thousand Cunts, your parents would have taken you to see one too. She’s pretty nice, although after about half an hour I usually put in earbuds and start texting people. ‘Stereotype’ was a little problematic though. I try not to read stuff about myself online, but that song was very much misinterpreted by people. When I sang about all those horrible stereotypes actually being true, everyone seemed to think I was joking.”
How was it looking back over your full discography and re-visiting things for the compilation? Were there mixed feelings around taking a lot of the music down from digital streaming platforms, and do you think you’ll return to those platforms?
“First question – yes, it was hard. I read an interview with some singer, and he said that when he listens to their first album, he wants to rip the stereo out of the wall. When I listen to our first album, I want to ritually disembowel myself with a ceremonial Japanese sword I’ve been admiring belonging to that anime guy on the 4th floor who keeps forgetting to lock his door. That album was called ‘Want To Hear The Most Annoying Sound In The World?’, and boy was I glad to see that baby go to digital heaven. ‘Let The Bad Times Roll’ was ok, and my heart was in the right place on ‘Failure Is The Best Success’ and ‘A Song About The Best Songs Ever’, but come on, Sarah – a song called ‘I Haven’t Had Sheets On My Bed For Over Three Months’? The thought of anyone having listened to that makes me want to get drunk and drive head on into a bus again.”
You’ve been both a solo artist and in a tonne of bands. How does the experience differ for you? Are there elements you prefer in one form over the other?
“Yeah, I much prefer to be in a band. Having my name out there so prominently gives me the heebie-jeebies, to be honest. My former label, Insurrectionary Records NYC, they were a small label but they did things right, they mailed out promo stuff and glossy 8x10’s of me all the time, and then I’d go to work in the morning and see people snickering in their cubicles, and taped to my monitor would be one of them with something obscene written on it with a Sharpie and a reasonable facsimile of my signature.”
“I always put a heart above my name, so usually there’s boobs or something instead. When I speak to clients, I usually kind of mumble my last name, I think a lot of them know me as Sarah Hrrrrurrruh. At least there are a lot of Sarah Herreras in the world, when people Google me without adding ‘punk’ or ‘music’, luckily they usually get that newscaster or the doctor out on the West Coast. Actually, the only thing that comes up on the first page of Google for just my name is an interview I did once with something called Broken8Records. I dunno, you probably never heard of them.”
Looking at your body of work, what do you hope listeners take away from your music, particularly those who might be new to your sound or message?
“Ha, I think that was a question in the closing credits of This Is Spinal Tap. I don’t like to plagiarize, except in all the songs we did which are just my favourite movie quotes (and were subsequently scrapped, although ‘Aloha Spicoli’ managed to slip through on the album ‘Yelling Freebird! At Funerals’, which was with my side project Pancreatic Cancer).”
“If there’s something to take away, it would be that when you’re listening to one of my songs, it was written for you. I may not know you as an individual, but that doesn’t matter. Wasn’t written for fortune. Wasn’t written for fame. I never tried to write a hit single for Sony or EMI or whatever and get invited to play a duet at the Super Bowl halftime show with some talentless rapper. I sometimes used to go to shows as an 11 or 12 year old and try to meet the band afterwards and be told to move along. Fuck that. You come up to me on the street as a fan, I’ll give you my number, we’ll have drinks together. You can put it on your credit card, and I’ll write you a third-party out of state check, won’t be a problem.”
Now that these new releases are slowly making their way out into the world, do you think there is space for some new material?
“New releases? Definitely.”
“Oh, you mean from me? Very doubtful. Maybe if the right K-Pop boy band comes knocking. Whatever. It’s all a work in progress. I’ll let you get on to the next interview.”