After recording their acclaimed 2019 album, Morbid Stuff, PUP was left with a handful of songs that didn’t make the final tracklist, largely because they were too frenetic or too unhinged. And for an album that fantasized about the world exploding, that’s saying a lot. “We usually save the really dark songs for the end of an album,” says frontman Stefan Babcock. “But we felt that Morbid Stuff was already pretty fucking dark by the time we got there.” The Toronto four-piece loved these thematic stragglers so much, though, that instead of forcing them onto the record or hiding them away forever, they decided that they deserved to stand on their own.

The excluded tracks are now seeing the light via a six-song EP, This Place Sucks Ass.

For This Place Sucks Ass, however, they say it was relieving to let loose and put something into the world that values pleasure over perfection. “Our expectations are so high. Every album we make, we want it to be better than the last,” says Babcock. “But just putting out songs we like and think are fun, that’s also pretty rewarding. Taking a breather from the pressure we put on ourselves has been so positive for us.” Like all of their material, This Place Sucks Assis a document of the band PUP is—at times thoughtful and introspective and at other times wildly cathartic. And they hope that fans will take its sentiments of anger, frustration, and bitterness that run through This Place Sucks Ass and find collective empowerment and joy in turning them outward along with them. “Everything sucks and that’s OK, because it sucks for everybody,” says Babcock. “And we can make it a little bit better by being together in the shittiness.”