New Hope for the Wretched
album by Plasmatics
New Hope for the Wretched is the debut studio album by American punk rock band Plasmatics. It was released on October 2, 1980, by Stiff Records.
Jimmy Miller, former producer of the Rolling Stones and Motörhead (a band Plasmatics would collaborate with in the future), was the initial producer for the album. He had a heroin addiction from the day he arrived in New York City and he was virtually useless to the project, nearly bringing the whole project down with him. Stiff Records fired Miller, and the album was finished by engineer Ed Stasium and manager Rod Swenson over in England. In addition to songs like "Corruption" and "Living Dead", linked to TV smashing and automobile destruction, the song "Butcher Baby" featured, as with the live shows, a chainsaw sawing through a guitar in place of a guitar solo. Stiff released it as single and it peaked at No. 55 on the UK Singles Chart, with the album reaching the same position on the UK Albums Chart.
The liner notes for the record proudly proclaimed that during the recording of the cover of "Dream Lover" (originally by Bobby Darin) the musicians were isolated from each other while recording and, during the instrumental break, could not hear what each other were playing.
The album was re-released in 2001 by Plasmatics Media, Inc.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “New Hope for the Wretched” is album by Plasmatics. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hope, Wretched and album, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3281280. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “New Hope for the Wretched” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.