State of the Art

State of the Art is the fifth studio album released by Australian hip hop trio, Hilltop Hoods, on 12 June 2009. At the ARIA Music Awards of 2009, the album won ARIA Award for Best Urban Album while Suffa won ARIA Award for Engineer of the Year for this release. At the J Awards of 2009, the album was nominated for Australian Album of the Year. Background State of the Art is the first release by their newly founded record label, Golden Era Records. It is the first release to be made by the group since their ARIA Award winning album, The Hard Road, in 2006, and its remix album, The Hard Road: Restrung, which was released in 2007. These albums were both released under their previous label Obese Records. The first track on the album, 'The Return' is about how long it had been since they last released an album.