Best Punk Album in The World...Ever

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When melodic metalcore exploded in the early 2000s, it was often tied right in with emo-pop, but Wristmeetrazor imagine a much darker, gothier version of that genre. Their sophomore LP Replica of a Strange Love is full of infectious riffs that sound like the best parts of the Trustkill/Ferret Records era, but their soaring hooks and creepy industrial sections bring to mind White Pony era Deftones and Downward Spiral era Nine Inch Nails. The ingredients are all familiar, but rarely combined like this, and it’s a testament to Wristmeetrazor’s power that they’re able to offer up such time-tested thrills in a way that genuinely feels innovative. Matching the darkness of the music is that of frontman Justin Fornof’s lyrics, which pull equally from personal experience and classical philosophy and use vivid poetic imagery to tap into the depths of human emotion. On all levels, from the bone-crushing breakdowns to the lyrical melodrama, this album is intense.

In the face of the onslaught of their imitators, it’s easy to forget what a breath of fresh air Bad Religion was in ’88. Suffer broke the brutal testosterone-infused chokehold of hardcore on punk and along the way introduced a new generation to the forgotten art of writing lyrics and melodies. It also didn’t hurt that Brett Gurewitz and Greg Graffin knew how to balance their rage with heavy doses of intellect and weren’t such tough guys that the thought of adding a little harmony into a tune didn’t fill them with mortal terror. That song, ‘One Hundred Years’, is one of many songs highlighting The Cure’s new direction. Having followed a similar path to Siouxsie and The Banshees (emerging from punk to find a new artistic channel), the group use their post-punk sensibilities to capture the intense feeling of the band’s regeneration. The album inspired a legion of bands in its wake. “It’s flattering, but it makes me feel uncomfortable because I don’t see us in the same categories that I see our idols,” said Holland of the album’s legacy. “Making you want to start a band is what the Ramones, Sex Pistols and The Clash do. Not us!” Readopting the surname Lydon, the erstwhile Rotten – having cleansed his musical palate with a trip to Jamaica, talent-spotting for Virgin’s reggae imprint Front Line – assembled his new troops for his next assault on prevailing sonic conservatism: Public Image Ltd, and their debut album First Issue.The first single released from the album boasted an uncompromising Lydon lyric; a bold statement of self-determination, a message as much to his identikit punk audience as to his doubting detractors that John Lydon’s Rotten past was behind him. It was allied to a driving, dub-deep Jah Wobble bass riff. Where punk had been dense, this was spacious. Its sound was post-punk and its name was Public Image. New Jersey trio the Ergs! went into recording their debut with low expectations: “We were just like, ‘Let’s make this thing, I guess,'” drummer-vocalist Mike Yannich, a.k.a. Mikey Erg, told Noisey. “There was no real thought process to it, just like, ‘Bands make albums, let’s make albums.'” Despite their lax attitude, the band ended up with an urgent, infectious pop-punk tour de force, the sort of album that makes you want to pogo jump while screaming about heartbreak. “I’m in love, I’m in trouble!” Erg yells on the aptly named “First Song Side One,” riffing on the Replacements and announcing a 16-song LP that lasts just 32 minutes. Along the way, Yannich & Co. touch on everything from hardcore to hip-hop and doo-wop (to say nothing of references to The Simpsons and Henry Rollins’ Get in the Van book). But the album never strays far from its speedy, melodic roots, helping to secure the band’s cult-fave status among the pop-punk faithful. P.V. When Savages emerged in 2011, they came with their own mythology that felt ripped from another time; at early shows Jehnny Beth goaded crowds from inside a wooden cage and the band laid out their creative vision in a succinct manifesto. “If you are focused, you are harder to reach,” read the front of their debut album ‘Silence Yourself’. “If you are distracted, you are available.” And it was an ethos that informed every last note; brutal, industrial, rib-cage juddering post-punk without an ounce of bagginess. For follow-up album Ixany On The Hombre, The Offspring would leave revered SoCal punk label Epitaph in favour of Sony’s Columbia. And the rest is platinum-plated history.

This record is an addictive joy for the myriad experiences of youth, for the eternal combination of pleasure, excitement, boredom, anger, and frustration that everyone experiences during that fragile transition between adolescence and adulthood,” wrote PopMatters in 2003. “That attitude is mirrored in the hot-wired treble sound of the record, a sound so tightly wound it threatens to jump off the turntable at any moment and sear your brain. Wayne Kramer’s guitar continuously asserts its presence with a maddeningly propulsive manic energy that makes you forget that the Who, the Kinks, or the Kingsmen ever existed.” Great electric guitar tone. You know it when you hear it, and you’ll hear it all over Future Forecast, the first full-length album from Melbourne, Australia’s latest great band, Civic. Everything about Civic is no-frills; these are just plain punk songs, featuring hard-charging rhythms, bouncing bass lines, buzzsaw guitars, occasional saxophone and the ever-simmering, sneering vocal style of frontman Jim McCullough. Did we mention the guitars on this record? My goodness, they sound incredible through headphones. —Ben Salmon That album had catchy riffs. We loved bands that were very punk, but these bands didn’t always have great melodies. We added something musically memorable to the energy of punk music.” Crass put out some truly great albums, and perhaps there is none greater in their catalogue than Penis Envy, an impassioned, HMV-banned, 30-minute anarcha-feminist rant that took aim at various facets of female oppression, and featured exclusively female vocals in the form of Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre. The album won the band a not-insignificant amount of good, old-fashioned tabloid outrage when they successfully managed to pull off a hoax offering a flexi disc single from the album to be given away free with teeny bopper magazine Loving, drumming them up a shit load of free press in the process. Few bands, punk or otherwise, have ever been so controversial. And, yes, they did split up in 1984. Why it was so influential: Savages brought with them a dose of much-needed mythology, and raised valuable questions about why women in punk are so frequently branded as bolshy or intimidating. Fontaines DC, ‘Dogrel’ (2019)Mis-filed under ‘also-ran punk’ for way too long, Blank Generation deserves reappraisal as a truly outstanding late-70s punk classic.