When The Slits formed in London in 1976 they couldn’t have been any more a-Typical of the punk scene at the time — which was a lot more reductive than the history books let on. […]
Tag: punk
Feel the Burn: GHLOW – Hold On
A dirgy industrial racket that feels more like a sweaty headbutt than a dancefloor bop — but that’s all good
Wire still kicking into the future on Primed & Ready
“Are you scoping the future?” sings Wire’s Colin Newman in the first line of ‘Primed & Ready’ — the second single off the band’s upcoming 17th album Mind Hive. Dunno about you, but over their […]
Jah Wobble: Post-punk’s steady pulse
Jah Wobble was there at one of the most important forks in the road for music – answering a call from his old mate John Lydon to start a band after the sordid implosion of […]
Fist-up dance floor defiance on Louisahhh’s Feral Rhythm
The clue’s in the title here — Louisahhh’s new EP Feral Rhythm is a straight-up classic call to arms track about dancefloor escapism. The Paris-based New Yorker hits the club with a techno-punk snarl and […]
Stiff Little Fingers: ‘Still putting the fast back in Belfast’
When stiff little fingers formed in Belfast in the late 70s, the idea of them playing an outdoor gig for thousands beside the High Court would have been beyond a surreal joke. But the veteran […]
‘Seven women fighting over a cowbell’: The 80s No Wave art-punk weirdness of Pulsallama
Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 not only cemented the socio-economic foundations of just about everything that is wrong with the West, it also coincided with a short-lived epoch of unfettered creativity in New York City. […]
The Armed keep flipping hardcore
The Armed call themselves a “punk rock band from Detroit, Michigan” on their Bandcamp page, but they’re selling themselves short. The band take hardcore rage as a starting point and wrangle in atonal electronics, noise-rock […]
Fucked Up: Stretching hardcore to the limit
Toronto act Fucked Up have transcended their hardcore punk roots without selling out in the slightest – on their 80-minute concept album Dose Your Dreams last year. Loosely, it’s a story of a factory worker […]
Fontaines DC: Taking Liberties
Dublin punk act Fontaines DC started 2018 with an underground ‘ones to watch’ ripple, and ended the year with four brilliant EPs unapologetically rooted to their Liberties roots, cock-sure festival performances and support slots with […]
Praise be to Shame…
Along with IDLES and the more erratic Fat White Family, Shame are another English lad guitar band who are thankfully miles outside the usual dead-end indie-rock channels that have all but smothered guitar music’s grip […]
IDLES: giving landfill indie a kick in the teeth
Bristol punks IDLES are one of the few English guitar lad bands who are punching up through the underground with something to say — helping to finally banish second- and third-hand indie bands still waiting […]
John Lydon interview: ‘I’ll go another 40 years… I don’t do full stops’
From punk provocateur to post-punk pioneer, John Lydon has been one of the most singular and divisive figures in popular music for over 40 years – and he reckons he’s got 40 more where that […]
GZA leads the Irish gigs highlighter
GZA/GENIUS: The Sugar Club, Dublin, Sunday, Monday & Tuesday, €27.50 The number of side projects, solo albums and guest appearances in the Wu-Tang Clan universe is head-melting, but GZA’s 1995 album Liquid Swords is one […]
Public Image Ltd is John Lydon’s real legacy
In an interview recently, John Lydon somewhat ambitiously told me he’d been in the music game for over 40 years – and he’s still got 40 years left. And even though for many he’ll always […]
Moo Kid 