Best Punk Album in The World...Ever

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Formed in Belfast in 1977, Stiff Little Fingers sang of their rubble-strewn streets and the limited opportunities of life in the Six Counties with a frustration that ran like a marble of fat through their otherwise commercial songs. Sure, they were mods and not punks, but the Jam were prime players in the London maelstrom of 1977, and this herky-jerky, unfiltered album is simply too good and too influential to ignore.

The Best Punk Album in the WorldEver, Part 2 - AllMusic The Best Punk Album in the WorldEver, Part 2 - AllMusic

This debut album by England's finest art-school punks is as austere as a Rothko painting and as terse and urgent as a self-destructing telegram. The Stoke band’s gristle-strewn sound was also a major influence on American thrash metal, with Metallica covering Free Speech For The Dumb, from Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, on their multi-platinum covers album Garage Inc. The familiar complaint that the contribution to British punk rock of The Damned has been undervalued is one to which the Buzzcocks might reply, ‘Well, what do we get?As the album ends with the words “and there’s no God in Heaven, so get of your knees”, the sensation is of being beaten bloody by something close to perfection. The best hope in years for American punk rock, the ska-fueled bounce of Say It Out Loud, the quartet’s second album, is beloved of both a younger crowd and an audience old enough to have seen the 2-Tone explosion first hand. I’ll make my way back home to you, head north on San Marco Avenue, white crosses on the church lawn, I want to smash them all,” sings Thomas Gabel on the record’s title track.

The Best Punk Album In The WorldEver! by Various Artists The Best Punk Album In The WorldEver! by Various Artists

On the final night of his life, Darby Crash purchased four hundred dollars’ worth of heroin and injected himself with a quantity strong enough to kill four people.The unexpected and overwhelming success of Smash began when the Southern Californian radio station KROQ began playing Come Out and Play, the album’s leadoff single. With a history of drug addiction and general punk rock mayhem, LA’s Fidlar – F___ It Dog, Life’s A Risk – are in one way a throwback to the time when the ‘SoCal’ scene was feral and dangerous. But with Rotten on the mic – he auditioned for the group by miming to Alice Cooper’s I’m Eighteen – the Sex Pistols became a dangerous weapon.