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10 legendary bands who built the foundation of the grunge genre

Despite the grousings of certain members of punk’s first generation, grunge most certainly earned its place on rock’s historical timeline, the perfect antidote to the cliche-ridden joke hardcore became fairly quickly: Everyone attempting to run the 100-yard dash in two seconds? Why not take a nice, leisurely stroll, instead? Most know that meat turns out […]

15 bands who are crucial to the history of noise music

When it initially blasted into the world from New York’s Lower East Side almost concurrently with punk in 1977, it was dubbed no wave. Village Voice critic Robert Christgau referred to it as “skronk,” an onomatopoeia based around the general guitar sound. He uncharitably dubbed its ’80s practitioners “pigfucker” bands. This writer’s personal name for […]

15 essential post-punk bands who represent the evolution of the genre

Post-punk had to happen. Punk rock opened all this space for people to make exactly the kind of art or culture that the disenfranchised had been imagining in their heads, and maybe had limited means or skills by which to make it. But what if you didn’t want to crank out recharged three-chord rock ’n’ […]

15 punk albums from 1993 that embraced contrarianism over prefab rebellion

Alternative rock still dominated popular music in 1993. This obviously begged the question of just how “alternative” something was if it was now on a major label and on the radio. Not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we’d never have to hear Whitesnake again. Bottom end and distortion returned to rock record-making in a […]

The best punk albums of 1987 are still setting fire to the underground

What a year 1987 was! Ronald Reagan was all all up in the Iran-Contra affair, but his Teflon psyche made sure none of the backlash stuck to him. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher brought uptight conservative rule to the U.K. for a third term. Ted Kaczynski (aka the Unabomber) came to notoriety as a domestic […]

These 10 noise-rock tracks were built to defy your volume settings

Oftentimes, there simply isn’t a guitar chord ugly enough to convey what you want to say. And that’s why we have noise-rock glory. Sometimes torturing a guitar just sounds better than happily strumming it. This fact has been proven time and time again. And in 2020, these 10 noise-rock tracks were built to defy your […]

These 15 punk albums of 1987 brought more noise and power than ever

Welcome to the best punk albums of 1987. But first, some context. Feb. 20, 1987: An attack by a domestic terrorist called “the Unabomber” plants a bomb in a Salt Lake City computer store. The owner is injured. March 4: President Ronald Reagan owns up to what was swiftly called the Iran-Contra Affair in a […]

The best punk albums of 1986 were the sounds of rules being broken

1986 was a turning point for punk rock. Some people thought it should stay frozen in beer-soaked amber or it should sit the hell down. For a culture that proclaimed there were no rules, it felt like the punk-rock rulebook was going to go into its second or third editions. Fortunately, there were plenty of […]

These 15 punk albums of 1986 mutated the underground even further

1986 was the year that speed metal and crossover (metal/core a la Cro-Mags’ The Age Of Quarrel) metastasized across the now-stale hardcore scene. The true sound of mid-’80s punk was the seeds of pop punk. Hüsker Dü were the kings of this, although Descendents really are the square root of every band who eventually played […]