Punk's still twitching
January 29, 2025 8:00 AM   Subscribe

Stalwart punk zine Maximumrocknroll has released its annual top ten lists for 2024: part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Unlike many other best-of lists, MRR just asks its various reviewers to name their top ten records of the year and presents them in full, although there is a bit of aggregation at the end of part 3 ("we can convey this information to you via the punkest of mediums: graphs!"). Most of the mini-reviews have embedded BandCamp links where you can listen to the music right in your browser.

As a punk publication, the recommendations here lean heavily in a punk/hardcore direction, but there are also strong showings from adjacent genres, like neo-glam bedroom rocker Peace De Résistance, French power-pop quartet ALVILDA, and post-punk talk-singers Artificial Go.

If that isn't enough rock music for your ear-holes, the 2023 top tens have a similar wealth of material.
posted by whir (11 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
The aggregated top tens, with videos where I could find them:

1. STRAW MAN ARMY – Earthworks
2. PUBLIC ACID – Deadly Struggle
3. ALVILDA – C’est Deja L’heure
4. NEUTRALS – New Town Dream
5. KRIEGSHOG – Love & Revenge
6. MARCEL WAVE – Something Looming
7. INVERTEBRATES – Sick to Survive
8. ALAMBRADA – Rios de Sangre
9. SUBDUED – Abattoir
10. ARTIFICIAL GO – Hopscotch Fever

(These are ranked by how often the albums appeared on individual reviewer's lists.)
posted by whir at 8:17 AM on January 29 [1 favorite]


Listening to the Straw Man Army record now, it's pretty great. Thanks for pointing this stuff out, I didn't realize that Maximumrockandroll was still going, but it does my heart good to see they're still out there.
posted by Strange Interlude at 11:34 AM on January 29 [2 favorites]


To paraphrase Frank Zappa: "Punk is NOT dead. It just smells funny."
posted by Paul Slade at 11:43 AM on January 29


Artificial Go (from Cincinnati, OH) is really enjoyable but man it really irritates me that the singer affects a fake British accent. YMMV, I guess.

The Sheaves and The Shop Regulars LPs are both fantastic IMO.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 12:28 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]


I really like that Shop Regulars LP! It's like math rock, with super complex time signatures, but unlike most math rock it doesn't make me feel like I'm an asshole for wanting to tap my feet every now and then.
posted by whir at 1:27 PM on January 29 [1 favorite]


Oh, also my favorite line from the reviews: "I can only imagine the amount of art school student debt this L.A. band must have." - from Nick Odorizzi's review of Muscle Beach's s/t cassette.
posted by whir at 3:47 PM on January 29


man it really irritates me that the singer affects a fake British accent

SLC Punk! explains Punks vs Posers
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:05 PM on January 29


ee my band is on one of these lists! although it is almost certainly because a friend in town likes us…

they definitely have an expansive definition of “punk” and there is a lot of punk-adjacent jangle pop, industrial-ish, post-punk etc in there so don’t write it off if you aren’t interested in the hard stuff.
oh yeah and buy things from people if you like it!

if you like straw man army check out kaleidoscope it’s some of the same people and also kicks ass

also fake british accents are IN!!! sorry not sorry
posted by crime online at 9:14 AM on January 30 [1 favorite]


man it really irritates me that the singer affects a fake British accent

Over on this side of the pond, one of punk's great innovations in 1976/77 was the singers' refusal to adopt aa cod American accent - as pretty much every British dinosaur band it set out to overthrow then did. Interesting to see this funhouse mirror reflection of the same issue.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:43 PM on January 30 [1 favorite]


See, I'm an American who loves British punk and post punk! My username is from a song by The Fall. I just finished reading Mick Farren's autobiography. I love Swell Maps, TV Personalities, Wire, etc. AND I live in Ohio!

So I guess for me, even though Artificial Go is right up my alley, the idea of a band in my own backyard with a fake accent is more than I can take. If I got on stage with my band and started singing with a fake accent, somebody would throw a shoe at me, I'm sure of it.

Anyway, it's only rock and roll.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 8:18 AM on January 31


I'm with you, SystematicAbuse. Fake accents are bad no matter which country's bands are doing them.

If you enjoyed Mick Farren's autobiography, you might also like Nick Kent's memoir Apathy for the Devil or his anthology of old NME pieces The Dark Stuff. Kent was right at the centre of Britain's punk explosion and, along with Farren and Lester Bangs, was one of the most vivid and honest writers to chronicle it. Also, you may be interested in the 1970s and 1980s incarnation of these old John Peel shows.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:58 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]


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