What is the best oi! album of the '00s so far?

chuck, do you like the unseen? the boston street punk band? they aren't really oi, just wondering. they have good singalong choruses on some of their stuff.

By the way, the three Hard Skin baldos (two of which have *some* hair, actually) are named Fat Bob, Johnny Takeaway, and Nipper! And I am just now realizing that *Same Meat Different Gravy* actually has a shot at my Pazz and Jop top 10 this year! (Prediction: Even if I vote for it, it won't win.)

The Unseen – State Of Discontent

The Unseen make punky punk for punks who believe that punk will never be dead because punk belongs to the punks. Got that, punk? They’ve been working the Boston street punk angle for years and their chugga chugga singalongs and freight car riffs are perfect for a night of Guinness and bloody noses. Also perfect is their current home at Hellcat, a label seemingly created with the unstated goal of inventing a world where it is always 1977 (Only this time all the bands can actually play their instruments and the riot goin’ on sounds more like a party.). The pogo-ready punter punk chants will keep you hopping. State Of Discontent, with its ear-punishing trebly sound provided by a Dropkick Murphy and the very, very old hardcore legend Brett Gurewitz, makes me do the dishes with a quickness! I’m sure weighty issues are being debated on songs like “Weapons Of Mass Destruction” and “Social Damage” (I didn’t say they would win any prizes for originality, did I?), and I’m sure the band would like me to hit the pavement and question some fuckin’ authority or something, but the only authority figure I see on a daily basis is my mailman and that dude looks like he lifts some serious weights. Plus, he brings me my Netflix. The Unseen are fast, good time charlie punk with spikey hair and they are blessedly free of any and all metal /dub/doom/calypso hybridization bullshit. Yesterday’s news never sounded so refreshing.

xp

I totally disagree with Milo aboout Dropick Murphys! Their earliest stuff just struck me a generic and clunky and thuggish. My favorite album by them is probably *Sing Loud, Sing Proud!*, but I also like *Do or Die,* *Blackout*, the new one (including the Red Sox song! I like their Bruins song from a couple years back, too!), the live one that came out last year, and the B-sides and singles comp that came out early this year.

Sing Loud, Sing Proud had moments (the Amazing Grace cover) but I don't care for that singer's voice.

"Green Hills of France" is a reason to get it. Secondarily "The Auld Triangle," neither of which they wrote. The Woody Guthrie thing is a stinko throwaway and there's at least another traditional on it that's not quite fair. The title cut on boxing is better than average, and -- agreed -- the Red Sox song is terrible.

I'd listen to the album more if it didn't have the annoying copy protection scheme on the promo copy that slices the CD into 99 pieces.
Makes it too hard to skip over the body of the Vans Warped Tour stuff.

"Green Hills of France," though, is accidentally the best anti-war song this year, easy. Not a big field by any means and most of the reviewers of the album seemed to have totally missed the boat on its provenance. I rather doubt if any contemporary American could write a song like it, let alone get anyone to think they ought to publish it.

and i'll check the macc lads out, george! sounds up my alley.

plus of course public domain irish folktunes whose origin i (and probably they) am unable to name

University of Alberta, buy it on-line. Yurgghhh, don't smash me teeth.

http://yas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/31/2/131

It's complicated, I would think from my experience with the ricin trial. The basic message in the country, put out by the government and supported by the majority of the media was that the Islamists in the dock were guilty, even though the jury utterly aquitted them.
There was a special antagonism that came from them being illegals, also banged up for document frauds, the kind that are also quite common in the US, or any place with a large and varied populace of foreign-born in the lower rungs of the economy.

So the general populace, not just the extreme right, has been moved toward an antagonistic and paranoid stance. And it's supported by much of the media.

You could see it in the Brit press this week with the news that some of the bombers were on welfare and in subsidized housing.

So, yeah, excerpted from The Scotsman:

National Front fans flames

FERGUS SHEPPARD

THE National Front will stage a march in central London this afternoon amid growing fears that Britain's Muslim community could increasingly be at risk from reprisal attacks, despite high-profile appeals by police and community leaders.

An initial request to hold an event near the Edgware Road Tube station - an area with a large Muslim population - was refused by police, he said.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police and officers in the Football Intelligence Unit were yesterday studying websites run by far-right groups for any signs that violence against Muslims and their property was being orchestrated.

Policing around the Leeds-Millwall game, which takes place at Leeds' Elland Road ground on 7 August, is likely to be particularly intense. While both clubs have done their utmost to shed fans with racist sympathies, the setting of the game in Leeds could provide a cue for extremist violence.

And this really gets at some of the underlying issues, from the perspective of the persecuted. Not about music, but an interesting read.

http://www.asiansinmedia.org/news/article.php/publishing/1034

Not much more than if Lil Jon and the Eastside Boi!s' albums did.

Hard Skin are a joke/spoof Oi! band, which is probably why they have an anti-Thatcher song on their new album. I don't think you need to worry about any dodgy political affiliations with them.

Fryups = fried food, typically traditional English breakfast fare but may be eaten at any time, especially after getting back late and inebriated after a good old Cockney knees-up 'round the joanna down the old rub-a-dub. cf. Madness' "Don't Quote Me On That ("it's all eggs bacon beans and a fried slice....").

Mothers Pride = leading branded cheap-ish massed-market plastic-wrapped soggy bland sliced white bread.

"Also, fags are cigarettes not homosexuals here, right?"

Almost certainly.

http://www.skinhead.no/content/gallery/museum/allen.asp

On a slight tangent, the Cockney Rejects were billed to appear in a support slot at Morrisey's Meltdown festival: did this actually happen and did anyone see it?

does anyone sound like fucken iron cross anymore? cos thats what i'm after.

the question stands. i am listening to crucified for our sins and it's still fucking beautiful. especially after that ok but really kinda mediocre templars album i just listened to.

Are there any good new Oi bands this decade? Real ones I mean, so Hard Skin don't count (I'm going to see them on Friday, woop) I can only think of stuff like Argy Bargy and Crashed Out, who both suck.

http://www.myspace.com/86mentalityband

I dunno if these dudes were too hardcore to be Oi but they were pretty rated I think and they did a 4 Skins cover so...

Deadline. That's another new(ish) band. Don't like them much either though.

That 86 Mentality sounds more like tough-guy hardcore but there is an Oi influence there as well. Actually on 2nd song yeah OK this is kinda Iron Cross sounding. Not bad!

yeah, that's pretty good. dude sounds appropriately gravelly.

Hard Skin were fucking fantastic tonight! I just wanted to put all my Cockney Rejects and Blitz records on when I got home.

This was w/ Stupids and Shitty Limits, right? Actually kinda envious

Yah dude

My mate's a big Deadline fan, don't see it myself. He also likes Argy Bargy, so might not be entirely trustworthy, but I can ask him this afternoon for any other recommendations.