knucklehead american hardcore -vs- knucklehead british punk

what can i say, i love breakdown-heavy simpleton u.s. hardcore a ton and i love oi! a ton. if i had to choose i guess i would go for oi! just cuz the business alone have made my life so much richer in so many ways. and i just got the hard rock album that the singer from the business did and i love it! U.K.! not the proggy U.K. the oi!-inflected rock U.K.

and despite their prole accents i don't consider the upstarts or the rejects or the 4skins knuckleheads. they were way smart! but their fans were pretty oafish. i love it all. i even love bad oi! i get a little scared listening to german oi! that's for sure. japanese oi! is mostly kinda terrible and i've tried to love it. oh how i've tried.

and if you count brit d-beat punk as meathead stuff then the choice is clear.

but i do love straightedge u.s. stuff. i can't lie. and i loved agnostic front a ton back in the day. and the cro mags. was just listening to slapshot's sudden death overtime while i was doing the dishes and i love that album a lot. ssd. dys. now you are talking. ssd easily one of my fave 80's bands. i loved youth of today and all those guys. despite the fact that i was as drunk as a skunk all through the 80's.

i never went to the shows back then much so i didn't see all the kid violence. it was all kinda removed from me in my room. all the hardcore shows i went to were pretty chill in the 80's.

i was a metal fan before i was a punk fan, so for me its just about a good beat and a good riff really. i LOVE that breakdown-heavy death metal that all the kids love these days. most metal people of a certain age wouldn't go near that stuff with a ten foot pole. they don't take it seriously. i do! and i take the oppressed seriously too! and judge!

Fear's "Let's Have a War" vs. Anti-Nowhere League's "Let's Break the Law"--close, but I vote Fear.

Wait, I just sampled 30 seconds of each and I'm changing my vote--knucklehead British punk wins.

you know who i never listened to much? the exploited. i liked gbh okay. when i was a kid the exploited had such a fake-punk stench for some reason. i think they sound perfectly fine today. and anti-nowhere league totally sound like great hard rock if you listen to the right record.

i tried to listen to the first fear record a while back - got it in at the store - and i couldn't do it. so much great cali punk to listen to and they are not my go to band at all for that era.

Besides "Let's Break the Law," the songs from Burning Ambitions I used to love were Blitz's "Someone's Gonna Die" and Angelic Upstarts "Lust for Glory." I bought two or three Oi compilations after that. Then I went to teachers' college, then I got old, now I listen to Yo La Tengo.

that's so sad. nobody should have to listen to yo la tengo. not even a dog.

i still listen to all this stuff all the time.

love that first blitz album. i even like when the british bands go new wave. i love jimmy pursey solo albums.

oh man I *loved* The Exploited's "Live at the Whitehouse" LP when I was in highschool. I knew that it was like cartoonishly retarded but for that very reason it really spoke to me. Wattie's between song banter was ace.

Definitely loved the Cro-Mags too though, and Judge, and SSD. I saw SlapShot in Boston and it was hilariously macho and over the top, Choke the lead singer had his shirt off and was brandishing a hockey stick as he took to the stage- it was really homoerotic and man was that a scary moshpit, yikes. Just to add to the phallic ritual character of the show, they were sharing the bill with the Hard Ons.

Oh, and it's nice to be back on here, I have had a horrible, horrible experience with various browser settings that automatically wipe all history and forget all passwords and it has made trying to post to ILM/ILX really onerous and annoying. Hope I can get it together to chat with y'all again, it's been too long.

that's so sad. nobody should have to listen to yo la tengo

We have to. It's in the old-person rulebook.

nice to have you here, the tune was space.

I think I'd go with the Brits. I can listen to Blitz all day long, but most American HC (especially the Revelation-era and after) just wears my ears out. I do love Minor Threat and Crippled Youth in the SxE realm.

Scott do you have an opinion on "NYHC: The Way It Is"? My favorite band on that is Trip 6 by a mile. The singer sounds like he's from Mars or something.

Hi dere.

Strangely I got into US hardcore before I got into UK Oi!. Well it's not that strange really given that I got a lot of my music information from the UK music press in the mid 90s and they roundly hated all UK punk post 1st wave, but were fine with Black Flag, Bad Brains etc. It wasn't really until I got access to the internet that I was exposed to the wonderful world of Oi!

I have to go with the UK on this one though. I like some tough-guy/youth crew HC bands but it's not really my kind of HC. I saw 7 Seconds with Madball and H2O the other day - H2O were kind of OK but with really cheesy cliched straight edge lyrics, Madball sucked mad balls, but 7 Seconds were great.

What about British hardcore vs American Oi!

The Stupids vs The Templars
The Varukers vs The Anti-Heroes

would prolly go for the US here but when I saw the title I initially thought of like Negative Approach in terms of American bands. most of the Revelation stuff that's now deemed 'seminal' or w/e is a blindspot for me and I don't really get much out of it - idk if I think of it as knucklehead per se, most of those guys had lofty ambitions in some ways? which were carried out in a knuckleheaded manner maybe

Yeah if the US side of this was Negative Approach & the Nihilistics instead of Cro-Mags & Youth Of Today it'd be more difficult.

Negative Approach had such a ferocious live show when I saw them way back when

Sick Of It All/Gorilla Biscuits/Judge at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ in 1988/89 = one of the greatest shows I've ever been to. Still listen to SOIA and Judge on a semi-regular basis. Most UK punk leaves me totally cold, though, no matter what generation.

fyi: this is kinda my fave american hardcore label right now:

http://www.ihateyouthattack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pe9xrh-xxCo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8t5eWJM5Wo&feature=relmfu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPxX1jz_YoA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8LAw9xU2J4&feature=related

YA's design is amazing, but i thought they only made investment products

i love hoax. they are on youth attack. they've played in my basement at the store. like going into a time warp for me. THE TUNE WAS SPACE you have to check their singer out. he's constantly flagellating himself with the microphone. also, buyer beware, they have a song called "fagget" which is uh some sort of commentary on something. they aren't anti-gay as far as i know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65AuS9UUGmw

^that's the footage where someone pulls a big ceiling fan down or something isn't it? it 'gets a bit tasty' alright. Hoax are good knuckleheads for sure, most of their loathing seems to be self-directed tho

Failures don't rly fit the idea of this thread but they have my favourite lyrics of any hardcore band of maybe the last decade

Yeah I've heard tons of good things about Youth Attack. I'm really out of the loop on new stuff, especially the last year or so. I changed jobs and can't listen to music all day any more. Just a bit here and there.

Way back then, it was the oafish likes of The Exploited and their primitive cartoon punk that sent me searching stateside.

Thirty years later, I still get more out of the US side of the pond in most genres.

But to answer the question, knuckle draggers are not recommended in any form. Fullstop. Unless it's satirical, hilarious or so o.t.t. ,it's disturbing. Hoax could fit the bill there by the look of things

here's an archive of a bunch of 3 hour radio programs that plays a bunch of great hardcore past and present from all over:

http://www.wmse.org/archive/new.php?dow=Fri&hour=030

It comes on from 3-6am friday morning, so I only hear the last hour as I'm coming into work. I pretty much love everything I hear, but am overwhelmed by how many bands there are from the 70's to present day.

hey scott can i recommend you some other new hardcore punk labels/bands if you love youth attack? this is my favourite stuff going on in music in the world right now and youth attack are great (especially SQRM and hoax) but only the tip of the iceberg!!! posted a bit about some of this stuff in the rolling punk thread but didn't seem like anyone was interested

toxic state (hank wood & the hammerheads lp, dawn of humans 7", various crazy spirit stuff)
katorga works (wiccans [best band in the world IMHO], creem)
feral kid (brown sugar [other best band], utah jazz)

haven't delved 2 deeply into knucklehead british punk yet, listened to some of it in hs through a friend but my mind was elsewhere. i listen to this oi! song all the time, great chorus for a drunk sing-along

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU8P0Ufwpl8

i will check out those labels. this is a gold standard for me. this song. i've listened to it hundreds of times. two minutes long. it says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQYaMRZrlU8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2RQUbMVe7I

not really a knucklehead band, but what the hell, this is primal u.k. stuff and in my hall of fame. there are days when i want everything to sound like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqTFa31rs7A

Crazy Spirit LP is greeeeat and incredibly good looking. in my ltd experience screenprinting posters like the one they put in the sleeve costs a packet so how they keep their prices as low as they do I'll never know

rumour is the kid who runs the label is from a v v well-off family & runs the label out of his trust fund, and often sells a loss. no idea if this true at all but would explain things if so

speaking as someone with a low income this suits me fine tbh

hey scott can i recommend you some other new hardcore punk labels/bands if you love youth attack? this is my favourite stuff going on in music in the world right now and youth attack are great (especially SQRM and hoax) but only the tip of the iceberg!!! posted a bit about some of this stuff in the rolling punk thread but didn't seem like anyone was interested

toxic state (hank wood & the hammerheads lp, dawn of humans 7", various crazy spirit stuff)
katorga works (wiccans [best band in the world IMHO], creem)
feral kid (brown sugar [other best band], utah jazz)

― reductio ad burzum (flopson), Wednesday, 15 August 2012 22:31 (Yesterday) Bookmark

am bored of myself today and will now listen to all of these, may the odds be in your favour flops

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L23I1xi7uR0"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L23I1xi7uR0

ha one of my favorite releases of the year is on katorga works but it's not really in this vein i don't think.

merchandise - children of desire

Not oafs though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOLd830vTNg

This came on my ipod on the way to work this morning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM0D_OaO7Wc

Nice one Poo. Partisans went all muso on their 2nd. 'Blind Ambition' still sounds OK with it's 6th formy lyrics

It's. Tut tut.

i listen to this oi! song all the time, great chorus for a drunk sing-along

― reductio ad burzum (flopson), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 5:36 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I fucking love that Cock Sparrer song. I've probably put that on at least 15 mixes in my life. It's so good.

poo, do you have the last resort album? they only had one, right? i still need that...

ooh i've got that Partisans single, bought cos a) they were Welsh b) comedy punx overly-studded leather jackets on cover c) cost 50p

i think i have a partisans singles comp on vinyl. i know i have that menace album. i love that one.

just read that one of Partisans went on to be in Transvision Vamp and Bush. Oi Oi Oi!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQEJscmQg0

i actually really like the weird blitz album from 1989. i don't think too many people dug it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lESADYbk3mw

i love the new wave-y angelic upstarts album too. still from the heart. i know they were just going for an eclectic clash vibe with the dub stuff, but i like the upstarts more than the clash so i'm good.

I like Boston Strangler's album, 'Primative.' I think it's 2012.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2eXuLa5DnY&feature=relmfu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vztrcHDc2E&feature=relmfu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW9yY_NKz4g&feature=related

I fucking love that Cock Sparrer song. I've probably put that on at least 15 mixes in my life. It's so good.

― (✿◠‿◠) (ENBB), Friday, August 17, 2012 1:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i recently put it on a mix, too! great "end of night" song at the bar too

poo, do you have the last resort album? they only had one, right? i still need that...

― scott seward, Friday, 17 August 2012 18:31 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I do, but only on CD, Captain Oi! reissue. They only had one that actually matters - Roi has put together a few line-ups since then and done a couple of albums, I've heard the one from '89 where they were just called The Resort, and it was awful. Well, IMO I guess, it was actually kinda not that far away from the 3rd Blitz album, just sounded like plodding mid-tempo rock with everything I like about Oi! music taken out.

ooh i've got that Partisans single, bought cos a) they were Welsh b) comedy punx overly-studded leather jackets on cover c) cost 50p

― zappi, Friday, 17 August 2012 18:31 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think I paid about £4 for mine! I knew about Bush and Transvision Vamp but hey if I started disliking musicians for their later careers I'd have to throw out 3/4 of my collection.

I fucking love that Cock Sparrer song. I've probably put that on at least 15 mixes in my life. It's so good.

― (✿◠‿◠) (ENBB), Friday, August 17, 2012 1:29 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I never liked that song, even though I know it's not a racist song and have defended it to people who say it is, any kind of English nationalism just skeeves me out. Riot Squad is my fave song on that album.

the lyrics to EBTM make almost no actual sense. well the individual lines do but there's hardly any connection from line to line. song rules tho

This is a bit of an underrated Blitz IMO:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rajF73BI6tI

violence, violence, violence, ultra violence, blood on the streets