10 Forgotten Punk Albums You Need To Redisover
Sounds from the underground and beyond.
By the virtues of the genre, there’s a great deal of punk music out there in the world. This is a style of music that’s meant to be accessible to anyone. If you can grab a few friends, some cheap instruments, and master three chords, you can form a punk band.
That can mean that it’s hard to know where the good stuff lies. Beyond the genre’s heavy hitters, there’s a whole lot of music out there, and so many different subgenres and offshoots to wade through. To this end, there are a great deal of bands whose albums have disappeared from the public consciousness.
In some cases these are bands that once had a lot of momentum or attention behind them who subsequently fell out of popularity; in others, they’re acts whose labels never gave them the push they needed, or whose music was too strange or confrontational to make a major impact.
Whatever the situation, these punk records are more than deserving of rediscovery. Punk may or may not be dead, depending on who you speak t0, but these 10 albums need to be revived.
10. Black Market Baby – Senseless Offerings
Beyond New York and London, there was perhaps no greater hub for punk rock than Washington DC, with the likes of Bad Brains and Minor Threat two of the most important groups for the scene in the ‘80s and beyond. Less well known but just as good were Black Market Baby, whose 1983 album Senseless Offerings deserves a place in the punk pantheon.
Black Market Baby were as politicised as any group of the era, with opener “Downward Christian Soldiers” dripping with disdain for organised religion and the sharp if obvious “World At War” taking a broadside swipe at their war-hungry nation.
They give their songs room to breathe in a way many of their hardcore contemporary didn’t, though. “Gun Point Affection” rolls along with growing, sinister menace, and “This Year’s Prophet” - a track which takes aim at contemporary political punks they felt insincere - delivers its venomous message over a patient, riff-laden five minutes.
The subject matter is familiar ground - the government, war, the scene kids of “America’s Youth”, but every song is razor sharp and fantastically performed.