10 Hard Rock Bands Never Better Than Their First Album

Punk rock was more or less born out of the music of The Ramones. From the first second you heard Dee Dee Ramone count off the tune, the band's fast paced energy and raw aggression made them impossible to resist. Even with multiple decades under their belt, the band's self-titled debut is by-far their most accomplished work.

Standing at a lean 29 minutes, the band make every single chord count as they hammer out classics like "Blitzkrieg Bop" and "53rd and 3rd." Just when you think you're off the hook, the band leads you screaming into the next tune with an attitude that later pop-punk bands can only hope to equal. This album also was responsible for launching a thousand different bands' careers, with everyone from the Clash to Nirvana citing it as one of the best albums ever made.

After this record, the band did have a fairly prosperous career, working with such luminaries as Phil Spector to help craft some of their later hits. However, no matter how hard they tried, they never sounded as badass and ready to kill than on this slab of punk goodness. A lot of bands get it right on their first try, but The Ramones surpassed even that expectation by making what is probably the greatest punk album ever made.