Well well well... Finally! 2020 is finally coming to its end...
It's been a loooong year for everybody....Pfffiu what a mess!
I really hope all the crisis and all this shit did not hit you too hard wherever you are and whatever you do. Unfortunately it would be really naive to believe that the end of the year means the end of all that bullshit...
Well let's focus on music and 2020 has been a really good year for punk records. Yes a loooot of good records were released all over the world and it was really hard to choose what would go in my 2020 personal top or not.
If you wanna check all the other great releases of the years don't hesitate to go through the blog and especially all the compilations here and there.
I have also made a special BEST OF 2020 RAF COMPILATION!
That being said let's jump into it!
As you know my spectrum of interest is quite large (in "punk" of course) so I was not sure how to make this... in the end I have decided to do it the easy way and just go through three types of format.
All these records, except a few, have been reviewed earlier during the year, link under the cover picture.
So here are my favourite punk, hardcore, post-punk, hardcore punk, noise-rock, whatever, records of 2020 in no particular order:
LP
The band from Perth, Australia, has got everybody's attention for a few years now after a couple of super good 7" on Helta Skelta Records.
Ashley and the other Aussies came back this year with their first full length, and it's another success!
Honestly Brandy did me some good this year... their album brought freshness and joy in my life and I have found myself listening to it a lot more than I would have thought... yes really!
Because and simply because Brandy delivered a great and super catchy Rock'n Roll album, and some times that's all you need!
Cool Jerks totally blew me away with this LP.
Smart, powerful, deeply rooted in the bleakness of our times, this is what UK punk deserves.
That's one of the biggest release of the year. The excitement around it was just unbelievable.
Coriky = The Evens + Joe Lally... enough said right ?
Yes this album is good, really good...
Post-punk is a genre which has become very trendy over the past few years, creating two kinds of scene, the die-hard old-school fetish scene which struggles accepting anything outside of the 80s dogma and the new hipsterish/indie scene which tends going a bit too far from the punk roots sometimes.
Well Stuck is in between these two scenes and when you call your LP Change is Bad you have obviously understood what the problem is.
Anyway the Chicago guys delivered a great album, mixing a lot from the past with a lot from now, in the best interests of our eardrums.
The Upturned Stone is on of the most exciting release of 2020 in my opinion.
These guys explore, dig, travel all around the post-hardcore side of punk rock... Defining their sound as cave prog, I am not sure how to call it but it is sure new enough to deserve a new page in the big book of punk sub-genre...
As I put it in my review :
As somebody wrote it: "this music is exactly the kind of shit that keeps me interested in punk as an art form"
Another great find from Australia : CLAMM is a young band from Melbourne which delivered a perfect modern punk album in my opinion. It's smart, it's well-played, it's edging with post-punk sometimes AND it's catchy and powerful as hell... it's simply great and punk!
Only release from this list of LPs that I have not properly reviewed, I wanted to do it but I was not feeling my Blacklisters knowledge strong enough to go safely through the band history...
Yes Blklsrs is probably the best and biggest noise-rock band in the UK right now...
With their 3rd album these guys delivered another beautiful piece of noise-rock which could not not be in this top.
Liiek has been very productive this year with a full length and an EP.
And the LP is the one making it to this Best Of, yes between this 12" and me it was striking love at first sight... I could not do anything...
Catchy, nervous, beautiful, tensed, punk and post-punk... the boys and girls from Berlin take me where I like to be and deliver one of the best album of this year.
EP/CS
Arf I never wrote anything about this band from Lille, north of France, and I should have...
But I have included two of their tracks in my compilations, a song from their great LP in Rien à Faire #3 and a song from their also great Simulation EP (released in May) in Rien à Faire #13. Lille has seen a lot of great Oi! and hardcore punk bands in the last 10 or 15 years (check out Build Me a Bomb and Années Zéro) and Gutter is one of the latest and one of the best, these guys have dirtied their boots in a lot of rehearsal rooms before giving birth of this one and it's a beauty!
Glib started the year with a bang!
Wow this tape is full of super mean and angry hardcore punk coming straight from Cardiff, UK...
Brutal, fast, overflowing with an uncontrollable energy, it was one of the highlight of the beginning of the year...
Can't wait to get more! ASAP!
Ok this one with 9 songs is almost a full length but it was released on tape so...
Anyway this is another pure expression of mean and nasty hardcore punk... what I called freak punk or freak hardcore punk but who cares?
These guys have a PHD in anger and chaos... marvellous!
Another great hardcore punk release from the beginning of the year.
Speed, anger, great songs... Everything you need is in the 7" of this young band from California...
Ok now I know who these guys are... take Violent Reaction, Chubby And The Gang, Crown Court and all the London lads roaming around them and you'll probably get all the Chisel band.
They just made the best mix of old school oi! and punk of the decade! Think Crux, Blitz and The Strike... Bloody perfect, mate!
Writing a song called Virus Carnival in January 2020 was more than good foresight, it was genius!
Signal is from New York and this song is not the only reason for them to reach this Best Of 2020!
Nice little 4-track tape!
I wrote a few enthusiastic words about Vangas from Atlanta and their first releases (up to their January single) in May. Noisy post-hardcore maybe ? Great noise-rock for sure!
They came back a few months later with a new single on Chunklet Industry... a really amazing 2-track release! These guys are the future of noise-rock!
I think this tape took everybody by surprise.
Dark, angry, fast and dirty... another beauty of freaky hardcore punk!
Hailing from Portland which reputation in terms of Punk rock has already been made an eternity ago, these guys deliver what the world deserves...
This is hardcore punk at its nastiest!
11PM Records has proved over the past years being an important producer of great hardcore punk. And this is not this new EP by Rolex which is gonna make me lie.
Yes this is another hardcore punk EP but to the classic sound of the genre Rolex adds weirdness all over a fantastic guitar work...
Very impressive!
I discovered Sniffany and The Nits at the last Static Shock Festival in London (just before the end of live shows all over the world) and it was one of the greatest surprise of the week end in my opinion.
A few months later was released this EP on Thrilling Living; The Greatest Nits is a beautiful piece of mentally deranged punk rock, pouring insanity all over the place in the person of this deviant singing nurse!
With this new 7", Kaleidoscope confirms being an important band of our times.
Not only thanks to the super tensed punk rock these guys are playing, but also (and maybe
above all) for asking the major contemporary questions of the western world.
This is what anarcho punk sounds like nowadays.
Beautiful.
Demo
First class punk rock straight from Australia.
Called a demo but actually a proper solid release, totally mind-blowing!
What's next ?
Well another great Aussie demo right ?
Yes but from the other side of the country this time, and on Helta Skelta of course.
No hardcore punk here but some kind of old school punk rock edging with post-punk and heavily influenced by old UK bands like Crisis...
Very nice!
Not much information about this band except that attention catcher little demo.
Some nice female-fronted punk rock... let's see what comes next!
Super catchy female-fronted punk from Cleveland, Ohio, Boiled Men delivered a great demo in January. Think early west coast punk, think Dangerhouse catalogue.
These guys have had their dose of rock'n roll before Boiled Men in weird punk acts like
Perverts Again, Cruelster, The Roobydocks and Jim Davis and they are definitly not done yet. I was expecting something more to come up during the year, maybe next January ?
Perverts Again, Cruelster, The Roobydocks and Jim Davis and they are definitly not done yet. I was expecting something more to come up during the year, maybe next January ?
Featuring members from Draino, Morte Lenta, Society's Chain, Bed Wettin Bad Boys, Royal Headache and Tim And The Boys, this new band from Sydney, Australia, is delivering 6 tracks of super raw and raging hardcore punk. Walking in the steps of bands like Rapid Dye, Optic Nerve or Xilch, Osbo is keeping Sydney hardcore alive and kicking. This was probably recorded as live takes (super good for a demo) and I can only imagine how sick a proper recording would be!
Tactics - Demo(n)
Originally released in february on the band's bandcamp page, Slow Death Records decided to make a tape out of it in November, and it's clear why: This demo is a killer !
Not much information about these guys except that they are probably from the Victoria / BC area in Canada and play super sick hardcore punk (despite a few unfortunate metallish guitar parts... keep metal out of hardcore, guys!!)!
It's dark and heavy (Demo(n) right ?) with a great deal of explosive energy, delivering super bad ass in-your-face hardcore... in a nutshell: it's great!
Special mention to the vocals.
A new great band from the lone star state probably featuring Cesar, the singer of the Slimy Member. Flower City is fast anarcho-punk at its best, a mix between Conflict (UK), 80s US punk and a darker atmosphere...
Great!
Aaaaand that's all folks!
You can listen to one track of each of these great releases on the
Rien à Faire : Best OF 2020 compilation!
And if you're bored, locked up in your cave during Christmas, remember that
It only remains to wish everyone a happy new year and all the best for the coming months!
See you next year!!
N,J'Oi!
ps: you can also check, if you're curious, a new musical project a friend and I are working on. It's called Guimauve.
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