50 punk albums every music fan should own

The Ramones, who made number 4 in our list
The Ramones, who made number 4 in our list

It can surely only be a matter of time before the question "what is punk?" enters the lexicon of philosophical head-scratchers. It’s a sound, for sure, as anyone who has heard the Ramones' first album will know. But it’s also a quality, something that might loosely be termed "attitude", a nebulous vapor that can be attributed to many, from Billie Eilish to Dominic Cummings. What a puzzle.

Considering the game was up for 20th Century English punk at the moment Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols called Bill Grundy a “dirty f_____” live on television in 1976, the genre worldwide has proved to be both enduring and adaptable. Capably nurtured by our American cousins, in 1994 it even cracked the US mainstream for the first time with the multi-platinum success of both Green Day and The Offspring. Spin magazine called it "the year that punk rock broke… again." 

This list, then, spans both decades and continents; not only that, it also swings from the breeziest punk-pop to groups whose music registers on the Richter scale. Inevitably, a number of worthy artists failed to make the cut – from Siouxsie and the Banshees to Television, TSOL to the Adolescents – while for our successful entrants, we had just one rule: only one album per artist was permitted space on our list. 

Finally, in writing about such a wide array of bands, we were reminded of the words printed on a t-shirt by that great philosopher of the punk age, Wattie Buchan from The Exploited, who wrote succinctly, if ungrammatically, "Punk’s not dead… bollocks is it." So without further adieu, hey-ho let’s go: 

50. Slayer: Undisputed Attitude (1996)

So alarming was the sound of Slayer smashing their way through various American hardcore punk songs on their covers album Undisputed Attitude that the band’s record company had some advice for them. Perhaps the bass didn’t quite need to thrash along at the same pace as the guitars, they said. The reply from the band was swift: ‘Slayer does not play funk’. 

Slayer
Slayer Credit: redferns

49. Culture Abuse: Bay Dream (2018)

Bay Dream, the melodic second album from LA’s Culture Abuse, is the only album on this list to feature a member with an acute disability. Singer David Kelling has cerebral palsy, and aims to use his group’s music to change people’s perceptions of the condition by which he is burdened. “No one with cerebral palsy ever gets the girl, or comes in first place, or anything,” he has said. “I hope to change that.”

48. The Rezillos: Can't Stand The Rezillos (1978)

Challenging the hegemony of the English scene, Edinburgh punks The Rezillos appeared bound for glory with a recording contract with Sire Records, home of the Ramones, and the chance to track their debut album in New York City. Widespread acclaim may have eluded the band, but the ragged and melodic Can’t Stand The Rezillos remains a timeless release. 

47. Husker Du, Zen Arcade (1984)

Few bands originally labeled as punk developed their sound quite as radically as did Husker Du. Zen Arcade, the Minnesotan trio’s mid-career double album, tells the story of a troubled youngster from an abusive home that in the end turns out to have been a dream, at least of sorts. Recorded for less than four thousand bucks, the pioneering concept set would play a key influence on Green Day’s American Idiot. 

46. Alkaline Trio, Good Mourning (2003)

The masters of modern macabre punk rock, Chicago’s Alkaline Trio write of a world where lovers are slaughtered and friends die from overdoses on late-night drug runs. Lusciously produced by Joe McGrath and Jerry Finn, Good Mourning balances its dark obsessions with superbly crafted melodic songs brought to life by the precise playing of drummer Derek Grant. 

45. Fidlar, Almost Free (2019)

With a history of drug addiction and general punk rock mayhem, LA’s Fidlar – F___ It Dog, Life’s A Risk – are in one way a throwback to the time when the ‘SoCal’ scene was feral and dangerous. The music, however, scotches any notion that the band’s angle is one of revivalism. Featuring a wide cache of styles, Almost Free, the quartet’s third album, is their best. 

44. Discharge, Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing (1982)

Although largely dismissed at the time of their emergence, Discharge proved that there was life in British punk beyond the cartoonish fare offered by groups such as GBH and UK Subs. The Stoke band’s gristle-strewn sound was also a major influence on American thrash metal, with Metallica covering Free Speech For The Dumb, from Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing, on their multi-platinum covers album Garage Inc. 

43. The Descendents, Milo Goes To College (1982) 

The decision of Milo Ackerman, singer with the Descendents, to enter the world of higher education may have provided his band with the title for their first album, but it also called time on their career for the next three years. Catchy and compact, the record is today a Southern Californian punk rock landmark; along with Dexter Holland from The Offspring and Bad Religion’s Greg Graffin, Ackerman is the third punk singer from the state to hold a PhD. 

42. Poison Idea, Feel The Darkness (1990)

Formed in Portland, Oregon, in 1980, Poison Idea are bastions of unclean living that have somehow survived, more or less, for 40-years. Relentless in their intensity, it may have taken the band a decade to achieve full velocity in the shape of Feel The Darkness, but when they did the result was a high-water mark of grimy excellence. 

41. Generation X, Generation X (1978)

Billy Bragg once suggested that Billy Idol’s sneer was so pronounced that it could only have been controlled by a roadie at the side of the stage with a line of fishing wire. One of the genuine stars of the early-day British scene, the contribution of Generation X tends these days to be overlooked. The fact that the band recorded parts of their eponymous debut album while pissed suggests their punk credentials were legit. 

Generation X
Generation X

40. Against Me!: White Crosses (2010)

As erudite and impassioned as the driving power-punk of Against Me! may be, the songs on White Crosses, the Floridian quintet’s fifth album, seem to yearn for something different from the punk rock norm. “I’ll make my way back home to you, head north on San Marco Avenue, white crosses on the church lawn, I want to smash them all,” sings Thomas Gabel on the record’s title track. Two years later Gabel became Laura Jane Grace and attained the change he desired. 

39. The Replacements,  Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (1981)

The Replacements may have played the odd show where they were too drunk to stand up, but in Paul Westerberg the Minneapolis group boasted a songwriter whose superior talents covered a multitude of sins. Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, the quartet’s first album, is a collection of turbulent songs that would prove a major inspiration on a young Billie Joe Armstrong.

38. Operation Ivy, Energy (1989)

The early-day house band at 924 Gilman Street, the independent punk club in Berkeley at which Green Day would also make their bones, Operation Ivy combined ska and punk with an aplomb that knocked their audience bandy. Torturously recorded for Lawrence Livermore’s scene-defining Lookout! label, by the time Energy was released the band that recorded it were no more. 

37. Converge, You Fail Me (2004)

Described as ‘a case study in calculated cruelty’, Converge have carved a celebrated career making the kind of music that ought to carry a government health warning. You Fail Me, the New Englanders’ fifth album, is a work of astounding brutality from a band with the musical chops required to drive their needles purposefully into the red. As aggravating as earache, this is much more than noise for its own sake. 

36. Stiff Little Fingers, Inflammable Material (1979)

The flinty edge that runs through Inflammable Material can be explained by the fact that, for the band that recorded it, the threat of a violent world was entirely real. Formed in Belfast in 1977, Stiff Little Fingers sang of their rubble-strewn streets and the limited opportunities of life in the Six Counties with a frustration that ran like a marble of fat through their otherwise commercial songs. 

35. Buzzcocks, Love Bites (1978)

The familiar complaint that the contribution to British punk rock of The Damned has been undervalued is one to which the Buzzcocks might reply, ‘Well, what do we get?’ Love Bites, the Manchester band’s second album, contains the evergreen Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve), the kind of song with which multi-platinum American punks would run riot just 15-years later. 

34. The Muffs, Happy Birthday To Me (1997)

With the death last year of Kim Shattuck, the singer and songwriter of The Muffs, popular-punk lost one of its most dependable talents. Happy Birthday To Me, the LA trio’s third album, combines major-key melodies and effervescent choruses with lyrics that speak of personal shortcomings and quiet disappointment. Deserving of a wider audience, the LP is worth the price of admission for the glorious All Blue Baby alone. 

33. Minor Threat, Minor Threat (1984)

Appalled by their friends’ appetite for self-destruction, Minor Threat helped popularise a punk subculture known as ‘straight edge’ that eschewed drugs and alcohol in favour of hard work and productivity. The results of this diligence can be heard on their eponymous debut album – actually a compilation of two earlier EPs – that somehow manages to burn through a dozen songs in under 17-minutes without being buzzed on anything. 

32. Circle Jerks, Group Sex (1980)

Formed by former Black Flag singer Keith Morris, the Circle Jerks added splashes of chaos and colour to LA’s already vibrant punk scene. Taking notions of economy to stringent degrees, the 15-minute long Group Sex, the quartet’s debut album, is so compact and bijou that guitarist Greg Hetson falsified the running time of its songs on the record’s back sleeve. 

31. Randy, Randy The Band (2005)

The most obscure album on this list, on a just and fair planet Randy The Band would be celebrated as one of the world’s finest high-octane punk rock’n’roll records, rather than the final release from a barely-remembered Swedish group with a rubbish name. But while Randy are by now forgotten, their music ought to be missed. 

30. Mariachi El Bronx, Mariachi El Bronx (2014)

Mariachi El Bronx is the alter-ego of The Bronx, a punk group from Los Angeles who at their best rollock as hard, and as capably, as any of their forbears. But it’s in the guise of a modern mariachi band that the quintet impress most with their soulfulness, suppleness, and a capacity to convincingly master a completely different sound. On songs such as Everything Twice and the efflorescent High Tide, the results are spellbinding. As if the idea of a punk group dressed in charro outfits could hardly be any more confusing, Mariachi El Bronx, the group’s third album,  shares its title with its two predecessors. Good luck dialing this baby up on Siri. 

29. The Stranglers, Rattus Norvegicus (1977)

When The Stranglers supported The Who at Wembley Stadium in the summer of 1979, their music was sufficiently provocative that it caused fights between their fans and supporters of the headline act. Despite a shared appetite for volume, the differences between the two bands were striking; Pete Townshend’s group lived high on the hog, while their punkish special guests slept in a squat in Chiddingfold from where they penned songs such as Peaches, Hanging Around, and (Get A) Grip (On Yourself). Viewed with suspicion by their big city peers – a little too suburban, a bit too late to the party – as heard on Rattus Norvegicus, their debut album, The Stranglers are a menacing force. 

The cover of Rattus Norvegicus, by The Stranglers
The cover of Rattus Norvegicus, by The Stranglers

28. The Interrupters, Say It Out Loud (2016)

Each night before taking to the stage The Interrupters prepare for their show by watching the British film Dance Craze. Featuring music from The Specials, The Selecter and Madness, among others, the documentary from 1981 gives a clue as to the young LA band’s motivation when it comes to finding a groove. 

The best hope in years for American punk rock, the ska-fueled bounce of Say It Out Loud, the quartet’s second album, is beloved of both a younger crowd and an audience old enough to have seen the 2-Tone explosion first hand. A support slot on Green Day’s upcoming stadium tour will only broaden their appeal. 

27. Crass, The Feeding Of The 5000 (1978)

While Johnny Rotten sang about anarchy with all the comprehension of a child playing with a hand-grenade – although not even a child would have considered rhyming the word ‘anarchist’ with ‘antichrist’ – for Crass such matters were far more serious. During a career of infamy and provocation, the Epping collective produced a homemade tape that purported to contain a private conversation between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan – the Prime Minister was made aware of its existence – and had their music criticised in the House of Commons. With The Feeding Of The 5000, they laid down a marker for hardcore militancy for generations to come.

26. Social Distortion, Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell (1992)

Social Distortion mainstay Mike Ness once accepted payment in heroin for a concert at the Cathay De Grande in Hollywood that saw the rest of the band give notice with immediate effect. After cleaning up his act, and working for a spell as a house-painter, Ness saw his group gifted a second lease of life when the appropriately titled Prison Bound began attracting airplay on the radio station KROQ. 

A major label deal with Epic Records followed, of which Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell is the second installment. A persuasive mixture of punk rock, roots music, and good ol’ fashioned rock’n’roll, 1992 was the year in which Ness emerged as one of the most authentic voices in blue-collar America. Today, Social Distortion are a top five concern. 

25. NOFX, Punk In Drublic (1994)

In 1994, NOFX responded to the opportunities afforded by the world going ga-ga for punk rock by shutting up shop. Avowedly independent and reassuringly spikey, the LA band declined to be interviewed and even refused to grant permission for MTV to air the clip that accompanied the aptly titled Leave It Alone, the lead-off song from Punk In Drubic, their fifth album (the decision was supported by Brett Gurewitz, the owner of their record label, Epitaph). 

The results were not as expected. Despite its media blackout, Punk In Drublic scored a gold album in the United States and is remembered today as a shining gem from punk rock’s second golden age. 

24. Fear, The Record (1982)

As politically incorrect as a foie gras picnic at the grave of Bernard Manning, Fear sing about starting wars so as to “give guns to the queers” and how they “just want to f___ some slut.” Provocative in the extreme, concerts by the LA quartet often descended – ascended? – into violence after front man Lee Ving had wound up the audience and then launched into a song called Let’s Have A War. Not without humour, The Record’s true redeeming quality is the strength of Ving’s soulful and resonant voice, especially as he delivers the line “survival is superiority” on the dementedly hawkish Foreign Policy. 

23. Idles, Joy As An Act of Resistance (2018)

With the release of their second album, Joy As An Act Of Resistance, Bristol quintet Idles cemented their justified reputation as the finest domestic punk group of recent years. Occasionally untethered and reliably relentless, the band also boast a poetic ear that is the envy of lesser talents. “I’ll sing at fascists ‘til my head comes off, I am Dennis Skinner’s Molotov, I’m lefty, I’m soft, I’m minimum wage job,” they sing on the not delicately titled I’m Scum to a beat that sounds like encroaching jackboots. ‘In a world run by bullish… sex pests, [the band’s] aggressive compassion is a potent antidote,’ wrote one reviewer. 

Idles performing in Glasgow, December 2019
Idles performing in Glasgow, December 2019 Credit: redferns

22. Fugazi, Repeater (1990)

While some bands strive for stardom, Fugazi were concerned only with purity. Refusing to issue merchandise and declining to be interviewed by any publication that carried adverts for alcohol, at the time of the release of Repeater, their debut album, the quartet from Washington DC were playing to a thousand people a night without any help from anyone. 

Given their status as the high-priests of moral correctitude, it’s strange to think that a key influence on vocalist Ian MacKaye came from the far-right loudmouth Ted Nugent. Impressed by the Motor City Madman’s wild concerts and his insistence on hunting his own food, MacKaye took these tenets and created something new. 

21. Sleaford Mods, Divide and Exit (2014)

Described by the writer Michael Hann as ‘a dark-world equivalent of David Brent and Gareth Keenan,’ the electronic-punk wielded by the two-man Sleaford Mods resonates with confrontational vignettes of breadline Britain. “Tesco extra an’ a real bad cough that stinks of rice with beef stroganoff,” they sing, sounding like John Cooper Clarke at the end of a very bad week. Iggy Pop loves the band, while Noel Gallagher is unconvinced. “There’s no joy in [it], is there,” he said. “It’s just two guys, one clearly mentally ill, shouting like Brown Bottle [from Viz].” Good luck finding a stronger recommendation than that. 

20. The Slits, Cut (1979)

With a front cover that featured the all-women line-up of The Slits naked save for mud and loincloths, Cut stood virtually alone in challenging the all-male hegemony of British punk. The fact that the Londoners could at first barely play their instruments was a shortcoming that mattered less in the scene’s heady early days, not least when Joe Strummer told them they would be “great” after a period of intense touring. Like The Clash themselves, The Slits were less interested in pogoing with the boys and more concerned with exploring the musical possibilities of dub reggae, a pursuit that makes Cut a more satisfying and more significant release than many from the time. A young Neneh Cherry also appears. 

Cut, by The Slits
Cut, by The Slits

19. Germs, (GI) (1979)

On the final night of his life, Darby Crash purchased four hundred dollars’ worth of heroin and injected himself with a quantity strong enough to kill four people. Less than 24-hours later in Manhattan, Mark Chapman drew a gun and assassinated John Lennon; with this, the story of the final hours of the front man with the Germs was blown from sky. Mourned by everyone in the Southern Californian scene, the most chaotic band in all of LA punk made just one album. Produced by Joan Jett and recorded for six thousand dollars, the ragged and relentless (GI) is now rightly considered a genre classic.

18. Gallows, Grey Britain (2009)

The decision by Warner Bros. to sign Gallows for a million quid was not one of the label’s wiser commercial decisions. Grey Britain, the one album the Watford quintet recorded for their new label, may have been universally well-received – the Telegraph described it as ‘a masterpiece of rock brutalism’ – but packed with radio-hits it was not. 

Gallows themselves were similarly untamable; at a concert at the 100 Club, singer Frank Carter left the stage and chased an audience member out into the street after a band mate had been drenched by a pint. For him, everything was a war. “If the horses won’t drink, drown them in the water,” he sings on The Vulture. Imagine how much of a hassle that would be. 

17. Black Flag, Damaged (1981)

By the time Black Flag convened to record Damaged, their debut album, the band had already burnt their way through three singers. Their fourth was a former ice-cream shop manager from Washington DC named Henry Lawrence Garfield, who relocated to LA and became Henry Rollins. 

Joining Black Flag was a bit like joining the marines: the group toured relentlessly in circumstances so penurious that its members were occasionally required to eat dog food to survive. No surprise to learn, then, that Damaged has a bit of an edge to it. MCA president Al Bergamo described it as “anti-parent” and refused to distribute it; delighted, Black Flag duly headed to the pressing plant and covered up the label’s logo with a sticker that read "As a parent, I found it an anti-parent record."

Damaged, by Black Flag
Damaged, by Black Flag

16. Public Image Ltd, Metal Box (1979)

One of the few original punks with the imagination required to successfully execute a second act, Public Image Ltd gave John Lydon the freedom to run riot. Spacious and strange, nowhere is this freedom more capably utilised than on Metal Box, the London quartet’s second album. 

Originally released in a – yes – metal box, the band considered separating with sandpaper the three 12” discs onto which their hypnotic and dependably challenging songs were pressed. All fun and games, but the legacy of PiL endured; the dreamscape guitar work of Keith Levene in particular can be heard throughout the 1980s as replicated by REM, The Cult, and even The Smiths.   

15. Dead Kennedys, Frankenchrist (1985)

With the release of Frankenchrist, the third album from the Dead Kennedys, the US authorities decided they’d had just about enough of the country’s most provocative punk band. Aggrieved at the decision to include a poster of H.R. Giger’s painting Penis Landscape in the inner sleeve, the group were charged with violating the Californian penal code. 

The subsequent criminal trial ended in a hung jury, while the request for a retrial was struck down by the Californian Supreme Court. A messy and costly affair, it is not unreasonable to believe that the state jeapordised the liberty of an independent band lacking in corporate muscle simply because it could. Exhausted, within a year the Dead Kennedys were no more. 

14. Misfits. Walk Among Us (1982)

When Metallica began wearing Misfits t-shirts in the late 1980s, the barely-remembered punk group from New Jersey enjoyed a resurgence that last year culminated in a tour of the largest arenas in North America. A curious case of a band becoming a brand – the quartet’s skull logo is more widely known than any of their songs – at least the music on Walk Among Us, their debut album, is worthy of re-appraisal. 

Propelled by the melodic and mischievous songwriting of Glen Danzig, the Misfits played songs about Martians and zombies with the kind of revelry that Ed Wood Jr. might have brought to The Beach Boys. Silly, yes; a classic, certainly.

13. The Damned, Damned Damned Damned (1977)

According to Elvis Costello “The Damned were the best punk group… I loved them from the start.” It seems fitting that Declan Patrick MacManus would say this, because shortly after The Damned had recorded their debut album, Damned Damned Damned, its producer, Nick ‘Basher’ Lowe, recycled the master tape for use by Costello himself. If you’re looking for the reason that the first English punk album has never been re-mastered, you’ve found it. “We boshed [the songs] out in two days,” recalled bassist Captain Sensible, “we must have sounded radically different, really gnarled and mangled.”

The Damned
The Damned

12. X, Los Angeles (1980)

Produced by Ray Manzarek of The Doors, Los Angeles is the punk album that best encapsulates the city from which it takes its name. Featuring an economical buzz-saw sound and the unique harmonies of singers Exene Cervenka and John Doe, in X’s eyes the City of Angels – in which “the days change at night, change in an instant” - is a place where serial rapists stalk their prey on public buses and the idle rich ask the hired help to burn them with curling-tongs. 

An exercise in nihilism this is not; the pronounced morality of Los Angeles is drawn from the atonality with which it’s delivered. As the music critic Greil Marcus once wrote, ‘X’s vision isn’t fragmented, it’s not second-hand, and its ambition is to discredit any vision that suggests there’s more to life than X says there is.’ 

11. Bad Brains, Attitude: the Roir Sessions (1982)

Described by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch as “the best hardcore punk album of all time,” the first full-length release by Bad Brains is a creation of such precision and power that its game-changing qualities are revered to this day. A compelling live draw in both New York and Washington DC, the Rastafarian quartet’s home city, Attitude… captured the group’s energies without spilling a drop. It’s fearsome stuff, too; such was the pace of its songs that in 1982 the listener might have been forgiven for believing they were playing them at the wrong speed. Perhaps with this in mind, ROIR Records decided to release the collection only on cassette. 

10. The Offspring, Smash (1994)

The unexpected and overwhelming success of Smash began when the Southern Californian radio station KROQ began playing Come Out and Play, the album’s leadoff single. This boon was good news not just for the band that recorded it, but also for their record label, Epitaph. A mid-sized operation at best, owner Brett Gurewitz remortgaged his home in order to pay the pressing-costs on an album that was by now required listening for every teenager in North America and Europe. With 11 million sales to its name, Smash remains the highest-selling independent rock record of all time.

In 1994, The Offspring weren’t even a full-time band. Guitarist Kevin ‘Noodles’ Wasserman worked as a janitor at a school in Anaheim; its pupils would spy him sweeping leaves in the morning and tell him that they’d just seen him on MTV. Singer Dexter Holland was a student at the University of Southern California who wrote Come Out And Play, a song about gang violence, after driving through Watts and Compton en route to classes (today he holds a doctorate in molecular biology). 

Unlike the major-label affiliated Green Day, with whom The Offspring broke through the glass ceiling that separated punk rock from the mainstream, the success of Smash happened without much encouragement from the musicians that made it. The band gave virtually no press interviews and even spurned invitations to appear on Late Night With David Letterman and Saturday Night Live. But Smash, their bouncing collection of punk rock nuggets, proved irresistible, then as now.  

9. Suicidal Tendencies, Suicidal Tendencies (1983)

The last thing Mike Muir expected when he wrote the song I Shot Reagan was a visit from the Secret Service. But once the track had found its way into federal ears, the then 19-year old singer with Suicidal Tendencies received a knock on the door of his home in Venice Beach from two of the president’s men. 

In receipt of GBH of the earhole from the ol’ good-cop-bad-cop routine, Muir was instructed to sign a form giving access to his medical records, to submit a sample of his handwriting, and to provide prior notification if ever he planned to visit Washington DC. “It was a real experience,” he said. 

Suicidal Tendencies divided opinion like no other band. For many in the LA scene, their fans’ appetite for violence was just one reason to avoid their shows, and their music. So appalled were the readers of the punk magazine Flipside by the cross-breeding of hardcore punk and metal guitar-leads on their self-titled debut LP, on which I Shot Reagan appears, that they voted it the worst release of 1983.

A screaming generation-chasm put to music, Suicidal Tendencies would have the last laugh when the album’s centerpiece - Institutionalized, a song about an adolescent bound for a mental health facility - appeared not only on late-night MTV but also, bizarrely, on an episode of Miami Vice. A hundred thousand record sales duly followed. 

8. Rancid, …And Out Come The Wolves (1995)

Looking like individuals in keen need of a dollar from a stranger, Rancid had talent to burn and clothes that appeared to have been salvaged from the fire on which they’d burnt it. The band’s singer, Tim Armstrong, was a recovering alcoholic who had previously lived at a Salvation Army hostel. So impressed was Brett Gurewitz by his previous band, Operation Ivy, that he offered Armstrong a recording contract without having heard a note of his new group’s music. “Tim is our scene’s Bob Dylan,” he once said. 

Rancid's  …And Out Come The Wolves
Rancid's  …And Out Come The Wolves

Beloved of everyone that has heard it, …And Out Come The Wolves is the finest American punk record of the nineties. It also happens to be only the third native release of its kind to have attained platinum status in its country of origin. 

If not as poppy as Green Day’s ubiquitous Dookie, Rancid’s third album is nonetheless packed tight with jagged gems and family-sized choruses. But it’s Armstrong’s poetic vignettes of outsiders on the wrong side of the American Dream brought together by the power of community, and of punk, that really sets the record apart.  

“Jackyl was one of the ones that perished [but] he was one of the ones that was already saved,” is the tribute paid to a fallen friend who could be found “shooting dope in the men’s room” on the magnificent Daly City Train. 

7. MDC, Millions of Dead Cops (1981)

When Billie Joe Armstrong inserted a chant of “No Trump! No KKK! No fascist USA!” into Green Day’s performance of the song Bang Bang at the American Music Awards in 2016, he introduced a battle-cry that would resound at protest rallies across the United States for years to come. The slogan in its original form, to which Armstrong replaced the word “war” with the name “Trump”, is taken from the song Born To Die from Millions Of Dead Cops, the finest hardcore punk album ever made. 

Barely 20 minutes long and featuring 14 songs, the debut album from San Francisco’s MDC – over the years the initials have stood for many things, from Millions of Dead Children to Misguided Devout Christians – takes the peaceful sensibilities of the hippies up on the Haight and uses them to wage war. In the canon of culture from the City by the Bay, it’s like Jerry Garcia going berserk with ‘Dirty’ Harry Callaghan’s Magnum. 

On an LP that can barely contain its own fury, singer Dave Dictor sings about animal rights, transvestite rights, police oppression – “what you gonna do? The mafia in blue, hunting for queers, n_____s, and you” – the craven morality of slumlords, and, even, the idea that John Wayne was a Nazi. The past tense is important, cos he’s “not any more”, not since “life evened the score”, anyway.  

It’s a wonder that Millions Of Dead Cops never runs out of steam, let alone targets. As the album ends with the words “and there’s no God in Heaven, so get of your knees”,  the sensation is of being beaten bloody by something close to perfection. 

6. Refused, the Shape of Punk to Come: A Chimerical Bombination in 12 Bursts (1998)

Unluckily for them, the elevation of Refused to punk rock’s hall of fame occurred after the group had disbanded. The split occurred during a troubled tour of the United States that saw a gig in a house – a house! – in Harrisonburg, Virginia, broken up by the police. Shortly afterwards, MTV began airing the clip that accompanied the then almost unknown quintet’s song New Noise, at which point the band became Gods. 

Like Clive James in Falling Towards England, on The Shape Of Punk To Come… Refused are revolutionary socialists bolstered by the certainty of youth. “Capitalism is indeed organised crime and we are all the victims,” sings Dennis Lyxzen, while elsewhere demanding “we want the airwaves back… we want all the time all the time.” 

As much a jazz album as a punk record – the title is cribbed from Ornette Coleman’s LP The Shape Of Jazz To Come – at least the music is as radical as the politics. It isn’t easy to devise entirely new running-routes for the punk rock playbook, but Refused managed to do so. 

“Sometimes I’m a bit jealous of the certainty that we had in the nineties, the way we said ‘this is the way things are,’” Lyxzen said, five years after the Swedish group had re-formed. “Now I’m more like, ‘I think this is the way things are.’”

5. The Clash, London's Calling (1979)

With the title track from London Calling employed as the music to which the players of one third of the capital’s professional football clubs take to the field, today The Clash are about as revolutionary as a seat in the House of Lords. In the 21st Century, the Capital City punk rockers have raised their flag not only on the imagination of the mainstream, but on the corpse of the Sex Pistols, over whom - scandalously, as it goes - they are held in higher regard. 

The Clash
The Clash

The DJ Don Letts once said that while “the Sex Pistols made you want to smash down a wall, The Clash gave you a reason for doing so,” to which any punk worth their sodium would have replied, ‘Actually, I quite like not having a reason.’ John Lydon himself was once asked for his opinion on his one-time London rivals, to which he replied that Joe Strummer was a man not “overburdened with wisdom.”

At least London Calling, the band’s one truly great album, is a bona fide masterpiece. A smash’n’grab of rockabilly, reggae, roots and punk, in songs such as The Card Cheat, Four Horsemen, The Right Profile, and Clampdown, The Clash capture lightning in a bottle as it shoots from all corners of the sky. Released in 1980 in the United States, Rolling Stone magazine voted the album the best release of the decade. 

4. Ramones, It's Alive (1979)

When the Ramones first came to London, in the summer of 1976, they had some advice for a young Paul Simonon, bassist with The Clash. Having missed the band’s show the previous evening at the Roundhouse because of a gig in Sheffield, outside Dingwalls in Camden Town he told the New Yorkers “we played our first show last night: no one wants us because we don’t know what we’re doing, and we’re not good enough.” Johnny Ramone replied with the words “you haven’t seen us play We Stink!... just do what we do, just play.”

Despite not being all that popular at the time, the Ramones’ eponymous debut album forever changed the course of popular music. But as with The Beatles' earliest recordings, the best versions of tracks such as Blitzkrieg Bop and Now I Wanna To Sniff Some Glue – beat those for song titles – are mixed in mono, whereas Ramones was issued in stereo. Because of this, the ‘bruddas’ first live LP takes its place on this list. 

Recorded at the Rainbow in Finsbury Park on the final evening of 1977, It’s Alive dispenses 28-tracks in under 54- minutes – last year’s deluxe edition contains 109 songs - and features almost every one the band’s compositions worth hearing. As direct as the L Train, it is the work of a pop band that approached their craft like a boxer unloading a combination of punches to a bell that never sounds. 

3. Bad Religion, Suffer (1988)

With the release of Suffer, Bad Religion saved American punk rock from extinction. Although at the time a part-time band from Los Angeles, and a second-tier one at that, their apparently minor third album relit the pilot light on a scene that had shrunk to almost nothing. It helped inspire both Green Day and The Offspring, and without it the commercial explosion of the genre in 1994 would never have happened. 

Suffer, by Bad Religion
Suffer, by Bad Religion

At the time of its release, punk rock found itself trapped by an apparently terminal pincer-movement; its sonic violence had been surpassed by thrash metal, while its capacity to shock had been upstaged by gangsta rap. Bad Religion wriggled free from this vice by recording a record that wasn’t all that angry. Instead, it was wordy, sharp, catchy, and smart. 

They were the unlikeliest of saviors. Suffer was the band’s first album for five years – its predecessor had sold in the hundreds – and their singer, Greg Graffin, was a full-time student at UCLA (today he is a lecturer in evolution at Cornell University). His co-songwriter, Brett Gurewitz, had spent years learning to produce music; when the time came to record his own band, the results were powerful and rich. 

Gurewitz also ran a small label on which the record was issued. In time, Epitaph Records would become the most important imprint in the history of punk, with millions of sales to its credit, but to this day Suffer remains its most important release. And the band that created it are still going strong. 

2. Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977)

Sad to say, but it’s no longer possible to offend a nation in quite the way the Sex Pistols once did. They swore on television and ended up on the front page of the tabloids. They were robbed of a number one single after the charts were gerrymandered in favour of Rod Stewart. They released an album the explosive title of which was unwittingly provided by a pair of Millwall supporting hot-dog vendors. What’s not to love?

The Sex Pistols
The Sex Pistols

If the Ramones created punk rock’s original sound, it was Johnny Rotten that defined its voice. Without it, Never Mind The Bollocks… would be little more than an amphetamine-spiked pub-rock record that carried a little too much weight. But with Rotten on the mic – he auditioned for the group by miming to Alice Cooper’s I’m Eighteen – the Sex Pistols became a dangerous weapon. Certain and self-conscious, the way he phrases the words “we are ruled by none” - and just listen to the way he rolls that ‘r’ -  on EMI, the album’s best song, is priceless. 

It ended in a mess, obviously, with guitarist Steve Jones and bassist Sid Vicious addicted to heroin, the latter up on a charge of murder for a crime in Manhattan that he probably didn’t commit. But by then Johnny Rotten had formed Public Image Ltd. and found a wildly different way to continue his one-man war with everything, including himself. 

1. Green Day, American Idiot (2004)

Prior to the release of American Idiot, Rob Cavallo called a meeting at the headquarters of Warner Bros. Records in Burbank, California, for the company’s press officers and sales team. As well producing Green Day’s seventh album, Cavallo was also the president of the label.  

“Okay, we have an album that we’ve made,” he said. “It’s a punk rock opera and I think it’s the greatest piece of music that we’ll put out this year… We’re gonna sell one million records in the first week, and we’re gonna sell 10 million records by the time it’s done.”

Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong in 2017
Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong in 2017 Credit: wenn

As it turned out, Rob Cavallo’s figures were wrong; by the time the cash registers had stopped ringing up copies of Green Day’s latest album, the Oakland trio’s one true masterpiece, American Idiot had sold more than fourteen million copies. Not only is it the last true blockbuster of the rock age - with sales that will surely never be matched - it is also the highest-selling punk rock album of all-time.

And it is a punk rock album, just as Green Day are a punk rock band. Despite the group’s aged army of determined detractors – cries of “that’s not punk!” have resounded since their breakthrough album, Dookie, sold in similar quantities in 1994 – when the group decide to floor it, there are few who can touch them. 

Partly political, conceptual, supple, ambitious – the record features not one, but two nine-minute songs – catchy and complete, American Idiot is the sound of a group testing both themselves and the boundaries of the genre they so capably represent. 

This is what Telegraph readers said:

@Paul Murray:

"My tastes run mainly to Wagner, Strauss and Mahler but I agree that American Idiot is an absolute 'must have' album. It's superb from start to finish."

@Stevie Gooding:  

"As many have pointed out, most of these bands are post punk or punk revival at best.  So many worthier names are notable by their absence - The Ruts, Vibrators, Slaughter & the Dogs, Only Ones, UK Subs, Adam & the Ants, Siouxsie & the Banshees...  New York Dolls should also get a mention in dispatches - without their influence on Maclaren, the Pistols would never have been."

@frank frank:  

"The first Clash album is missing and is one of the holy trinity of punk albums. Even Mick Jones himself acknowledges that his favourite clash album is the first."

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