this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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I wanna hear everyone's fight music! I've been leaning on RTJ the last few days.
Yess, I've been trying to explore punk. Give me punk bands with lyrics I can understand, and who are vocally critical of conservatism and fascism please.
For myself -
A lot of RATM has floated to the top for me in the past few years. They are in heavy rotation now, and weren't really for about fifteen years prior to that. The songs you don't immediately think of when I say RATM have lyrics that are just as true and just as biting. If you like their sound but aren't familiar with most of their work, this is a good time.
Brother Ali - particularly songs like Uncle Sam Goddamn
Dropkick Murphys, particularly most of the Album "This Machine Still Kills Fascists"
Anti-Flag. I know they have proven to have done some shady things with regard to harassing some women at their shows, but I only just discovered them recently (and learned this about them afterwards.) Unfortunately I like their songs and lyrics. "Victory or Death" comes to mind immediately.
Public Enemy - By the time I get to arizona, Black steel in the hour of chaos, fight the power (obv), fight the power 2020, really I don't think they do a song that's not good for the current state of affairs. Over and over in recent years I have concluded that the hip hop community saw what was and what was coming long before (decades before) the rest of us. I wonder why. 🤔
Last couple Arrested Development albums. Good tracks off the top of my head "And This I know" "The Meek" "Amazing" "Fire" "Moses" Gotta listen to these, most aren't going to leap out with the expected energy if you don't pay attention to the lyrics all the way through. There are others. Their last three albums have a high percentage of gems IMO.
Really old one by B. Dolan called "Which side are you on?" (loosely based aoround Guthrie song) which is congruent with a lot of today's issues, though I think it was written primarily in support of this woman. Gonna link it here because I just listened to it again and damn does it slap.
A lot of what I listed above is unsurprisingly posted by me or others in !music@lemmy.world
All of these groups rule. Good taste in music
Thank you!
Further recommendations for your exploration: any band Ian MacKaye has played in. Even if you don't care for his work, he has had an outsized impact on the development of American punk / hardcore (even if he's resisted that attribution). Specific recommendations include:
Okay, with MacKaye given his due, other "classic punk" recommendations include:
Some slightly deeper cuts, more in the proto-emo space than political punk, but they share a lot of musical DNA and I think some of these tracks are underrated.
That's probably enough for now. I hope you find some stuff you like here.
Thank you very much!
I'm really just about the ideal age to have been an OG Punk fan, but at the time my attention was elsewhere, so I'm excited to crib from this list. 🙂
Ah, I'm a bit younger (in fact I don't believe there's a song on that list that was released after I was born), but I'm a big history geek, and the evolution of genre is a particular fascination of mine, so I have intentionally sought out the music which influenced bands I liked in high school.
I'm sure I've missed out on some killer acts from the era, so hopefully someone who was both alive at the time AND paying attention to the scene will appear and give us both an education.
A tangentially related suggestion for you, if you share my fascination with the context around the art we make (though you are probably well aware if you're an old-head haha), there's an EXCELLENT documentary about the LA hc punk scene that was released during its zenith (arguably) in 1981. Several of the bands I mention in that list appear. It is called The Decline of Western Civilization, and the most convincing argument I can make to get people to watch it is that the LAPD chief wrote an op-ed demanding theaters not screen it.
Absolutely was NOT aware, but I will check it out!
Well shiiiiit bro, that was all you had to say!
UK Subs - Riot, Social Distortion - Don't Drag Me Down, Restraining Order - Fight Back, The Casualties - 1312, Pennywise - Fuck Authority, Against All Authority - We Won't Submit, Descendants - 'Merican (ugh, the formatting on mobile isn't wonderful)
Eyyy, +1 for Pennywise. That's a band I've not thought about in some time.
Thank you very much!
Probably a lot of obvious choices on here, but I like to think of it as honoring the classics of the genre, and hopefully there are a few entries which are new to folks.
Two nautical themed metal/hardcore songs which get me ready to tussle isn't a lot, but it is weird that it happened twice.
That seems like enough brainstorming for now. Hope someone finds something they vibe with.
Definitely need to take Pantera off your Nazi fighting list.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/26/pantera-shows-cancelled-after-frontmans-nazi-salute-prompts-fan-backlash
Oh Jesus fucking Christ. Thank you for letting me know, I'll edit that immediately. The worst part is that I've conditioned myself to cope with the news I've just received by listening to Pantera.
Yeah, that was an unpleasant surprise to me too. I found out when I was singing along with the song at karaoke and a native American friend of mine got really mad. Ending the song calling someone "boy" has a very different meaning when it's considered with racial context.
Yes, though this is a scenario where I'd argue such a reading is a touch overzealous, and is exactly the sort of overreaction that leads idiots to think that calling Musk's Nazi salutes what they are is just pearl clutching. The song is about haters who talk mad shit behind your back, but don't dare say anything to your face. Therefore, "boy" is being used to imply the narrator doesn't consider these people to be "men", as they lack some quality (maturity, courage, whatever) necessary to qualify.
Also, the world changed a lot in the decades between the song's release and 2016. I'm not going to go digging to try and find out exactly how much of a piece of shit Anselmo has been and for how long. Fucker isn't worth my mental bandwidth, so I'm okay with operating on the assumption that, like many, many folks, he was radicalized over time by the rise of the "alt-right" and becoming wealthy. In either case, it doesn't change the fact that I've got no intention of ever financially supporting his endeavors in the future, despite enjoying some of his output in the past.
I've known about KMFDM for a long time but discovered Free Your Hate about this time in 2017, it's too bad it's that relevant again but at least we've got some good Nazi-punching music.
In all honesty, I have no idea how I came across that song. Despite some of the other selections that are also in that mold, industrial metal isn't actually a genre I fuck with that much. I'm open to it, especially as I've continued to get comfortable in some of the less melodic subgenres, but the actual wave of popularity these bands were riding on missed me as a kid and ive come to it later.
I assume that it must have been included in a video game soundtrack of some kind? In fact, as I've been writing this comment, I think it may have been a part of the Brutal Legend soundtrack, and I had all of that stuff on my iPod at the time.
Song do go pretty hard tho, don't it?
It really does. And I do think it was on the Brutal Legend soundtrack. I know it because I'm just old enough to remember that sort of stuff back in the 90s when it was big.
Do you have other recommendations from their catalog? This is the only track of there's I think I've listened to.
+1 for State of the Union and Sentry the Defiant. I also see your Waking the Demon and raise you one You want a Battle? (Here's a War). I don't know if we're all against Anti-flag with Justin Sane being a trash human, but their catalogue is still good for this situation.
I almost don't want to know, especially given what someone else shared with me about Pantera's lead singer; but, given what I'm sure you've inferred from my selection, Anti-Flag was very much in my rotation for a couple of years. So, in the interest of doing the bare minimum necessary to claim I haven't been ostriching the WHOLE time since the election, what revelations have come to light about this guy?
My read on it was that onstage he'd ogle underage girls/attendees, really flexing the rockstar swagger or whatever. He'd somehow relay to them an invitation to meet him after the show, and he'd bring them onto the tour bus where he'd pressure or trap them into having sex.
A silver lining is, as I read it, the rest of the band immediately disavowed him. Some fans/ commenters alleged the other band members had to have been aware he was doing this, particularly citing the close quarters of the tour bus. Yet, the band holds its stance that they really did not know.
Oof. Well, I'm disappointed but I refuse to let it ruin my day. I also tend to think that the band saying they had no idea is a stretch, but I empathize with someone who rationalizes away suspected bad behavior of a long term friend. I can't say with 100% confidence that I wouldn't do the same, as long as there was enough plausible deniability. If they disavowed him immediately upon it coming to light, well, I guess that's better than praying for forgiveness and healing or whatever, even if they had thought his behavior was suspect beforehand and not acted on it. Perfect can't be the enemy of good, and I'm just so fucking tired man...
State of the Union has been one of my favorites to the point I honestly forgot it's not a single
I listened to Siren Song of the Counter Culture all the way through for the first time since probably 2007 a little while ago, and tbh, there's little on the record I would call filler. Some songs do less for me than others, so I'm not gonna say it meets "All Killer" criteria, but I was surprised by how much I was enjoying the deeper cuts.
In fact, it surfaced an embarrassing memory for me. When "Paper Wings" came on, I was reminded of a little light plagiarism I committed as a shitty 13 year old. We had discussed the use of enjambnent in "The Red Wheelbarrow", and were told to write a poem with an emphasis on structure as much as meter or rhyme. Being (as mentioned) 13, shitty, and confident that Rise Against was not in my English teacher's rotation, I basically just copied and pasted lyrics from that song and incorporated odd line breaks and punctuation.
Had I a modicum of self-awareness at the time, I'd like to think I'd have made different choices, but that's high school, baby!
My musical awakening was just too late to pull that kind of nonsense in school but I absolutely feel that
Propaghandi is a big one for me since they're from my city, but also Dead Kennedys, NoFX, Stray From the Path, Jeff Rosenstock
Edit:
I have more 😈:
Sorry, music and finding it is a special interest.
Don't be sorry ✊
Of that list, I know TMBG. Always a fav of mine, and I appreciate their attempts to educate and promote science. The sun is a miasma of incandescent plasma!
I love the fact that the song you quoted is a kind of retraction of another, less scientifically accurate song of theirs.
The sun is a mass of incandescent gas...
It is, but they adopted it. It was originally written by Hy Zaret. They give him credit, of course, but it became theirs to steward.
They've definitely been one of my faves as well since I was a kid and found them while watching Malcom in the Middle
Add Leslie Fish to the list!
Okay commenting again to tell you I just looked this up and was reading the info for the artist and learned the term "filk" (science fiction folk) so I'm soooo in.
Thanks so much! I'm building a playlist so I'm always happy to take suggestions :)
That whole proapgandhi thing about then regretting the lyrics to Halle salasse up you ass for talking shit about Rastafari was dumb. That religion is nuts.
Ya can't say I disagree with you there
Maybe Im basic but Rise Against still hits. Sudden Urge goes hard. Also turns out they just released a new song within the last 24h that I need to listen to
I need to poke at their newer stuff. I kinda stopped paying attention to their new releases after Black Market and the one single they released a couple years after that, but there's a few songs that hit that older style like The Eco Terrorist in Me that still go hard. I do respect that even as the sound left my general preferred punk sound, their lyrics remained as complex and literary as always (seriously how often are you looking up words from song lyrics in a dictionary?)
The dork in me loves when Tim does not end a line with a preposition.
+1 Sudden Urge!
I slept on most of the post-Endgame catalogue except for maybe 5 songs, and this was not one of them. I eased up on the skip button one day in the car recently and got to hear it again, for what felt like the first time. It gave me chills.
Show Me the Body is great.
From old timey union fight songs (ex Workers of the world, Awaken) to protest rock. The Swedish band Nationalteatern have a great banger "Staten och Kapitalet" about that the state and the capital sit in the same boat, but it is not those who row and the whip does not lick their fat necks.
I've been loving the old Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Billy Bragg, and Barbara Dane
This music just hits so hard
Dead Prez been radical and vocal about social and political issues since long before everyone else got there. Music is probably dated by now but their messages have always been consistent and they are very applicable today.
Basically anything off of Idles' 2020 masterpiece, Ultra Mono. Grounds is probably the most direct fight song. My other favorites are War, Mr. Motivator, and Carcinogenic.