All I want for christmas is Oi!

Alright, the year is almost over and Christmas (or Jul as they say here in Sweden, because yes, fuck you christianity) is here ! First I thought I would do something about christmas songs in Oi! music, but that already has been done like a million time, and it's boring. So instead I'll give tou a little Top 5 of the best stuffes that came out this year according to me (which is not much more original, but it has never been done by me so far) ! There might be some stuffes that I haven't reviewed in the webzine, either because I didn't had the time or because I'm lazy -your choice- but whatever. No particular order, but anyway, here we go !

Top 5 12"

Battle Ruins - S/T

Eh, you really need an explanation on this one ? I guess this one's not a big surprise, since I kept repeating all year long how awesome it was. Still listen to it several times per day, and it's still as brilliant ! Review here

Urban Savage - Let Thunder Roar

Really good lyrics and brilliant music genre mixture ! Perhaps the swedish answer to bands like Hammer and the Nails ? At least they're as good ! And more is coming from them soon as well. Really good end-of-the-year surprise ! Review here

Hard Evidence - Last One Standing

Excellent debut album by the St. Louis band. Melo as fuck streetpunk band, their song "Rising Sun" is one of my favourite from this year.

Noi!se - The Scars We Hide

After 4 long years of waiting, Noi!se finally released a full-lenght, and it's actually a great one. Not as "Oi!" as they where in the beginning, but still, great release !

Boston Strangler - Fire

Wow. Even better than their first LP, and that was not easy to do... This album is pure fucking genius ! The song "Slow Burn" itself is the best reason to get that gem !

Top 5 7"

Justice Blocc - S/T

New band from Colorado Springs, and the proof that the USA are not done with giving us great bands ! Can't wait for the 7" to be out, since the tracks were so far only released digitaly.

Sabotage - Betraktelser från Staketet

Brilliant music, brilliant lyrics... In brief, brilliant band ! They have a 10" coming out next year, which is gonna be a blast ! Here you can listen to the first extract of it ! Review here

Reconquesta - S/T

Really good first release for these Barcelona guys, I saw an album was going to be out soon, great news ! Here's a preview. Review here

Syndrome 81 - S/T

2014 was definitely a good year for the Oi!-influenced punk hardcore/punk hardcore-influenced Oi! (call it how you like) genre, and that was definitely partly thanks to Syndrome 81. Probably the best new band from France right now. Good news, they are working on a new 7" ! Review here

Damaged Head - S/T

We don't have much in Uppsala, but we have great HC punk bands, and Damaged Head is a great example of that !

Top 10 best songs

Some albums might not have made it to my (very strict, indeed) top 12"/7" of the year, but they have some gems that deserved to be mentionned. A top 5 was to short for that, so it'll be a top 10 instead.

Battle Ruins - Coming of the Beast
Maraboots - Ils Sont Partis
Ouka - Basara
Violent Reaction - Dead End
Hard Evidence - Rising Sun
Last Crusade - Deadbeat
Sabotage - Blå Linjen Blues
Lion's Law - Our Generation
Stone Dagger - The Siege of Jerusalem
Justice Blocc - Time

Glory Days - S/T tape (Self-released - 2014)

Something like a week ago I got a mail from Piotr, guitarist of the Warsaw-based 3-piece band Glory Days, asking me to review these guys' debut tape. I agreed, because I usualy don't refuse to review stuffes (unless it's really bad, it's hard to write bad stuffes about a band, there's not a thousand way to call a shit record a shit record), and also because I pretty much know nothing about the polish scene, and the eastern european one in general (never got a deep interest for it, for no particular reason). I also saw that these guys got litteraly destroyed by Maximum Rock'n'Roll. Well what a fucking surprise, MRR generaly doesn't like Oi!, so nothing new here.
Let's talk a bit more about Glory Days itself. They're a melodic mid-tempo Oi! band, with nice solo guitar additions, some nice gang vocals and all the package. Once again, it don't really know how the scene is in Poland, and what they sound like, but Glory Days sounds pretty "western european". I hear 80's english Oi!, and more modern bands, like Alternate Action (yep, they're canadians, and Canada is not in Europe, I know thanks), Perkele (the Från Flykt till Kamp period) or, to quote their fellow eastern comrades Saints & Sinners from Czech Republic (both musicaly and the vocaly, in that case). Also they sing in english. On the one hand, that's good because then I can understand what they're singing (my abilities in polish are pretty much inexistant... kurwa ?), but on the other hand, I like when people sing in their native language. I guess it's easier to express yourself and transmit your messages in your mother tongue, but whatever, that's not the problem here.
So, on that tape Glory Days give us 4 tracks, "Reality Check", "Glory Days", "The Line" and "Out of Sight", all dealing with kind of topics : trying to escape reality, which hits you right back in the face, living for today without forgetting the past, or telling people trying to use and abuse you to get lost. Best songs being, for me, "Out of Sight" and "Glory Days" (even of the two other ones are more than ok).
So, nothing revolutionary here, Glory Days obviously doesn't break the "Oi!-mould", but they fit just right in it, at least to me. That's an honest band, giving us a nice 4-tracks tape, I actually have a hard time understanding why MRR hated it so much ?
Anyway, give these guys a listen, you can stream 3 of their 4 tracks through their bandcamp, with lyrics included.

Syndrome 81 - S/T (Offside Records - 2013)

I've been mentioning this guys quite a lot lately, so it seems kind of obvious to review their first 7", even if it has been out for like a year now. And moreover, first french review here, and I don't think it could have been a better first one than this.
Syndrome 81 is made of members from french hardcore bands like Thrashington DC, Night Stalkers and Police Truck. So you might think these guys have not much to do with Oi! But just listen to that 7" and you'll see that you're wrong. this is definitely one of the best french band I have listened to lately, mixing HC punk (Negative Approach seems like an obvious influence here, especially since the band cover one song of them) and Oi!/Chaos punk (think about bands like Kidnap, Trotskids or Komintern Sect, I would actually also name Tolbiac's Toads because these guys play so good and kind of faster than your usual french Oi! band, the hardcore influences and background explaining it a lot). Extremly melodic mid-tempo songs, perfect solo guitars, nice lyrics and vocals, gang choirs and morever a kind of dark/depressed feeling to it all... This is just fucking awesome.

That Negative Approach cover is just brilliant, I mean even the translation kicks asses !

But the whole "Chaos punk" thing isn't just about the music. You can feel it in the lyrics as well : talking about the dark side of everyday's life ("Une Vie Pour Rien", which is not a cover of Camera Silens' song with the same name), their city (Brest, in Britanny, which already has a glorious punk past with bands like Al Kapott, Les Collabos or the more controversial but still classic Brutal Combat) like "Recouvrance" and "Brest la Grise", and even a kind of a surprising song about the french war in Algeria and the use of torture during that war, with "À Coup de Gégène" (myself being french, I can't really think about any punk song sharing the same topic, apart maybe "Un Pays à Défendre" by L'Infanterie Sauvage). And of course the Negative Approach cover in french, exclusive to the vinyl version of that release. A great anti-P.M.A. song is how you can describe that cover. Fuck your positive attitude, the future is not bright.
That record came out in different version, first a cassette limited to 81 copies (what else ?) and then, hopefuly on vinyl (a regular black version and a special artwork and grey vinyl version limited to 100 copies). All that with an artwork that match the dark ambiance of the songs, a really D.I.Y.  insert with band photos, lyrics and thanklist, but moreover, 6 fucking brilliant songs.
These guys have already toured Europe now (even playing in Sweden, where I unfortunately missed them) and are going to play in Paris with the legendary band R.A.S. soon. If you can go to that show please do so, because you don't want to miss it, this is just gonna be epic.

Syndrome 81 is bloody fucking awesome, I read that they were on their way to record more stuffes, and I can just be happy with that ! Vive la France, vive them and I hope I'll be able to see them live soon !

Urban Savage - Let Thunder Roar (Savage Records - 2014)

It is time to head back to Sweden, more precisely to Malmö, aka Crime City, home of the best falafels of Northern Europe, good hardcore bands and Urban Savage, which is today's subject.
How can I describe Urban Savage to you ? I would say that they are a Oi!/UK82 sounding band, with obvious hardcore and rock'n'roll-ish/cock-rock influences. They seem themselves not to care much about what they are labeled as (they describe themselves as "hardcorepunkoirocknroll or whatever" according to their facebook page), and that's good, who the fuck needs a label anyway. What's important is that the music is good. And Urban Savage is good music, let me tell you that.
No-compromise songs driven by strong bass lines, with powerful vocals backed by good gang choirs is what you will get here. The sound is changing through the songs, for example songs like "When the Day Comes" and "Those Who Go & Those Who Stay" are more rock'n'roll-ish (here you will here that cockrock influences I was talking about), while "Minimum Wage/Maximum Slave" as a more Conflict feeling to it all, and "Fight to Win Fight to Lose" is definitely sounding more Oi! In the end it reminds me, once again, a lot of that whole Boston-Oi! scene (namely Battle Ruins, Hammer and The Nails or Tommy and the Terrors), or bands like Hired Goons and Syndrome 81, mixing musical genres to end up with a great sounding result.

But the most important with Urban Savage is definitely the lyrics. I hope you like songs about drinking beers and being a smartly dressed skinhead. Because that's absolutely NOT what Urban Savage is about. These guys will bring you back straight to reality, reminding you what life really is. And it's dark and hard according to them. And they're right. The lyrics deals with what's wrong with society, how you get fucked up by it and how you should not give up and fight back. For that matter I would definitely associate them with Hammer and the Nails, because they deal with the same kind of subject (and have kind of the same sound influences, to me) : everything that is wrong with the modern world. If I had to choose my favourite song on that 12", it would definitely be "Wolves", the bass line, the dark ambience, the lyrics... Everything is just perfect to me in that song. But once again, every songs are good on that album.

As the band said themselves, this records includes "no download codes - no silkscreened cover - no free lollipops". Everything is straight to the point, DIY insert, plain black vinyl, good "let the thunder roar in Malmö" (I guess the cover is depicting Malmö ?) looking artwork (it's self-released by the band through their own label, Savage Records). You don't need more than this and you will anyway not get anything better than this. Because Urban Savage are just fucking brilliant. If you want to listen to something more than just "Oi! Oi! drink beers wear boots", if you want reality to punch you right back in the face, and if you're into great music, then Urban Savage is made for you. If you don't, you can still continue listening to Evil Conduct. But that's your problem.
Anyway, it's always good to see that Sweden is producing some of the best actual punk bands, I mean, between them and Sabotage, both producing great music with clever and socialy aware lyrics, it just doesn't get better than this.
I read that these guys were going to have a new song on the upcoming volume (number 8 if I'm not wrong) of Turist i Tillvaron (which is a great swedish punk compilation serie. If you want to know what's going on in Sweden right now, get these records, because they're great and they give a wide perspective of the swedish scene), and I can only be glad with that because I want to hear more from Urban Savage. This is definitely a record you want to have, so make yourself a favor, contact the band and get this 12". I can assure you you won't regret it ! This record is going to be the prefect soundtrack to my winter ! Here you can listen to some of the songs included in the full length.