No-Speak-English Punk Albums
Posted by Rob Ortenzi on 26-Aug-08 @ 05:13 PM|
Selected by Andrew Marcus.
No other music has hopped more borders than punk rock. With just a quick Google search, you can uncover underground scenes in such far-flung locales as Iran, Singapore, Peru, Israel and Uzbekistan. But can you name a single punk album recorded in any language besides English? Never fear, dear reader: We've named 10 for you. |
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THE STAR CLUB Hello New Punks (Japan) (TOKUMA,1984)  In Japan, fans comprehend punk rock more clearly than in any other country outside the Anglosphere, but they sometimes speak it in all-new dialects. Until you play Hello New Punks, you’ll have no idea you wanted to hear UK82 muscle pierced by switchblade rockabilly and infected with bizarre studio effects. But you will, again and again, until your concept of punk rock gets kicked back to life.
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DECIBELIOS Vacaciones En El Prat (Spain) (RADIO TRIPOLI,1987)  Spanish Oi! was inevitable. Those Iberians love their alcohol, guitars and soccer. But Barcelona’s Decibelios played fiery skinhead rock and fizzy, skinhead reggae that left you drooling Sangria and wondering why none of their UK counterparts were ever so much fun. To wit: Singer Fray used to wear a Pope hat onstage-can you imagine the frontman of any English Oi! band impersonating the Archbishop of Canterbury? Decibelios were the most fun and funniest Oi! band in Europe.
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GORILLA ANGREB Vacaciones En El Prat (Spain) (RADIO TRIPOLI,1987)  Spanish Oi! was inevitable. Those Iberians love their alcohol, guitars and soccer. But Barcelona’s Decibelios played fiery skinhead rock and fizzy, skinhead reggae that left you drooling Sangria and wondering why none of their UK counterparts were ever so much fun. To wit: Singer Fray used to wear a Pope hat onstage-can you imagine the frontman of any English Oi! band impersonating the Archbishop of Canterbury? Decibelios were the most fun and funniest Oi! band in Europe.
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KSMB Aktion (Sweden) (MNW,1980)  It’s the most neglected open secret of punk: There were as many great Swedish bands at the start of the ’80s as there were great English ones. KSMB had the snot of the Adicts, the fury of the Ruts and a velocity that few other bands would dare until the outbreak of something called hardcore.
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MANO NEGRA Patchanka (France) (EMI,1988)  Has there been a worse year for punk than 1988? In the U.S., hardcore kids were mass-migrating to metal, while the former U.K. punks were wiggling to house music in smiley-face T-shirts. But over in Paris, the Spanish expats Mano Negra turned Clash-worship into a fine art on their debut, serving a world-punk platter of dub, rockabilly, ska, folk, flamenco and Oi! to a mass audience.
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EASTERN YOUTH Kanjusei Outouseyo (Japan) (TOY’S FACTORY,2001)  The word “emo” may’ve lost all its dignity, but Hokkaido’s Eastern Youth have kept the ethos of Revolution Summer ’85 so alive, it’s as if Rumination Summer ’99 never happened. Fresh off a U.S. tour with At The Drive-In, the band might have caught the gravy train with an English-language album; instead, they recorded this tunefully dissonant and viscerally resonant classic. You don’t have to speak Japanese to know frontman Hisashi Yoshino wasn’t singing about getting dumped.
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MÉTAL URBAIN Les Hommes Morts Sont Dangereux (France) (BYZANTEEN,1981)  In the past decade, Transplants, Refused and others have flaunted electronics in their songs as if they were the first punks to ever open up a can of beats. Métal Urbain actually were the first, back in 1977. This ’81 collection of their early singles mashes bloody-knuckled guitar riffs with fake drums and flecks of electronic noise. The result is a peek at what punk might have become, had dance music not turned synth to kryptonite.
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LOS CRUDOS Discografia (United States) (BEAT GENERATION,2002)  By measure of guts and individuality, Los Crudos’ Martin Sorrondeguy was the greatest hardcore frontman of the ’90s. Fluent in English but Uruguayan by birth, he turned an Español-only band into a staple of Chicago’s hardcore scene. Gay-and just as unwilling to apologize for it as embrace stereotypes-he made records that couldn’t be pigeonholed, either. Hardcore they were, but with a tricky balance of ’80s soulfulness and ’90s athleticism that few other bands have approached without slipping into metal.
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PEGGIO PUNX Ci Stanno Uccidendo Al Suono Della Nostra Musica (Italy) (PEGGIO,1985)  Peggio means “worst” in Italian, but these punks were not goofing around. Ci Stanno deserves to sit in the same crate with other forward-leaning albums from the final year of hardcore’s golden age, right between Minor Threat’s Salad Days EP and the Minutemen’s 3-Way Tie (For Last). Though Peggio Punx’s rhythms are so rigorous you get the idea the drummer was listening to West African djembe records as much as he was to Black Flag, the recording is raw and the band never let go of their early-HC fury.
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KONONO NO. 1 Congotronics (Congo) (CRAMMED DISCS,2005)  Strictly speaking, Kinshasa’s Konono No. 1 aren’t a rock band; since forming they haven’t even plugged in a guitar. What they’ve done instead is amplified junkyard percussion, buzzing likembé thumb pianos and mics made from car alternators, arriving with a kind of crudely supercharged traditional music that’s every bit as punk as the Pogues. The fact that they formed in ’78-as other would-be musical anarchists in the world’s remote corners were starting to catch wind of the Sex Pistols-is either proof of punk’s early arrival in sub-Saharan Africa, or a stunning coincidence.
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