Your favourite Punk albums?

At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command (post-hardcore)

Bad Religion - Suffer (melodic hardcore)

L7 - Bricks Are Heavy (technically grunge, but a very punk-based form of it)

Rise Against - The Sufferer and the Witness (melodic hardcore)

Off Minor - The Heat Death of the Universe (screamo, jazz punk)

Refused - The Shape of Punk to Come (post-hardcore)

Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues (punk, folk-punk)

Helmet - Strap It On (alt-metal, but with a heavy post-hardcore influence)

Big Black - Songs About f**king (post-hardcore, noise rock)

Minor Threat - Out of Step (hardcore punk)

And if we count metallic hardcore/mathcore:

The Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity (mathcore)

Converge - All We Love We Leave Behind (metalcore, hardcore punk)

Botch - We Are the Romans (metallic hardcore, metalcore)

Earth Crisis - Destroy the Machines (hardcore punk, metalcore)

Cave In - Until Your Heart Stops (metalcore, metallic hardcore)

Every Time I Die - Hot Damn! (metalcore, hardcore punk)

Now, obviously, all musical labels and genres are somewhat arbitrary creations imposed retrospectively. The signified has always existed before the signifier is assigned to it. But some labels and genres are more arbitrary than others, and they tend to be the ones given by the media. Krautrock is one, and Grunge is another. There is a huge difference in sound and style between various Krautrock artists, and the same with grunge. In both cases, the labels were bestowed upon music from a particular geographic area in a somewhat derogatory and pejorative manner, initially as nothing more than a joke. But that joke somehow stuck, and became a genre label.

But anyone who thinks all Krautrock bands play the same style of music, or sound similar, clearly hasn’t listened to much Krautrock. It’s more of a cross-genre grouping, than a genre in itself. (And yes, I know I am going to invite a lot of argument, but hey, no change there….)

The same can be said for grunge. It started out as a joke by the media because the bands all looked grungy. It wasn’t even about their sound, so much as their appearance, initially. But when pushed to try and make a genre out of the joke, the metal meets punk explanation somehow evolved. It’s about as accurate as stating all the “grunge” bands have something in common apart from their geography.

But within that mass of Seattle bands called grunge, Nirvana certainly stood out as being more of a punk band than a metal band, if you really had to take that punk/metal fusion thing seriously.

It could well be that no one else here likes them (as much) as you do, I love a whole lot of the bands that tend to be grouped together as “grunge” (even though they sound nothing like each other, and tend to all come from different genres, backgrounds and influences. I love Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Screaming Trees, to name some of the other big names of that period and geographic area, as well as a lot of lesser known bands. But I have to admit, I’ve never got on with Nirvana, and like very little of their material.

And, yes, we are definitely repeating ourselves! 😄🤪

(And so, yes, I knew you were saying it mostly tongue-in-cheek. 😜)

However, as you yourself admit, the punk movement came after punk was already used to describe the music. Music had been described as punk before their was an image/fashion/movement that was associated with that music. And even once that aspect of punk took off, and had punk become more than just the music, there were still punk bands that were not associated with that image/fashion/movement. To me, to conflate the punk movement with punk music (which existed before, and long after said movement) is denying a fair portion of pubk history.

To keep to the prog analogy, it’s like saying that prog music was not just from a certain place and time, but also only really applies to those who had at least one member of the band that wore a cape on stage. Yes, I’m extracting the urine a little. But if you can, so can I! 🤪

But what do you mean?

 

Fugazi's Repeater is something quite else than The Ramones and Pop Punk.