Poll: Give Me Your Top 5 Punk Albums (Here's Mine)

Thank you for reading Evil Speakers. Look for my weekly column on Thursday, followed by a special related audio interview post on Friday. To all my paying subscribers — thank you for making this newsletter viable. On the latest Indiecast, Ian Cohen and I talked about Rolling Stone’s recent list of the 100 greatest punk albums of all time. When Ian brought it up as a potential conversation topic, I thought, No way I am interested in parsing a list of punk records in the year of our lord 2026. But then I thought about it a bit more, and to my amazement, I realized Wow, I actually DO have opinions about this. In fact, I had three takes that really add up to one take. Let’s unpack them:Nirvana’s Nevermind is not a punk record. It’s a rock record that Gen X music writers pretended was a punk record so they could say that punk “won” in the early nineties. If Nevermind is a punk record, then Badmotorfinger should be considered a punk record, since Soundgarden was originally on SST. (I do not think Badmotorfinger is a punk record, to be clear.)If you include albums like Nevermind, it keeps off bands like Pennywise, Lagwagon, and other nineties skate punk acts that get little critical attention but lots of love from actual self-identifying punk fans. Or they did when I was closer to the ground on such matters, anyway. (I like Nevermind a helluva lot more than Pennywise or Lagwagon, for the record.)Lists like this should focus more on “punk as a genre” than “punk as an idea” albums. What I mean by “punk as an idea” is that all kinds of albums can be called “punk” by virtue of fitting a certain concept of punk as “confrontational, angry, abrasive and/or challenging music” without fitting the commonly recognized musical signifiers of the genre. Like how smirky critics will sometimes call Pet Sounds “the first emo record.” Now, as a music critic, I’m attracted to “punk as an idea” because it’s more “interesting.” (It’s the same reason I love this Chuck Eddy book about metal that features relatively little “traditional” metal.) But for a genre-specific list, I think it’s better to lean away from Nevermind and more toward Lagwagon. Nevermind does not need to be on a punk list. We all know about Nevermind at this point. But a punk list is the absolute highest ceiling for a band like Lagwagon. Let them have it!Anyway: One thing I didn’t do on Indiecast was come up with my own top five list of punk records. So, I’m doing that now. As always, this was done quickly and intuitively! Also: These are all “punk as a genre” albums. No “punk as an idea” choices here!