Sick of It All were one of America’s most celebrated and beloved hardcore bands. Their recorded legacy is remarkably consistent in terms of quality, and their later albums present a more accessible brand of hardcore than many of their contemporaries. While nineties albums ‘Scratch The Surface’ and ‘Built To Last’ gained most of the music industry’s praise, lesser known recordings such as 2014’s ‘Last Act of Defiance’ present an equally powerful band, now of veteran status, but not resting on their musical laurels.

A huge part of their appeal came from vocalist Lou Koller’s connection with the fans, which really came through whenever and wherever the band played live. It didn’t seem to matter whether Sick of It All were playing in a small, sweaty club or working a festival stage, Koller offered the same intense experience time after time, with his abrasive vocals retaining a superb amount of power. Their mid afternoon slot at the Reading Festival in the early noughties was especially strong, but many years later when the band played one of their final London shows in Brixton, Lou’s sense of commitment had not wained.

We’d like to invite you to revisit the Sick of It All live experience – and it was always a genuine experience – via a pair of excellent live shows. The first, from a festival show in Spain, promoting ‘Last Act’ has an amazing setlist, with incendiary renditions of ‘Take The Night Off’ and the still new ‘Road Less Traveled’ standing proudly alongside the classics. The second, a shorter mid-afternoon set at the Camp Punk In Drublic Festival, 2018, packs a lot into under forty minutes, with highlights supplied by a lightning fast ‘Machete’, a massive throwback to the band’s roots via ‘Friends Like You’ and a genuinely chunky sounding ‘Uprising Nation’, all with Lou approaching the crowd the same way he would at an intimate club gig.

[Editor’s note: I met Lou a couple of times over the years, and he was genuinely friendly, with none of the stand-off qualities, or aloofness of other punk musicians. There was no act; no pretense. You just got Lou. He was a better person for that. On our second encounter, almost twenty years after the first, I commented how he’d barely aged a day. He’d clearly looked after himself over the years. He was very self-effacing about that, though, laughing and claiming that “there was a lot of hair dye going on!” I always thought I’d bump into him again, somewhere down the road. – Lee Realgone, July 2026]

– Lou Koller: 1967-2026