SUNNYDALES – The Puppet Show EP

For a band that essentially formed themselves around a novelty idea – to perform punk songs based on plot points from Buffy The Vampire Slayer – Sunnydales have a surprising amount of staying power. On this fourth EP, the Fresno punks sound better than ever. Granted, their lyrical schtick ploughs a similar furrow to before, and they display their love for Ramones’ past works so proudly, the influence isn’t ever subtle, but all of its predictability, ‘The Puppet Show’ EP shows them in a more confident way than ever before.

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BLACK RUSSIANS – Communist Dudes

At the end of 2020, Black Russians issued a selection of new tracks as part of a split with US horror punks, The Jasons. The “Soviet Punk Rock” band might not have been the bigger name, but their material ran rings around the American act, showing a musical tightness and a humour that fit their chosen genre perfectly. A couple of years down the line, their full length ‘Communist Dudes’ makes good on the promise of those earlier tracks, delivering thirteen Ramones influenced bangers, dealing with topics such as satanism, communism, and an iron curtain winter. Armed with massive riffs and played with tongues firmly in cheek, aside from an obviously DIY production sound, it’s almost everything genre fans could hope for.

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THE HALLINGTONS – Hop Til’ You Drop

Between 2013 and 2019, The Hallingtons released a string of EPs that slowly found them perfecting their own homage to Ramones. Hundreds of bands had recorded in a similar style before, but few had managed to capture the early sounds from Joey and Johnny quite as perfectly as The Hallingtons’ ‘Hexed’, proving the world was more than ready for the Norwegian punks to deliver a full length musical assault.

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F.A.N.T.A. – El Paciente Cero EP

On their sixth album, 2017 LP ‘Mas Rapido!’, Spanish punks F.A.N.T.A. cranked out seventeen high octane belters in under thirty five minutes. The breakneck pace with which almost everything was delivered made it entirely possible to forget most of the lyrics weren’t in English. In fact, most of the album’s greatness often came from the playing itself: between a barrage of fast guitar chords and some pretty smart bass work – sometimes reminiscent of an early 80s Dee Dee Ramone – F.A.N.T.A. arguably gave the world their first true masterpiece; an album that really capitalised on the sounds of the previous release (2014’s ‘Asi No Vamos A Ninguna Parte’) and an obviously huge leap from their earlier, more raw work.

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THE SUCK – Boris Sprinkler

‘In-Cog-Neat-O’, the first full length release from US punks The Suck was a rough and ready release. Its collection of bratty sounding songs tore past at a breakneck pace, rarely clearing the two minute mark, and although the band didn’t sound particularly original, they more than demonstrated an easy knack for delivering fun. Two years on, their second album ‘Boris Sprinkler’ (inspired by 90s punks Boris The Sprinkler releasing an album called ‘Suck’) similarly cocks a snook at the concept of “full length” by banging through ten numbers in a shade over twenty minutes, but its fair to say that if you enjoyed previous fare from these guys – or enjoy the more ragged end of the Ramones obsessed punk scale in general – it’s brevity and urgency will more than add to its overall appeal. The quality of the song writing, on the other hand, can sometimes be a different matter. ‘Boris Sprinkler’ features The Suck’s best song to date (and by some distance), but unfortunately, it also contains two of their absolute worst.

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