Captain Oi Vinilo y CD

Review: Legendary first wave punks, UK Subs, really need no introduction at this point. Continuing their A to Z album titling to its natural, admirable conclusion, 'XXIV', served as the band's 24th official project, and has sadly been out of print since its 2013 release. Reissued for the first time on a gatefold double 10", with an accompanying acoustic variation of the entire record, there's never been a better opportunity to appreciate how exceptional the group's latter-day material has continued to be, while also realising that even the most seasoned of punk veterans have a softer side.

Review: The very next year after the original Oi! The Album compilation was released in 1980 saw the second instalment Strength Thru Oi! dropped onto the heads of the masses, and more than four decades on, it looks like folk might need another reminder. A topic of controversy upon initial release due to the use of an image of Nicky Crane, a British Movement activist who was serving a four-year sentence for racist violence at the time, on the cover art, original pressings are like gold dust these days as the release was withdrawn from publication by Decca Records. Now that the smoke has cleared, we can all wet shave our scalps, lace up our steel-toes, grab our dirtiest combat jacket and punch the ever loving shit out of the air to anthems from the seminal likes of The 4 Skins, Cock Sparrer, The Toy Dolls and The Last Resort (to name but a small handful), with little in the ways of reprimand.

Review: Oi! The Album was the very first oi! music compilation album, originally released in 1980 via EMI. A definitive collection of that easily-missed fusion of punk and pub rock - the snarling punk rebellions of the late 1970s, melded (perhaps not so) seamlessly with the affective camaraderie of football casual culture - this definitive record marks the rough hundredth anniversary of an entire subcultural way of life, compiling all the best tavern-born transmissions by such legends as the Cockney Rejects, Terrible Twins, Angelic Upstarts, Postmen and The Exploited. As you're sure to hear, the oi! sound carries the repetitious, chanting, patterned-carpeted, nigh patriotic group dynamic to the early nascence of punk. And despite popular presumptions, this compilation pre-dates oi!'s later co-optation by skinheads, with many of the recordings here evidencing the band's retention of a pub rock originality.