From the very first listens we completely fell in love with Béton Armé, a band from Montreal, Quebec, formed in 2018. Their Oi! sound is inspired by the Italian scene of the 1980s and the more recent French wave, also enriched with hardcore punk influences that give everything the right extra push. The result is a direct, raw, and savage sound that’s truly unique. In 2025 they released Renaissance via La Vida Es Un Mus, which we immediately included among our favorite records of the year!

• Radio Punk: Hi and thanks so much for being here on our webzine! Let’s start with the basics: we know you formed in 2018 and over the years you’ve consolidated the project through several splits and two releases. Where do Béton Armé come from? Do you have – or have you had – other projects besides this one (bands, collectives, anything else…)?

Béton Armé: Hi ! First, thanks for having us. It’s always great to contribute to zines from all over the world. It’s a really important part of the subculture and we’re always honored to be included in them. 

The idea of the band coalesced at the end of 2017 and we really started playing together in early 2018. It started when I (Oli, guitar) came back from France, after spending a year in Paris where I hung out with friends there while the scene was at its peak and really wanted to get back to playing music since it had been on the back burner for years because of perpetual back and forth between Canada and France which didn’t allow me to be in a band in any serious way. At the same time Dan (vocal) and Fabio (bass) had the idea to start a band with similar influences so we got introduced by a mutual friend and we went from there. We asked Remi (drums) to join because we had seen him play with other bands and thought the energy he brought was exactly what we needed. He realistically is the only one who already was in a band worth mentioning (haha). He indeed was already playing with Faze, a hardcore band from Montreal which solidified its status as one of the best in the city even more in recent years. As for the rest of us we all had punk and hardcore bands, but nothing anyone outside of our local scene would have ever heard of. 

• Radio Punk: Your latest record Renaissance, released by La Vida Es Un Mus, is a real gem. We know you draw inspiration both from French bands like Rixe and from Italian Oi! bands of the ’80s, and this really comes through on the record! We’re curious: what are your favorite Italian records? 

Béton Armé: That answer is really easy and quite straight forward. Nabat is obviously the one that comes to mind immediately and is one of the main influences for the band. We also really like Rough from Turin. It’s a classic for us, especially for Fabio. We also fuck with Basta. All great bands with the sort of energy we wanted to infuse our music with since the beginning. 

• Radio Punk: Can you share some cool details, curiosities, or anecdotes about the record? And more generally, is there something you’d like to say about the album or about yourselves that nobody has asked you yet?

Béton Armé: Here’s a fun fact : as Dan is often saying, we’re a dance band from Montreal. The idea is to get people moving and in order to do that some of our songs are heavily influenced (if not totally ripped off) by 90’s euro dance hits. I’ll let the readers figure out which ones! 

• Radio Punk: In Europe, and especially in Italy, the punk and skin scenes are closely connected to social and political struggles and themes such as antifascism, anticapitalism, and transfeminism. Is it the same within the Canadian scene?

Béton Armé: Yes. In Montreal especially, punk and oi! Scenes are very much intertwined and heavily leaning on the left. We try our best to keep it that way and that’s where our politics stand. 

• Radio Punk: You’re from Canada, specifically Montreal, and in an interview from some time ago (with Matt from Creases Like Knives) you talked about how gentrification is destroying your city – something we’re unfortunately seeing in many Italian cities as well. How do the punk and skin scenes resist all this? Are there any “free zones” or places, venues, squats that try to slow down the inevitable slide toward a yuppie-dominated world?

Béton Armé: It is very hard. DIY spaces are opening and closing all the time. People try to organize and build alternative communities, but the general phenomenon is hitting our scenes very directly. One such example is the death of LoudHouse, which was one of the most long standing DIY venue/squat in North America a few years ago. We have yet to find a new alternative to replace it and it’s becoming quite difficult. Katacombes also had to shut down. It was a venue co-owned and run by punks and it got tore apart to build condos. I guess the only glimmer of hope is the neighborhood I live in, Hochelaga, where a lot of the punks live. It always has been a left leaning/working classe part of the city and a lot of community based initiatives work together to fight – or at least slow down- the aggressive gentrification of our city. It works to an extent, but rent is still increasing and it is a never ending uphill battle.

• Radio Punk: You’ve played a lot and in many different countries – the USA, Mexico, Chile, Spain, Germany, France… so when are you coming to Italy?! Jokes aside, with bands that tour as much as you do, we always like to ask for some trashy or grotesque tour anecdotes. Make us laugh!

Béton Armé: We’re gonna play at least a show in Italy in September. It’ll be announced soon. And obviously we would like to do more. It’s definitely coming in the next years.

As for anecdotes, I guess this one is our classic one : one member of the band – who shall remain nameless- had too much to drink one night in Milwaukee and ended up so drunk he pissed his pants… with his brand new passport in his pockets. This document has been nicknamed de PISSport ever since. And I might had that to cover our tracks, another member of the band left an empty bottle of beer on the couch where the deed happened to cover our tracks and the next time we saw the owner of the house he instantly came to us saying : “Nice try covering the stain on the couch, but don’t worry it’s not the first time someone pisses on it.’”

• Radio Punk: You’re a band that receives a lot of support, both live and online, and you’ve had a great response from the public – something we imagine makes you very happy! We also know that in your lyrics you really care about spreading the idea of unity within the scene, mutual support, and personal growth. How can these great values be put into practice in everyday life? And speaking of the scene, is there unity among the different subcultures where you’re from?

Béton Armé: There is obvious unity in Montreal. The support we got from every underground subcultures has been great. Even the more “mainstream” scene is starting to see us and support what we are doing, which is great. We try to practice what we preach, book new bands, support our friends and always be stoked for other bands’ success. We understand now the amount of work required to be in a touring band and it’s important for us to give back whenever possible. 

• Radio Punk: We’re at the end – thanks so much for answering our questions. We’ll close with one last, extra-spicy question: who are you in everyday life? What are your jobs and hobbies outside of music? Cheers!

Béton Armé: No worries, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for having us! And as for our everyday lives, I am a historian, I did research and taught history at Unii for a while. Remi and Fabio work construction/renovation jobs and Dan is an electrician by trade. But at this point we’re on tour so much that we don’t really do any of this very often. Remi is a great skater and it’s a big part of his life. Personally I mostly like to read and watch football. And most of us like hockey because… you can’t escape that in Montreal haha. 

First photograph by Jesse Ramirez

L'articolo  Interview with Béton Armé proviene da Radio Punk.

On November 14th the Stiglitz released their new album titled “Quando Tutto Tace”, available on LP, CD, and digital. You can listen to it for free on Bandcamp and YouTube. The record was co-produced by us at Radio Punk, Flamingo Records, and Rumagna Sgroza, and features collaborations with Fabrizio Barile and Stefania Carbonara on the visual side, as well as Toni Cocks and Fabrizio Sferrazza on two tracks. Without further delay, let’s get to know the Genoese band better and dive into this new release.

• Radio Punk: Hi guys and thanks a lot for being here! We know that before being a band you’re a group of friends, people who’ve shared a lot together beyond music. Tell us how this musical project came about and how it’s evolved over the years.

Stiglitz: Oi Kids! First of all, thanks to you for the space you’re giving us and for the great questions!
So: the Stiglitz were born inside the rehearsal room of the occupied space L.S.O.A. BURIDDA in Genoa, toward the end of 2018 — a place that unfortunately no longer exists physically, but that thankfully still lives on in the everyday lives of all of us who passed through it. Right — the Stiglitz came out of a context that was definitely parallel to (and inside) what was going on in the whole network of squats and occupations in the Ligurian capital. But at some point you still need to find a common point, some kind of glue that holds everyone together. And that, clearly, was our scene: putting on shows, and wanting to put our backs into it, for the scene and within it.
That’s it. That’s the recipe for how the Stiglitz came together: five guys who run into each other at gigs, who already come from that world, and who feel the right spark between them to do something good together — for themselves, but above all for their community, the one that lives in “the city underneath,” far away from all the supposed spotlight glare. Add a whole lot of proletarian anger coming from all our personal stories, the desire to be able to say one day, “fuck it, at least we actually did something instead of just complaining on social media,” and there you have it: literally five Kids playing Oi!

You can listen to the new album below. To order a copy of the vinyl or CD, please email us at info@radiopunk.it

• Radio Punk: On November 14th your latest LP “Quando Tutto Tace” came out, presented live with a show at Zapata in Genoa. Tell us some juicy curiosities about this insane record!

Stiglitz: Heheheh, alright, let’s get into the juicy stuff then! First off, this record really marks a turning point for us as a band. It includes songs we’ve been playing in the practice room for at least two years now, so in a way this album feels like a sort of summary of the time that’s passed since our previous release (Deja Vu came out in 2022) up to today.
Looking back, it’s clear we’ve come a long way — from tracks like “Non Affonda” and “Garassino,” all the way to all the people, stories, and places that we’ve passed through, and that have passed through us. What matters most to us, though, is that all these “traces” of our passage are still there, even if with a few bruises and aches along the way (because hardcore punk is also that). You can see them in the way we do things, in the thoughts of the people who shared this path with us, and in the grooves of this latest record. So yeah, this record saw us grow, and it saw grow the people who’ve been listening to us since day one. Our hope is that it leaves something behind even for those who’ve just discovered us. It wasn’t an easy record to make — this time there were a lot of emotions and stories that needed to come out.
Gian (the singer) lived in Bologna for almost the entire writing phase and came down when he could; the rest of us were in Genoa, all with other projects and a thousand hassles (without getting into our personal lives, which like everyone else’s are there and wonderfully complicated). And let’s not forget we’re human beings: we mess up, we lose our house keys, and sometimes we don’t find them again. So yes, making music like this, in this way, isn’t easy — but refusing to compromise definitely helped keep us together.
All our love goes to the people who’ve always been there behind the scenes. From Fabrizio “Fritz” Barile, whose photos managed to shape the imagery we’ve always had in mind when writing our songs (curiosity no. 1: every Stiglitz release has a Fritz photo on the cover!), to the Flaminghi crew — Emi, Albe, and Maso (curiosity no. 2: without them, Genoa, the underground, and more simply our music wouldn’t be what they are). Stefania Carbonara, who is basically the entire scaffolding holding up the layout of this record, and who’s a truly special person to us. And then there’s Sferrazza (curiosity no. 3: Fabri played sax on “SENZA CHIODI”; he was the saxophonist for Meganoidi, and for those of us born in Genoa and raised in certain circles, he’s a solid point of reference). To wrap it up: the Radio Punk crew and Rumagna Sgroza (curiosities no. 4 and 5 — you guys are our heart Ginis, and Rumagna Sgroza are without a doubt a driving force behind self-production and the Romagna underground), the whole turbo Oi! family (curiosity no. 6: the track S.T.O. was written by Lobo of TIGRE, who gets our devoted wishes for a truly respectable turbo Oi!), and Anto from COCKS (curiosity no. 7: he’s the photonic voice you hear in the second verse of “MA SE CI PENSO”), a real piece of our hearts and an irreplaceable “fifth” Stiglitz.

• Radio Punk: Genoa is a city with a strong personality, and it’s easy to see why for Genoese people it’s a fundamental part of their identity — almost an obsession, something that comes through strongly on your latest record.

Stiglitz: We’ll answer this one with a piece of advice. Come to Genoa in December. At Caricamento, take the number One bus, around 3:00 pm — that way you can chase the sunset heading west. Sit on the side by the window facing the sea, look straight out toward the horizon over the port, and really take it all in. Get lost between the concrete and the lives painted in people’s eyes in Sampierdarena, and in the reflections off the piers in Prá. Then, once you reach the Voltri terminus around 4:00 pm, walk down to Villa Azzurra beach. When you’re there, watching the sun die behind Savona, tell us if you don’t feel like writing a record about this city.

• Radio Punk: Your lyrics are introspective but also very direct — they get inside the listener and hit deep. What or who inspires you? (books, writers, bands, films…) What do you want people to feel when they listen to you?

Stiglitz: Honestly, we’re inspired by the days as they go by. We look for something in the stories of the people around us, in the everyday reality of our lives, that we can use collectively as an antibody against the nothingness that keeps advancing around us. For us, writing songs is a big responsibility. Being able to give space to lived stories, experiences, traumas, joys, and pain is a huge privilege. And probably one of the main gears driving the Stiglitz machine is knowing that what we write, people actually live — they see themselves in it, and they feel it as their own. We believe there’s only one real rule when writing a song: don’t lie to the Kids. A song might come to you while you’re hopping on a scooter, or in twenty minutes on a train ride home after years. That’s the magical part of this world. As long as you respect that rule, everything else works.

PS: and obviously, smiling and having fun — belin — life’s already a mess. If after eight hours of work you still have to get pissed off, it just makes no sense.

• Radio Punk: Besides Stiglitz, have you been or are you part of other bands or collectives? In some cities we’ve seen a strong generational shift and a lot of energy from younger people. Is something happening in Genoa? (bands, music collectives, political collectives)

Stiglitz: So, yeah — all of us have passed through pretty much every social center in Genoa, some more deeply than others, sometimes as part of the collective itself. As for other bands, the Stiglitz come from a lot of different experiences. Only Gian is on his first band; technically, though, Stiglitz includes members of COCKS, PIOVONO PIETRE, L.E.I.S.F.A., GOONIES, RISACCA, GAZED, SATANIC YOUTH, MEGADRIVE, and so on. Tying back to earlier questions, the way we write probably comes straight from all those genres we’ve played — and that we still play.

THANK GOD YES, IN GENOA THINGS ARE MOVING — BIG TIME.

The city and the nights are slowly filling back up with Kids, capable people taking their first steps toward DIY and self-management, organizing themselves and self-determining their paths. Even outside the music world, in political activity too, there’s a solid movement growing. We’ve seen it across Italy as well. We hope the long-awaited generational shift is really happening — who knows, maybe we’ll be back to fly-posting with bucket and glue at 11 at night. Better to say it quietly, though, for luck.

Radio Punk: With this record out, do you already have live shows planned or maybe a mini tour abroad? Spam the upcoming dates!

Stiglitz: Alright!! heheheh
Here are the dates confirmed so far — come find us:

24 gennaio – Bertinoro (IT)
21 febbraio – Imperia (IT)
7 marzo – Torino (IT)
13 marzo – Marsiglia (FR)
28 marzo – Treviso (IT)
2 maggio – Locarno (CH)
6 giugno – Modena (IT)

We’re also working on a bunch of shows outside Italy. One step at a time — posters in hand, we’ll keep you posted, definitely also through the Radio Punk website (curiosity no. who knows: GO CHECK THEIR SITE, THEY’RE INCREDIBLE, TALENTED, AND BEAUTIFUL).

• Radio Punk: Alright, we’ve known each other for a while now — tell the readers who the Stiglitz are in everyday life.

Stiglitz: Honestly, we’re really simple people. We like dark beer and doing Turbo Oi!

L'articolo Interview with Stiglitz proviene da Radio Punk.

Shortly after seeing them on stage at Sottotetto in Bologna this past February, the French band released their new album, Evermore. The live show was incredible, and we loved the record so much that we included it among our favourites of the month. So, we decided to get in touch with the band and ask them a few questions—happy reading!

• Radio Punk: Hey guys, welcome to our ‘zine! Let’s start from the beginning: how, when, and where did Lion’s Law form as a band?

Lion’s Law: We started the band in 2012 in Paris, let’s say with members of Street Kids and Maraboots. Both bands were singing in French, and we wanted to do something in English. We asked Thomoï, Legendary drummer of Komintern Sect, and when he surprisingly said yes, it all started!!! 

• Radio Punk: We know that you are very active in the music scene, not only as musicians. Could you give us an overview of your past and present bands, as well as any other side projects related to music?

Lion’s Law: Uffff I don’t know if I can even remember all the bands we all played in, but let’s try: Komintern Sect, Teep’n’teepatix, Burning Heads, Maraboots, Street Kids, Hard Times, Metal Urbain, Al Kapott, Hoax, DIG, Mowol, Faction S, Rixe, Atlantes.. Haha, it’s mental but yes, we all make tons of music and as you said, other projects, I (Wattie) have been booking shows under the name BSC for about 15 years now in Paris. I also run a web radio airing 24/7 called Droogies Radio! 

• Radio Punk: Many European cities, such as Bologna, where we’re writing from, are rapidly gentrifying and selling out to mass tourism. You live in one of the most tourist-heavy cities in the world. How do you experience this situation? Are there squats, social centers, venues, and other places where skins and punks gather?

Lion’s Law: These places are mostly gone now, compared to when we were kids, it’s totally différent, I feel like they wanna turn our city into a museum or like something only désigned for tourism, Airbnb’s and expensive groceries are the only thing you’ll find! But there’s a little community of punks trying to keep the alternative alive! We mostly gather in the streets or in pubs, we don’t really have our own space. 

• Radio Punk: Watching the Sewer Rats video, we noticed imagery that conveys unity between punks and skins. What is the general state of the Parisian punk Oi! scene?

Lion’s Law: We’ve always been shaved-head punks, what we call skinheads! We grew up tight, and there’s no real border between punks and skins here. Big up to my boys in Breakout!

• Radio Punk: Speaking of Evermore, would you like to share some curiosities and anecdotes about this amazing new album? What are the main innovations and differences compared to your previous work?

Lion’s Law: Well, this album is a new page for the band and for us a big, uncertain step. Our main composer and guitar player, Louis, left the band before we started writing this album. So we didn’t know and we feared that we couldn’t step up and write songs as good as he did !! But I like that now it’s more of a common process of writing… if we did it, you tell us! 

• Radio Punk: You just wrapped up an incredible European tour with Mess and Claimed Choice. Which places do you remember most fondly? And what were the craziest and most bizarre moments you experienced over the past few weeks?

Lion’s Law: It’s not just because you guys are Italians, but we had a great time in Bologna, that’s for sure! We played 21 shows around Europe with this crazy team, because let’s be honest, we all party hard every night !!! And it’s good to catch up with old friends in every city! I gotta say Berlin is still on top of Europe! 

• Radio Punk: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us! To wrap up the interview, tell us: who are the members of Lion’s Law in everyday life? (Hobbies, jobs, passions, guilty pleasures?)

Lion’s Law: Lion’s Law in 2025: 
Drums – Thomoï, punx since 1980 and biggest pothead on earth 
Guitar – Daick, Ex Straight Edge lord, broke up his edge on tour with Lion’s Law and now enjoys a warm 8°6 beer. 
Guitar – Vovott, InFamous 80’s punk guitar hero, please listen to Al Kapott.
Bass – Swann, the secret hidden kid of Matt Freeman and Beyoncé. 
Vocals – Wattie, not much to say about him.

Photo by Nina Galdino

L'articolo Interview with Lion’s Law proviene da Radio Punk.

In 2025, Bologna-based Oi! band Zeman celebrate ten years of activity. On 17 March, they released their new album, Ancor Non M’Abbandona. Following their previous full-length records, Attitudine Offensiva and Sunday Boys, as well as a split with Coru & Figau, the new release features 11 fresh tracks and is available on vinyl. It’s a co-production between Hellnation, Tough Ain’t Enough, Relax-O-Matic Vibrator, and Rusty Knife. To mark the occasion, we caught up with the band.

• Radio Punk: Hello there, and welcome to our zine! Although we’ve known each other for years, we’ve never had the chance to interview you as Zeman – though you lot have already been featured here with other projects like Cesoia and C4. Let’s start from the beginning: tell us the story of Zeman.

Zeman: It’s mostly a story of getting through, one way or another – hoping your liver holds up, surviving monotonous, underpaid jobs, scraping by in rented rooms, staying on your feet for the last drink, the last pointless scrap at five in the morning. Music had little to do with it. Especially in the beginning.

We were relentless. Sleeping two or three to a room, with no money to even get into bars or pubs, so we’d buy Lidl whisky for seven euros and drink at home on Via della Liberazione, playing cards. We’d get through at least two bottles of awful bourbon a week, but rarely straight – it was undrinkable. We’d cut it with Coke or just ice. The rest of our money went on canned beer and vodka stuffed under our jackets.

Bologna was different then – an open-air eatery, a playground for cash-flush Americans and Germans. Kebab prices have doubled since. Mauro was living in a student housing shoebox, and I was paying just over a hundred euros for a 1-bedroom flat that turned into a 2-bedroom flat whenever a mate needed a place to crash. Temporary contracts came and went like cockroaches on the floor.

We used to go to nights run by collectives, but only to nick booze and cause chaos. The autonomists kicked me out of their parties in Via Zamboni more than once – we were too working-class for the bourgeois offspring sent to Bologna for their political holiday in the cradle of ’77 [The so-called ‘movement of 1977’ was a spontaneist, mostly student-based ultraleft movement in Italy, reaching its peak in 1977, with Bologna as one of its strongholds – Translator]

I come from a working-class neighbourhood of twenty thousand blokes who do manual labour, warehouse work, or drink away what’s left in dimly lit social clubs – between addiction treatment centre queues for methadone and bottles of Ichnusa beer at eight in the morning.

The line-up has changed over time – Gaber was on bass until he moved to Barcelona, Norby played drums before heading back to where he came from, though he still plays with us, and Vinc from Gruppo Erotico Barletta was on guitar, but living far away makes it tough to piece everything together.

But we keep going – what else would we do? Spend Saturday nights in pizzerias or binge-watch TV series on the sofa, ordering junk food? Fighting is the only thing that keeps us alive. An uneven fight against fate. And since none of us has won the lottery, we’ve got no choice but to keep going.

The only thing I own is a Moto Guzzi V7, 750cc, made in Mandello del Lario, bought on instalments with my dad’s pension as collateral. The exhaust sounds like a distorted bass hammering against a snare drum. It goes from 0 to 100 in five seconds flat – like our new songs ‘Bardana’ and ‘Disciplina’.

• Radio Punk: Let’s talk about the new record. What do you feel you’ve brought to your discography with this album compared to the previous ones? What subject matter do you tackle?

Zeman: Lately, we’ve been hearing too much soft stuff – melodic guitars and polished vocals pandering to the audience, clean punk rock being passed off as Oi! or whatever. That’s not what we want. With this album, we’ve aimed for the sound of 1980s Italy – Nabat, raw, hard, uncompromising, lo-fi recordings that spit out pain and venom. We drew inspiration from recent French, Spanish, Catalan, and Basque releases like Beton Arme, Squelette, Brux, Aresi, Ultra Razzia, Rixe, and Reconquesta.

We entrusted the mixing and post-production to Alex from IENA. We wanted a record that captured what we lived and felt – drums pounding like a hammer on a metal bench, solos scraping at a garage door, vocals reverberating from beneath a stadium underpass. All that mattered was that it sounded real and raw, stripped back, sometimes dissonant – like a machine gun, like a Futurist poem. Zang Tumb Tumb.

As for the themes, we’ve tried to step away from the typical rhetoric of old, which now feels distant to us. ‘Bardana’ is about a crime in 19th-century Sardinia, where bands of armed horsemen raided the homes of the wealthy, killing everyone in their path. ‘Incorruttibile’ is about Robespierre, one of history’s greatest revolutionaries. Then there’s the nocturnal atmosphere of ‘Rasoi’, Sunday mornings heading to the stadium, the wake-ups, and our city in ‘Aspettando solo un goal’ and ‘Una vita intera’. The most identity-driven tracks like ‘Teste Rasate’ and ‘Ancor Non M’Abbandona’ tell our origins – we came from nothing, immigrants, and no one ever gave us anything (the album title comes from a line in Dante’s Inferno). ‘Fenomeno’ is about people who think they’re someone special, mostly online – it’s easier today: two posed photos, a bit of nonsense, and you’re set. Finally, ‘No One Likes Us’, our rework of the track by The Business, adapted to the streets of San Donato and our own terraces. Better Millwall than West Ham.

• Radio Punk: Can you tell us about the team behind the sound, artwork, photos, and the labels that helped release the album? We’re not just looking for a list of names – give us some behind-the-scenes insight.

Zeman: After ten years, we can confidently say that we all contributed fairly equally to the music on this record – riffs, melodies, rhythms, and sounds. We recorded in our bunker, Il Vecchio Son, at Sonhouse Studio with sound engineer Grug. The gang vocals session was legendary – there were at least ten of us, polishing off a bottle of whisky and a couple of crates of beer. The chants you hear at the end of the songs were all spontaneous – we actually had to cut some bits because things got out of hand. As mentioned earlier, Alex from IENA took care of the mixing. We wanted a raw, obsessive, clanking, anti-commercial sound – something that stands apart from most of today’s Italian releases. The mastering was done at a studio in Florence recommended by Alex.

The artwork was created by Tommy, a long-time mate. The photos and video for the album’s release were done by Camilla, who was incredibly patient, considering that we’re not exactly natural-born models, don’t look great in photos, and have no idea what to do in front of a camera. Before the full album, we recorded a promo and sent it to labels we respect, mostly French, Spanish, and Basque, alongside Hellnation – the indestructible hub of quality Oi! In the end, the record was co-produced by Tough Ain’t Enough (Spain), Rusty Knife, and Relax-O-Matic Vibrator (from Marseille, where we’ve played before), and, of course, Roberto from Hellnation.

• Radio Punk: Your bio and flyers say you’re from Bologna, but none of you are actually from here. What’s your relationship with Bologna and its stadium? What are the hangout spots for the kids, aside from the ‘Bar dei Ragazzi’ [a bar in the San Donato immortalised in a Zeman song on the previous album – Translator]?

Zeman: It’s all about the red and blue, basically. Those are the colours of my hometown, Sassari, the city where we formed, and of Cagliari, which I hate, but Mauro and Norby support, even though Vinc’s Barletta team has the colours red and white – but that’s another story.

The first time we ever rehearsed was at Vecchio Son in Bologna – the rehearsal space that Steno from Nabat runs. Steno had never seen us before, nobody had, and that’s where we chose our band name and wrote songs like ‘No Fair Play’, ‘Attitudine Offensiva’, and ‘Disciplina’. So, what else are we supposed to put in our biography, if not Bologna? Besides, we’re not Lega [Italian far-right party] supporters – the whole Jus Sanguinis thing [‘right of blood’ = nationality determined by descent] is a thing of the past, like something spouted by Calderoli [Roberto Calderoli, an Italian far-right politician known for his racist remarks – Translator].

The places we hang out at, and have always hung out at, are basically the ones where you spend less. I’ve never been into political gathering spots, those trendy places where people chat – it’s just not my thing. The national average beer consumption in Sardinia is the highest in Italy, on par with Munich, and I’m not about to spend eight euros on a pint or some overpriced craft beer. So, you’ll often find us in San Donato: Bar dei Ragazzi, Sardocinese, Bar Kantelli, and Bar Texas.

As for Oi!, we should mention Bologna City Rockers, the Sottotetto venue, and what used to be the Skeggia – a place run by Bologna’s Forever Ultras. It was all about long nights, ultras scarves, Campari and gin, all crammed between the bar and the wall, with stage diving from the door. But now they say they’re rebuilding the stadium, with parking lots, fast food joints, and balloons for kids. We’ll patiently wait for another venue, and if there isn’t one… well, we’ll figure something out. We even wrote a book about the Skeggia – me and the guys from Bologna City Rockers: skinheads, punks, and hooligans. It’s a true self-production, all done by us, no profit, no booking.

• Radio Punk: You’re a band that’s openly skinhead and anti-fascist, and you make that clear in the lyrics of this album, such as in ‘Nemico’. What struggles are closest to your hearts, and in general, what’s your take on the current geopolitical situation?

Zeman: With this album, we didn’t feel the need to repeat that we’re an anti-fascist band. We’ve been playing for over ten years, and people already know where we stand, so we focused on expressing other aspects of our lives. We’ve been involved in many anti-fascist struggles in the city, from street demonstrations to scuffles outside gigs, kicking Nazis out or stopping them from getting in. That’s what matters to me – being real, all the way.
That said, there’s one song we felt compelled to write in light of recent international events and ongoing wars: ‘Nemico’ [enemy]. Why? Because the democratic West has already decided who the new enemies of the established order, common morals, and civilisation are. It’s a holy war against anyone who doesn’t conform. The enemy is the Palestinian, the enemy is the Russian, and we, who have long memories and have studied history, know you can never trust the Americans.

• Radio Punk: Since the album is a collaboration between Italian, French, and Spanish labels, do you have plans for a European tour or something similar? And in general, what’s in store for Zeman in the future?

Zeman: There will be a promotional tour, starting with dates in Italy and Sardinia, and possibly later expanding to Europe. But don’t expect a three-week tour in France and Spain – we all work during the week, and we’re only free on Sundays and, when we’re lucky, Saturdays. As for the bands that do big tours in South America, the US, Poland, and so on… What kind of jobs do they have?

• Radio Punk: Ten years of playing is no small feat, especially since you’ve always stayed active in the truest sense of the word. You’ve seen and been through a lot. Do you think the skinhead scene in Bologna and Italy has changed over the years? What do you like about it, and what would you like to improve? After this philosophical question, we’ll thank you, say goodbye, and raise a toast to you. Oi!

Zeman: Everything changes, nothing stays the same. Panta rei. The scene is no different. The average age has definitely gone up, especially at live shows – you don’t see many young bands anymore, and that’s the case across Italy. In France, Spain, and Euskadi, though, the scene seems livelier. In Bologna, there’s still some movement, I think. Bands like Oltre La Linea, who are a bunch of solid lads from nearby Porretta. We won’t mention Cesoia, or else people will say we’re biased. Then there are all the bands we’re always happy to share a stage with: Nabat, Diario di Bordo, Zona Popolare, Rude, and Ghetto 84.

A lot of it comes down to venues. There aren’t many self-managed spaces left, so more shows are happening in clubs. This isn’t bad in some ways, like for the acoustics, organisation, and beer in glass bottles. But I think we lose some spontaneity, opposition, anger, avant-garde spirit, and contrast. Oi! needs vitality, people who come from nothing, from the provinces and outskirts. Eight-euro tickets, nine-euro drinks, six-hundred-euro rents for a studio flat – these things take away the magic.

We’re still the invincible ranks with black flames on our lapels [a reference to ‘Fiamme nere’, a marching song of Arditi del Popolo, Italy’s first paramilitary anti-fascist organisation, founded by ex-WWI combatants in 1921 – Translator]. I hope a new generation of kids will rise up – stealing wristbands to sneak into gigs, grabbing bottles from behind the bar, and getting kicked out, just like we did. Who knows, maybe they’ll make music that challenges our certainties, waking us from the suffocating numbness of gig photos, likes, shares, and petty arguments on social media. We’re trying to resist. And if you don’t like it, well, No one likes us, we don’t care.

Translation by Matt Zurowski
Credit photo: Cami Cristo

L'articolo Interview with Zeman proviene da Radio Punk.

Cesoia – made up of Gerry on vocals, Davide on guitar, Matt on bass, and Mauro on drums – haven’t been around for long, but they’ve already played a decent number of gigs and released a debut album at the end of 2024. So, let’s get to know Cesoia and their skinhead rock ’n’ roll!

Radio Punk: Hello lads – welcome to our zine! Tell us a little bit about how, where, and when Cesoia got started, and which other projects, bands, or collectives you have been or are currently involved in…

Gerry: Hi there! Me, Davide and Mauro have known each other for over 15 years – we all moved to Bologna from distant places in Italy. Then a few years ago, we met Matt, and after a many chats over many beers and shots, Robert Johnson appeared to us and we realised we should probably drink less and start a band that mixes the energy of rock ‘n’ roll with the rage of Oi!

Mauro and Davide come from Sardinia, where they played in various punk bands before moving to Bologna for university. It was not long before they formed Zeman. I sang in a few punk bands in Naples before moving to Bologna. It was here that I started Misfatt with Vinc from the local Oi! band Zeman during the lockdown period – a demented Misfits-style band singing in the Neapolitan language. We never played live, but we had a blast. Matt, on the other hand, has lived in a several different countries and, ages ago, played in garage bands such as Mod Fuck Explosion.

Radio Punk: Your themes and style are unmistakably working-class and skinhead. Tell us a bit about your lyrics and the messages you want to convey to your audience.

Cesoia: We live every word in our lyrics, and our lyrics are us – from laughter to rage, from social injustice to workplace strife, from class struggle to everyday battles, from drunken nights to late-night odysseys in search of the last open bar. In short, it’s music of the people, for the people. And to those who listen to us – great choice, keep it up, Oi!

Cesoia – S/T

Radio Punk: Let’s move to a topic that’s very important to us. What role does politics play in your lives? And what’s your take on those who identify as apolitical skins?

Cesoia: The members of the band have different political leanings, but we’re all anti-capitalist and anti-fascist. For us the real threat is not from below but from above, from control at all costs to the standardisation of entertainment. We’re all politically conscious – being apolitical is not for us. Politics is part of our lives and taking a stand on certain issues is a must.

Radio Punk: You’ve been around for quite a few years, despite the band’s relatively young age. How have you seen the punk and skinhead subcultures change over the years? Do you think there’s a new generation coming through, or are we heading towards the end of subcultures? If it’s the latter, what can be done to turn things around?

Cesoia: Subcultures have obviously changed along with society, but we still believe that those who gravitate towards skinhead and punk circles hold the same values as they did in the beginning. Of course, there will always be a few idiots trying their best to make you think otherwise, but the trick is to ignore them. The real enemies are elsewhere – it’s not about whether some kid is ‘inadequate’ because he doesn’t have the right clothes or whatever. As The Business said, ‘Fight the real enemy’.

For us it is about our friends and keeping the scene alive. The generational change in Bologna has slowed down – mainly because fewer self-run spaces, community-run centres and so on, mean fewer places for people to come together. For example, we recently played at the CPA community centre in Florence, and there were a lot of young people there who made the space their own.

Radio Punk: What bands are your main musical influences? Recommend some must-listen Oi! and rock ’n’ roll bands to our readers… And on the other hand, what are your guilty pleasures when it comes to music?

Cesoia: Apart from ’80s Oi! and ’70s glam/bovver rock, we’d mention what we call ‘punk with a Harrington jacket’ – bands like Slaughter and the Dogs, The Ruts, and 999, so bootboys, pub rockers, and glam rockers who somehow ended up in punk. We also love stadium glam like Slade, delta blues, country & western, Aussie rock, and first-generation rock ’n’ roll legends like Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.

Guilty pleasures? Sabrina Salerno and Amanda Lear.

Bands we recommend: The Reapers, No Time, Claimed Choice, Mess, Siekiera, Tchernobyl, Miners, Rose Tattoo, and of course, Nabat and The Business… but we could go on forever.

Radio Punk: What’s your connection with the city you live in and its scene? What do you love most about Bologna, and what would you change if you could?

Cesoia: We all come from different places, so more than us having a connection with Bologna, Bologna is what connects us – this is where we met. The scene here has always been very varied, from the skinhead world to the punk scene. There were and still are very important venues like Atlantide, XM24, A Skeggia, Vecchio Son, and the Bologna City Rockers collective, which organises all the best gigs.

Nowadays, with pedestrianised zones, restrictive regulations, and sky-high rents, the city is turning into an open-air shopping mall, where those who create non-mainstream meeting places are seen as a problem to be eradicated. Evictions, lawsuits, bans and restrictions make things difficult, but there are still people who fight for these spaces with passion. That’s the beauty of the city.

Radio Punk: What’s in the pipeline for Cesoia? Will there be a tour or any gigs to promote this record? Will it be released in a physical format too? And in general, what’s next for Cesoia?

Cesoia: Gigs are coming up as we go along and we’ll add them to our Facebook page as they happen. We have decided to make our debut album available for free on all platforms. We’re planning to record another album in about a year, and this time we’ll release it in a physical format. As for the future – the future not what it used to be, so we’ll see how things go.

Radio Punk: We’ll wrap things up here – thank you very much! We’ve known you for years, but some of our readers may not. Who are Gerry, Mauro, Davide and Matt in normal life? What are their jobs, hobbies and passions? And finally, if you had to choose – whisky or borghetti? Thanks again and see you next time – Oi!

Gerry: Right, so I work as a stagehand for concerts and theatres, Mauro is a healthcare assistant, Matt is a translator, and Davide is a precarious teacher. We spend our time listening to music, watching ’70s and ’80s horror and exploitation movies, reading, hanging out in the dodgiest bars in town, and disturbing the peace.

Whisky or Borghetti? Why choose?

Thanks to you lot – see you around!

Credit photo: Francesca Chiari
Translation by Matt Zurowski

L'articolo Interview with Cesoia proviene da Radio Punk.

As a longtime passionate and keen observer of the UK punk scene, I took the liberty of highlighting ten bands that deserve to be known.

Disclaimer: This article does not pretend to be either an encyclopedia or an archive of UK and Ireland punk, but rather a journey reflecting personal tastes and preferences. If you think something is missing, don’t hesitate to tell us! (contact us by email or write us on our social networks).

Chubby and the Gang: West London

Chubby and the Gang is a band formed in 2019 from the fusion of various UK hardcore-punk groups. The band consists of vocalist Charlie “Chubby Charles” Manning-Walker, guitarists Ethan Stahl and Tom “Razor” Hardwick, bassist Maegan Brooks Mills, and drummer Joe McMahon.

Their debut album Speed Kills was released by Static Shock Records after their first U.S. tour and was later reissued via Partisan Records. Their second album, The Mutt’s Nuts, came out in 2021 and includes the iconic track “Coming Up Tough,” which initially drew me to the band. After lineup changes, concerts, and growing fame, their latest album, And Then There Was…, was released a few months ago—a record I’ve practically worn out from playing.

I was lucky enough to see them live last month in Manchester—just a relentless half-hour set without breaks, but packed with energy.

Listen on Bandcamp

The Chisel: London

The Chisel is a punk band formed in 2020 in London, originating from the collaboration between vocalist Nicholas Sarnella and Cal Graham. They later recruited guitarist Charlie “Chubby Charles” Manning-Walker. This trio recorded the EP Deconstructive Surgery, with Manning-Walker on guitar, Sarnella on drums, and Graham on vocals, before adding bassist Tom Ellis and second guitarist Luke Younger.

After two EPs—Come See Me / Not The Only One and Enough Said—they released their debut album Retaliation via La Vida Es un Mus. Their latest work, What A Fucking Nightmare, came out a year ago on Pure Noise. Notably, among their numerous live performances, they also released a split EP with the Mexican street-punk band Mess.

Their music is often fast and aggressive yet melodic, with Graham’s vocals showcasing his Lancashire accent. The quintet will be back in Italy this March for a show in Milan. I had the chance to see them nearly two years ago in Bologna, and it was an absolutely devastating live performance.

Listen on Bandcamp

Fulmine: Around

Fulmine is a five-member band consisting of Luca, Sarny, Alex, Joe, and our friend Charlie “Chubby Charles.” Their debut 7” Randagio was recorded by Ben Spence at Fuzzbrain Studios. Reportedly, the band recorded these six tracks in just as many hours without a single rehearsal.

The sound is raw, intense, and essential, with highly incendiary lyrics. The surprising thing is that the lyrics are entirely in Italian, echoing the Oi! sound of the 1980s. At the moment, little is known about the band—it seems more like a fun side project. But a damn good one.

Rifle: London

Rifle is a British punk band from London known for their raw and direct sound. Formed in Camden, the lineup includes Max, Ross, Cam, Flynn, and Alb. So far, they’ve released three EPs: Holloway Demos (2022) and Under Two Flags (2023), the latter featuring five tracks and Pack Mentality (2024).

Their influences range from bands like Chubby and the Gang to The Chisel, blending ’70s British punk with the intensity of ’80s American hardcore. Recently, they’ve been very active on the UK live circuit, sharing stages with bands like High Vis, DIZ, and Crocodiles.

Listen on Bandcamp

Clobber: London

Yet another London-based hardcore punk band I’ve been keeping an eye on. Clobber first caught attention on No Echo in early 2022 when they released their debut EP Tribal Rites of the New Friday Night. Their rough and wild sound has made waves in clubs across the UK, sharing bills with hardcore legends like Madball.

Signed to Venn Records, they released their second EP, Yesterday’s Heroes, Tomorrow’s Snide, in 2023, addressing government failures, police corruption, and the negative impact of social media on young people. Later that year, they dropped their debut full-length album, Violent Back Beat Noise, featuring eight tracks in a limited-edition release. They’re currently playing shows across Europe and will perform at the Rebellion Festival in Blackpool this August.

Listen on Bandcamp

Lambrini Girls: Brighton

Hailing from Brighton’s ever-thriving music scene, Lambrini Girls are a duo featuring Phoebe Lunny (vocals, guitar) and Lilly Macieira (bass). Active for a couple of years, they released their first EP, You’re Welcome, in 2023 through Big Scary Monsters, and just weeks ago, they dropped their debut album Who Let The Dogs Out on City Slang.

Their songs tackle social criticism, violence, and abuse, delivered with fury through fast punk rhythms, sharp guitars, and aggressive drumming. Definitely a band to watch.

Listen on Bandcamp

Kid Kapichi: Hastings

Kid Kapichi is an English punk rock band formed in 2013 in Hastings, East Sussex. The lineup features vocalists/guitarists Jack Wilson and Ben Beetham, bassist Eddie Lewis, and drummer George Macdonald—a gritty quartet that openly challenges the establishment.

After building their reputation through local shows, they released multiple singles and EPs before touring Europe in 2019. Their debut album, This Time Next Year, arrived in 2021. On March 26, 2022, the band opened for Liam Gallagher at London’s Royal Albert Hall—Gallagher personally invited them after praising their song New England.

In June 2022, they signed with Spinefarm Records and later released their second studio album, Here’s What You Could Have Won. Their third album, There Goes The Neighborhood, was released on March 15, 2024, followed by a European headline tour.

Through their songs, they paint a vivid picture of life in small towns—exploring politics, pub culture, late-night adventures, and the desire to rebel against a corrupt system.

Listen on Bandcamp

Soap Box: Glasgow

Formed in the spring of 2022, this four-piece band took time to refine their sound before making their public debut. Since then, they’ve built a small but loyal following through various UK gigs.

They’ve released multiple singles and the Hawd That EP (2023). In the coming months, they’ll open for Kid Kapichi’s tour.

Listen on Bandcamp

Meryl Streek: Dublin

Meryl Streek is the ambitious project of a 32-year-old Irish producer from Dublin. I had the chance to meet him personally two years ago when he played his second-ever live show, introducing his stunning debut album, 796. The album’s title references a tragic event—the 2014 discovery of 796 children’s remains in a mass grave at a nun-run facility in Galway.

Following a couple of singles and countless UK live shows, he recently released Songs for the Deceased via Venn Records. His music transforms political manifestos into raw, furious anthems, tackling themes like church abuse, suicide, alcoholism, and political decline.

Listen on Bandcamp

The Dogs: Wales

After a few digital releases, this Welsh band debuted on vinyl with Total Dog Shit, a 10-track 12” released via Mendeku Diskak. Their sound is a mix of Oi! and straightforward punk—effective, insolent, and full of disdain for human stupidity.

The trio will be playing several live shows in the coming months after opening for The Chisel in London and Blackpool last December.

Listen on Bandcamp

Article By Demis Trieste

This article is an unedited piece written by Demis for Radio Punk. Its sharing is free but if you would like to republish or quote it write to us at info@radiopunk.it

L'articolo Punk in the UK and Ireland: an alive and kicking scene proviene da Radio Punk.

L’article est disponible ici en français / Here you will find the article in French

When Radio Punk asked me to try to write an article on French punk, I asked myself: why me? Do they know that more than half of the records I’ve bought lately are French? That I’ve been to Disneyland Paris five times (all as an adult and never paid)? That I once ate three baguettes in a row?

I don’t know, but I still try to delve into one of the most prolific punk ‘scenes’ of recent years.

Disclaimer: This article does not pretend to be either an encyclopedia or an archive of French punk, but rather a journey reflecting personal tastes and preferences. If you think something is missing, don’t hesitate to tell us! (contact us by email or write us on our social networks).

Let’s start our journey from the capital, Paris. I was lucky enough to play there several times in a year, and it was always a blast!

• The first ones that come to mind are Rixe, perhaps the most famous current French band, they have their roots in the primordial oi!, a perfect mix of early Nabat and early Blitz but with singing in French.

• Also in the Île de France capital are Bleakness. Try putting Killing joke’s early sound in a cauldron with hc punk and a Bleakness-like creature will emerge. If you like Chain Cult you’ll love them too.

• Moving on to more pounding sounds, fresh from a new record I recommend Turquoise. Scandicore, the Totalitar who sing in French!

• With people from Turquoise but dedicated to English anarcho-punk and sung in English, The Mob-style, I present to you Barren:

• When people from Bleakness and Turquoise try to mix it up and make a band out of it comes Going away party: post punk with great singalongs.

• Also in Paris we find MaryBell. They call themselves feminist grunge punk, great live and recently out with a new record!

• Oi/post punk, what they call Punk Froid (cold punk) in France, a very apt definition to describe them too: Cran. Here you will find melody and anger.

• Now we review a new band, recently out with their demo: Saccage, Antifa oi! from the heart of Paname rage

• The last two bands I mention, besides having members in common, have that rock guitar sound that makes you move your foot wherever you are: Youthavoiders and Stallen minds

After this roundup of Parisian groups, we move to upper France, on the border with Belgium, to the capital: Lille.

The characteristic of the Lille groups is that each group has one member in common with the other. Here we find the perfect mix of oi! and post punk, what I saw written in several French flyers and which I mentioned above: punk froid.

Let’s start with two bands that no longer exist but that in my opinion are among the most beautiful ever to come out of the French hexagon:

• Douche Froide, beautiful cold wave: I literally wore this record out on youtube, if anyone reading this has a copy to sell me absolutely contact me!

• And then Traitre, a melange between oi! and post punk, perhaps among the first to mix these two sounds: punk froid, best definition ever… here too anger and melody!

• UOne of the bands with members of Traitre that most excited me was Kronstadt, unfortunately I was told they played their last gig not long ago.

• An active band from Lille, with whom we shared a stage and a chat on French soil are Utopie. Politicised post punk, a record with beautiful artwork by the drummer, who has his hands on almost all the artwork of these bands from Lille, but not only.

• Let’s move on to Short days, with at least one member in common with each of the bands listed above, punk guitar but sadder and more melodic, below you will find the new album.

• Now I present a band different from the previous ones, they scream in English and are closer to hc punk. Gutter!

• Années zero, a little faster than the others and still with members in common with the groups listed above.

• Returning towards more post-punk, cooler sounds, a pleasant discovery of the last few months: Chiaro scuro.

In Lille they never stand still, in fact two very nice demos have been released this year, again cold punk!

• Peur Bleue:

• Arsou:

• The last group on the list consists of the same members as Année zero, but much more violent! Camellia Sinensis:

Now we move westwards, following the North Sea and land in Brest, where a few people have many groups, all of them incredible!

• Before I tell you which are the current ones, let me introduce them: Tachanka, also here we are in front of a mix of oi! and post punk, recently reissued for Mendeku Diskak, this record was introduced to me by my Parisian friends from AIM paname / Red Vibes. The title alone lets you know what the lyrics are about: Class revenge!

Now to the spearheads of Brest, but perhaps of the whole of France, bands that need no introduction:

• Syndrome 81: With their latest record, which is a cannonball, they even earned a call to Hell fest, perhaps the most famous extreme music festival in the world. Oi!, post punk, punk rock, all very good from the music to the lyrics.
  If you saw them live, you’ll agree with me….

• Litovsk: here their latest album, one of the best forms of world post punk.

• Another fine group that mixes punk rock and new wave are Secteur Pavé. Even in Brest it seems that people are always the same, in fact we find people from Syndrome and Litovsk in here.

• Now we move towards old school: bassist and vocalist from Syndrome, the former on instruments, the latter on vocals, have released a tight old school hc demo. 
  Mentalité 81 (does the name ring a bell?):

• As they used to say, you can’t change a winning team, and so our heroes Fab and Jacky (aka the singer and bass player of Syndrome, also them…) are releasing another new band, Grisaille. They may sound like Syndrome ‘less oi’, but there’s a lot of early century Scandinavian punk here (Gorilla Angreb and Masshysteria above all)

• Again with the bass player of Syndrome, whom I will also tell you about later, and another shady character you will find later on, I present Coupe Gorge fresh from a not bad Lp: fast, melodic and angry.

• The last group I present is a one man band, the bass player of Syndrome and drummer of Coupe Gorge recently played and recorded alone, yes because he has a recording studio, and practically all the bands from Brest, (but not only) record/mix/master at his place: at the movie recording… and I understand that he is a guarantee. Always post oi, cold punk, in short, call it what you like, the fact remains that this record rocks.
  Prisonner Du Temps:

Now we move a little further south:

• Litige, a punk rock quartet based in Lyon, here, too, melodies take centre stage.

• VClose to Lyon, in Saint Etienne we find Deletar. Above you can listen to their latest record, featuring members in common with Litige and Bleakness, a punk rock band as direct as a punch in the face!

• Also in Saint Etienne we find Zone infinie, always that hybrid of oi and post punk, with choruses that stick in your head. French punk rock with a touch of oi.

• The last band I mention that comes from the capital of the Loire are Surface Tangible, sometimes shot punk hc and sometimes post noise punk.

Let’s go even further south, more precisely to Toulouse to talk about four bands, which I understand have at least one member in common.

• Nightwatchers: a quartet that mixes post punk and punk/garage/rock and makes melody their sharpest weapon, along with very interesting lyrics: one of their records is about the French colonial period.

• Nohz: raw punk, dirty, bad and direct!

• Last but not least, Filature, fresh from their new album, also cold punk, if you like post punk sounds you are in the right place.

• Last band I mention from Toulouse are Trholz, Riot Girl against the patriarchy!

Now moving randomly through France, I give you the last round-up of bands:

• From Lorient, Brittany: Cuir. Another solo project, this time synth punk. With the singer of Coupe Gorge. Imagine playing a Billy Idol record at twice the speed, spice it up with a bit of dope and you have Cuir.

• Let’s move on to Bordeaux to talk about Bombardement. Swedish-minded D-Beat, to listen to in one go!

• From Nancy, a city in the Big East, come Rancoeur, who call themselves Cold oi, after a demo and a full-length. And recently with a very interesting 7-inch. One of the most interesting realities of this new oi/post punk wave.

The last two bands I will tell you about are:

• Oi Boys from Metz, electronic drums, synths but sung like punk. A highly recommended record:

• Hinin, Post-punk trio from Tulle who recently released a split with Litovsk.

Marseilles:

I didn’t mention any band from Marseilles because the good Francesco Zio ciko did a great report here.

In addition to all these bands, the whole of France is teeming with concerts, labels, artists and more generally counterculture punk.

I will now mention a few labels to watch out for, in fact many of the bands you find above are released on these labels, often by people who play in the bands listed above:

Destructure
Une vie pour rien
Symphony of destruction
No glory records
Offside records
Les Chœurs de l’ennui
Dirtyslap records

What can I say, listen to them all, go with the ‘cold’ punk!

Oi!

Article by Ivan Lo Mauro (Iena / Morgana / Carlos Dunga / Destinazione Finale)

For those who want to delve deeper, here is a guide to French punk written in 2019.

This article is an unedited piece written by Ivan Lo Mauro for Radio Punk, the result of months of research and work. Its sharing is free but if you would like to republish or quote it write to us at info@radiopunk.it

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L'articolo Punk en France: a voyage of discovery of the new French punk wave proviene da Radio Punk.

Formed in 2015, the Spanish band has released two albums, ‘LVX‘ and ‘Tenevrae‘ and several singles and EPs, the latest of which ‘Uroboros‘ was released last summer. The band‘s mystical and dark imagery immediately struck us and made us want to know more, which is why we contacted La Inquisición for an interview!

CLICK HERE TO READ THE INTERVIEW IN SPANISH | ENTREVISTA (ESP)

Radio Punk: Hi guys and welcome to our ‘zine! Let’s start from the beginning: how and when did you form and how did you meet? What other bands did you play in before La Inquisición?

La Inquisición: More or less we’ve known each other forever, before forming La Inquisición we had a band called Secret Army that we thought had completed its life cycle, so we decided to form La Inquisición. Then we played in many bands of different genres, Malarians, Último Asalto or Seeds of Hate to name a few.

Radio Punk: Your themes are often dark and sometimes seem related to religious/philosophical aspects. Since our audience is not familiar with Spanish, would you like to explain the themes you deal with and what you want to communicate to your audience? 

La Inquisición: I don’t think the subject matter of our lyrics falls into one single theme, we ask many philosophical, political, or even spiritual questions. If there is something that defines our intentionality it is: to tell a story, to create a narrative, always from a very personal point of view. In general, what we want is to convey feelings. Beyond any discourse, I think we approach different topics from a perspective where the narrative is part of the message and at the same time, we believe that language is a way of making music.

Radio Punk: You are a band that is playing around a lot, in Italy you were supposed to come but then there was Covid. Are you planning to come back? I know you have also played in different countries, in which situations have you had the best time and in which countries would you love to go and play for the first time?

La Inquisición: Now we are not playing much because we are preparing the third album. We have been playing everywhere for a long time, now we have a proposal for Italy, which we hope will come true! The truth is that we really enjoy playing…. We have a special memory for example of when we went to Mexico or Serbia, and we would love to go to Chile or Colombia because we know that people there listen to our music.

Radio Punk: …How is the situation in Spain? How is the Spanish punk scene, Basque, Catalan and in particular in Barcelona, your city?

La Inquisición: We are a bit disconnected from the scene in general, but there are some very good new bands and some less so… Each place has its own characteristics, in Euskadi right now there are a lot of very young people listening to this music, it’s amazing how at concerts of local and young bands more than 1,000 people gather. In our city and in Catalonia it is very different, for example, there is not such a clear generational change. But there are very good bands like Enemic interior or Brux.

Radio Punk: ‘El Himno de España’, one of the few songs I think I understand is an anti-nationalist anthem. Right? Do you also address more social and political issues in your lyrics? 

La Inquisición: That’s right. As I said before, we don’t tend to focus on concrete issues, but rather on certain questions that we ask ourselves at specific moments, often conveyed in a visceral but always personal way. Actually, in general we would like to destroy the negative circumstances in the world, but sometimes we just reflect on them. 

Radio Punk: …more generally staying in this area. How important are values like anti-fascism, anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-capitalism to you? Are there themes and struggles to which you feel most connected? And how important is DIY ethics for you?

La Inquisición: Each of us gives individual weight to certain ideas based on our way of seeing the world and we don’t have a specific agenda as a group. Although all the things you mentioned about fascism, racism, capitalism, and sexism are ideas that we deal with clearly and directly. Perhaps there is a part of the group that is more related to animal rights or anti-speciesist struggles and we all share a general worldview in which degrowth and a return to a simpler life, linked to nature, is necessary for the survival of the planet and the human species. For us there is nothing more beautiful than self-sufficiency, non-dependence, and independent thinking, so part of the so-called DIY ethic is a cornerstone of how we relate to life.

Radio Punk: Now that we’re into the discussion, tell us a little bit about yourselves outside the band. Do you do other jobs? Would you like to make a living from music? What other hobbies and passions do you have outside of playing music?

La Inquisición: Yes, of course. Music is not our job, it’s our hobby…. I sincerely believe that the watchword is not ‘living’ but ‘surviving’. There is a kind of idealisation of the job of musician, and it is a synergy that doesn’t interest us too much, the truth is that many of our colleagues who only dedicate themselves to this are like sharks, either you move or you die, either you play or you die. We think it’s great that there are people who drop everything to live their dream, we think it’s the most commendable attitude and maybe if we were younger, it would be something we would consider, who knows? But today we are happy with our way of doing things and we don’t depend on the band or anyone else for anything. Apart from music we enjoy being together, eating, going to the mountains, drinking beer, being with family and things like that.

Radio Punk: In Spain, it seems to me that the use of Spotify in diy punk is very widespread, while here in Italy it’s much less used. What do you think of Spotify? And what do you think about music in physical format in 2023? 

La Inquisición: I don’t know, we think that the more people listen to us, the better. Spotify, like all companies in the virtual world, is a capitalist company that wants you to spend minutes on its platform or pay for subscriptions. In short, like all these technology entertainment companies, they want you to depend on them… To make themselves essential in your life. That’s why for us the real value is records… They are beautiful, you can touch them, you can put them on, and they have a lot of work behind them. It’s the epitome of the physical world, as opposed to something virtual and inert like platforms and screens.

Radio Punk: Last summer ‘Uroboros’ came out, do you already have new work in the pipeline? What future projects are there? Please come and play in Italy!

La Inquisición: While we are answering these questions, we are busy preparing what will be our third LP, as with everything, we are going at our own pace with no hurry. Needless to say, we can’t wait to come to Italy, hopefully the planets will align soon!

Radio Punk: Since you have a lot of experience having played a lot on the road, let’s close the interview by asking you what were the best and the craziest moments that happened to you on the road! 

La Inquisición: There have been all kinds of moments in the band’s history, but something we remember with great fondness and that always makes us smile are the trips to Serbia and Mexico.

Credit photo: pic done in Manresa by Mr Beltza

Support us:

We are a DIY project and you can support us, if you like, in the following ways:
– you can take a look at our catalog and order records, CDs, books, pins, and more;
– you can join our open call with a previously unpublished article.

L'articolo Interview with La Inquisición proviene da Radio Punk.

With Marco Balestrino (Klasse Kriminale singer) it is difficult to get bored, since we started talking about “Box Restored, Remixed and Remastered” we have had dozens of chats both by phone and in person. Talks and ideas that led to the birth of this mammoth box set. We thought that sitting in front of a stereo, with the box in front of us, and bringing one of these chats back to Radio Punk readers, might be an interesting way to tell the behind-the-scenes story of our work. Imagine it like a ‘making of’ on the menu of a good DVD movie!

Alberto Flamingo: Where did the need come from to create a work like this, not just anthological but much more structured?

Marco Balestrino: I wanted to create a sound document that captured those years, those sounds, those moments. However, I wanted to give our audience something exclusive. We could have done a box set with the albums, the singles and some unreleased live stuff, but since I had the reels of the old work I wanted to go on a new journey and pull out of those old recordings what for a number of reasons I hadn’t been able to do in the studio at the time. In this box set there are not only 5 CDs full to the brim with music, but the history of many guys is encapsulated and it was only right to make it sound its best, restoring sonic dignity to what were the various Klasse Kriminale line-ups during those troubled early years, all with the Punk spirit of the time. So the idea was to create something that would stick and also be beautiful to listen to. We created a cross-section that photographed from the first half of the 80s to the late 90s, basically the analogue era of our recordings. As I said when we recorded, the studios were what they were, the experience of Rock’n’Roll in Italy still far behind, so we thought of remixing and remastering without correcting anything. Nowadays we could have grilled some things, overdubbed and made adjustments, but we didn’t do that.

Alberto Flamingo: I guess it wasn’t an easy job…

Marco Balestrino: The reels had suffered the normal wear and tear of time. The Ampex 456s, of which we faithfully reproduced the box containing the CDs in this anthology, are among those that suffer the most wear and tear. Just think, when I went to England in the late 90s to record ‘Electric Caravanas’ with Jimmy Pursey as producer, I saw that work was already being done in that studio, many English Pop tapes were being digitised. The reel was heated in a special oven to a certain temperature so that it would come off and then digitised with special machines. The prices for that procedure in those days were prohibitive, and even today to be honest it was not a cheap operation. But the idea was already there in my head at the time. It must also be said that that period of the transition of music from analogue to digital also corresponded with a particular moment of Klasse Kriminale, it changed a bit the history of the Oi! Skin movement not only in Italy, but also worldwide. Our mission up to that moment had coincided in an indissoluble way with the rebirth and diffusion of that movement, while in those days I was looking elsewhere and developing other projects, so a different chapter would open that is not part of this box set.

Returning to the reels, about a year ago I was contacted by a German collector who wanted to buy the digital tapes. I took the opportunity to realise the idea from almost 25 years earlier and recover all the material. Obviously it was a fool’s errand, ten years of recordings constituted a considerable amount of material and consequently a big basic expense. The work was done at Analogplanet in Pavia, and all the tracks were entrusted to Giulio Farinelli, who had done an excellent job on ‘Vico dei Ragazzi’ (Klasse Kriminale’s last album, ed.) and who had the merit of making everything sound homogeneous.

Alberto Flamingo: A throwback for you…

Marco Balestrino: What’s interesting about such a mammoth mix job is that you have to approach it in a completely different way to an album, where you have to split hairs; times and costs are different and you have to strike a blow to the circle and a blow to the barrel to get a good sound; also because as I said, we didn’t make any corrections. Then another step to make a professional master together with Giovanni Nebbia of Imperia. In short, we worked to get the most out of this music and in the end I think it was right to capture the last era of analogue music, I personally believe that with the advent of digital, art has lost something. Without being nostalgic, it used to be more complex, more expensive and there was a kind of gavetta to get to recording. You could make corrections for goodness sake, but it was much less immediate, you had to get to the studio and play. So was the graphic art, made of photos, cut-outs, films to be superimposed. Anyway, I think it made for an interesting journey, the years go by fast and I had never stopped to listen to all my stuff like that.

Alberto Flamingo: One thing I have noticed is that the sound of the era is not distorted, they sound better, but the productions of the era have been respected. There is often an attempt to ‘pump it up’ to make everything sound more modern.

Marco Balestrino: The work has logically had to make compromises, recordings on 16-tracks, others on 24-tracks, different musicians and studios have meant making middle choices in order not to make the whole thing sound too unglued. You can always do better, but I think naturalness and homogeneity were the primary goal. The 24-track recordings could have been even more defined, but then they would have drowned out the 16-track one from which we instead made the most of.

Alberto Flamingo: Another thing we can notice as we browse and listen is that over the years you have re-released certain tracks with different musicians and sometimes with changes in arrangement, are these changes dictated simply by the need to have the track played by different people or over time did you feel the need to ‘refresh’ them to suit new contexts?

Marco Balestrino: I’ve always tried to improve what we had, now as then I’m always looking for a better sound, the Prole Rock sound. Who knows, maybe I’ll get there sooner or later! Then anyway it was a forced process, you’d record a demo tape as an amateur off the top of your head and then go and redo the same tracks on an LP trying to improve them. If you look back at Rock or Punk itself, that was always the process, demo, single and then album with the songs played more professionally. Even though we weren’t professionals and there was no record company we always approached it as professionally as possible. We were kids, but so was The Clash, you know “White Riot” is in the 76′ demo, then the single and finally the album.

Alberto Flamingo: I take your last point about the Clash as a starting point to get onto another subject: a song like Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ in a demo version was rockin’ and then was turned into the hit record we all know, but there is management work behind it, producers and record companies giving input. You always acted as independents and without outside help or someone telling you how to arrange the songs to get more success.

Marco Balestrino: Yes, they were on the other side of the world, at the right time, with other budgets and a producer by their side. We always did the production of our songs with the help of the sound engineer on duty and to make him understand where I wanted to go I would let him listen to the sounds of the bands that had influenced me, even today I show up in the studio with a suitcase of CDs. Then it didn’t always work out… if you listen to the demo ‘Odiati & Fieri’ it sounds better to me than the album ‘Ci Incontreremo Ancora Un Giorno’. In that case I had a bad time in the studio, the recording had gone wrong: microphones, gates on the instruments, guitar sounds. We tried changing studios for mixing, but the sound was already compromised, plus the dominant sound at the time was that of The Cult or worse CCCP. There were fashionable sounds that could literally kill a Punk song.

Then again, sometimes the moment was decisive, ‘Costruito in italia’ was almost a summer experience, a moment caught on the fly. I met a Punk guy from Milan called Luca who played guitar (and he played bass with us, today he’s a professional bass player) and we got to talking and came up with the idea of recording the single. Also the drummer (Maurizio) and the second guitarist (Fabio) practically got caught by chance wandering around and wasting time on benches on summer evenings; think that line-up never even played live. But also the album ‘Ci Incontreremo Ancora Un Giorno’ was born almost by chance, we were no longer playing, no gigs, no line -up, but there was some expectation, some demand from fanzines and kids around the world. You know, we were getting at least two or three letters a day, communication in those days was cool, on the single was the home address and in those days we were visited without even a notice by Italian, French, German skinheads… Everything was so spontaneous, so simple, we all felt part of something that was really ours. The need for the album was there, so Antonella and I put an ad in a record shop, Franco came in, a guy who played bass, and we boarded Ringo, a metal kid who played Thrash, on drums, and after a few rehearsals we recorded the album. For Punk and even more so for Oi! those were pretty dark years but with an ad or a review the records sold.

Alberto Flamingo: I guess it wasn’t easy for you to play live…

Marco Balestrino: We were an Oi! band, for the press, institutions and concert organisers we were public enemy number one, us and everyone who followed us.

Alberto Flamingo: You had the ability to keep your old audience but always involve the new generation. Today’s kids have taken ‘Vico dei Ragazzi’ and made it the banner of these years, others are perhaps linked to the middle or early period; over the years not only the music has evolved but also the lyrics and themes.

Marco Balestrino: Yes, we were an Oi! band that was part of a movement and we were in the early years very attached to that scene, carrying it forward was a mission. We were talking about what was going on in the movement. ‘I Ragazzi Sono Innocenti’ was a strong denunciation against newspapers and journalists. It was born after the events in Rostock, when the world became aware of the Nazi-skin phenomenon. From there a strange attention towards me, newspapers were asking for interviews. Even the Digos opened an investigation and came to my house, the newspapers were likening us to the Nazis. Panorama, Espresso, no mention of fanzines. It even happened that a journalist came with us to Germany to write a detailed article on King and the European, complete with photos. We at the time therefore tried to make positive contact, unfortunately also on that occasion our hopes and trust were misplaced, the article was not what we expected although the journalist in question was treated very well. The headlines and speeches were all sensationalistic, portraying us as a dull and violent scene. I even had to do a spaghetti western-style skit in the editorial office of La Stampa, after which they wrote nothing more about Klasse Kriminale.

Talking about lyrics, when we started, it was only a few years after the explosion of the Oi! In the UK, in London you still met the skinheads you saw in the pictures of fanzines and they were still young, everything was fresh and yet in my lyrics it already seemed very old. Maybe it was because we were here in the suburbs, far away from everything, but the feeling was almost that the train had passed, even if in reality it was all in parallel, I’m talking about us but also about Nabat, we were quite in line with the times but maybe the physical distance and isolation also exacerbated that short time gap. To give you an example, Angelic’s ‘2,000,000 Voices’, one of my favourite records, was only a few months old when I listened to it, yet it seemed to me to have been out much longer. I would say that the lyrics of the first two albums were imbued with a certain melancholy. In general the lyrics told what was going on around me, maybe that’s why every generation is connected to a certain KK record, because it was about their time.

Alberto Flamingo: Besides the tapes there is also a lot of other material in this box, live, rarities and unreleased, would you like to tell us about it?

Marco Balestrino: Yes, I’ve always recorded everything, even in the rehearsal room, think that the first room was here where we are now, (in the warehouse of wonders Oi! at Marco’s house ed.) of course it was soundproofed with egg cartons and styrofoam. Having this place also made it easier for me, you could meet someone and organise rehearsals straight away, which for the lack of equipment at the time was a big thing. I still have our old drum kit here somewhere. Back to the question, I always recorded, both for documentation and for practicality, I could give the tracks to new/new musicians to listen to. So I had this box of tapes and thanks to a friend who digitised them for me, we were able to reconstruct this further cross-section. There was a complex job of listening to and selecting the most interesting material. Then listening to the concerts I was able to recall friends, anecdotes and situations that I had somewhat lost in my memory. This already came up in the first reviews, people almost more talked about moments and memories related to us and our concerts than about the music, which is also an interesting aspect of this box.

CD 1 

is the CD of the origins. It contains the first demo ‘Odiati & Fieri’ which was released in 1988 in a few hundred cassettes packaged with a photocopied booklet with lyrics and photos, the single ‘Costruito In Italia’ and a few live pieces which testify to our beginning with keyboard and sax. Among the cassettes I found the unreleased ‘Dure Scelte’ and a live performance of Warhead by UK Subs sung by MGZ

CD 2 

Contains the debut album ‘Ci Incontreremo Ancora Un giorno’, a couple of sessions that would end up on the second album ‘Faccia A Faccia’ of which unfortunately a reel has been lost. The live shows include a date in London and the gig supporting the Angelic Upstarts for the first time in Italy, at a difficult time for them and the Oi! movement held under siege by Nazi assaults.

CD 3 

“That’a Promise” and a 4-piece demo, the first work without Antonella and with Manlio switched to guitar was the basis for “I Ragazzi Sono Innocenti” of which we find the entire session. Rarities include the recording of the songs played for Indies on Video Music and a live radio concert in the Milan studios of Radio Popolare and some live performances from a mini-tour in Germany together with Red Alert.

CD 4 

It encompasses the whole period with Riccardo, Betty and Castel from Reazione, studio recordings with Paul Chain and some live performances from the ‘Planet Punk Tour’, ‘Tiziano Ansaldi Benefit Tour’ and on other stages. It is the CD that recounts the rebirth of Oi! which culminates with the concerts at Leonkavallo together with Nabat and Ghetto 84 for the ‘Tiziano Ansaldi Benefit Tour’.

CD 5

The single ‘Mind Invaders’ with the hand of Luther Blisset and the demo that prepared the album ‘Electric Carovanas’. Among the rarities taken from cassettes and DATs are tracks from the ‘Boys’ Own’ demo and live performances in Germany and Italy, including one at Inmensa in Genoa. From here on it was a different story for many reasons, but those who follow us already know…

Credit photo: Fabrizio Barile

Support us:

We are a DIY project, and you can support us, if you like, in one of the following ways:
– you can take a look at our catalog and order records, CDs, books, pins, and more;
– you can join our open call with a previously unpublished article.

L'articolo Klasse Kriminale Box Special: Interview with Marco Balestrino proviene da Radio Punk.

Everyone has at least one thing that psychoanalysts call a “fetish”, a serial passion for inanimate objects. Some people have socks, others hats, nail varnish, bags, brooches, or shoes. I have this fetish, I have been collecting exclusively Adidas shoes for years, and I am into casual subculture, as well as being into punk music. The shoe, if it had a voice, would tell our most intimate stories. This was first understood by the ancient Romans, who called their tragedies cothurnatae, the name of the shoes worn by actors in the theatrical figurations of the time, used to identify roles and parts during performances. In this article, I will try, with minimal historical and bibliographical references, to give a general framing of the influence of the Adidas brand on urban subcultures (hence mainly punk, skinhead and b-boy) and vice versa, since, as the designer and streetwear brand co-founder Paolo Coppolella correctly argues: “It is a vicious/virtuous circle that between ‘street’ and fashion. They mutually influence each other: the fashion system – much more than one would think – is retro-fuelled by phenomena taken from the street – gangs/crews/bands – and turns them into iconic garments into popular trends.”

Like all social phenomena, those concerning youth cultures take on a certain sociological relevance, since they are motivated mainly by the desire for revenge of a social minority opposed in the affirmation of particular rights (work, home, integration) by the state. And like all ‘gangs’ in revolt against the oppressor state, they adopt identifying codes, languages, and styles of belonging. As Mauro Bonvicini (musician and scholar of ideologized fashions) aptly wrote in an interview: “a subculture without a critical apparatus – philosophy? – is a mere fashion, while when the aesthetic dimension is lacking and a worldview that is inevitably antagonistic is favoured, we are faced with mere ideology. Subculture is thus the right balance of stylistic symbolism, aggregative dynamics and, indeed, antagonistic sensibility.”

If what you’re looking for is an article à la Vice – “Tell me what shoes you wear and I’ll tell you what music you listen to” – then you’ve come to the wrong place. If, on the other hand, we want to understand together why Adidas belongs to the aforementioned sub-culture style codes, then perhaps this article – without any pretentious desire to exhaust an extremely broad discourse – can be a first hint.

Once upon a time…

The origins of Adidas date back to 1924, when Adolf Dassler founded a shoe company with his brother Rudolf, the Gebrüder Dassler Schuhfabrik. The idea was to create sports-specific shoes that could offer athletes maximum comfort and protect them from injury. In the beginning there were only two side bands and they started out from a purely functional necessity: they served to maintain and support the structure of the shoe on the central area of the upper, but also became a company hallmark. For years the family business went well, but the outbreak of World War II started a rivalry between the two brothers, who had very different ideas on how to deal with the nascent Reich: Adolf had no intention of turning his sports shoe factory into a war boot factory for those who would shortly be trampling Europe and millions of corpses in their path of conquest. Rudolf, on the other hand, was sniffing out a bargain, the possibility of becoming the main supplier of footwear to the new great German empire appealed to him, and quite a lot. In 1947 each went his own way, Rudolf founded the new company RuDa (later renamed PUMA because of its catchier sound) and Adolf began the history of Adidas, whose name came from the union of his nickname and surname: Adi Dassler. Having founded the new company, however, Adi could no longer use the two side stripes. The solution was to add a third stripe in the middle and give birth to the iconic 3 stripes. Rudolf instead took them both and folded them diagonally creating what was the first Puma logo. Even the town of Herzogenaurach was divided over the issue and was nicknamed “the town of folded necks”, because people constantly looked at the shoes worn by others to see who they were siding with. The two brothers never reconciled and, although they are buried in the same cemetery, their graves are at opposite corners of the holy field.

From then on, the success of Adidas was an uphill road, punctuated by small major revolutions: in the early years, the new company concentrated on improving the materials used, the design structure and the search for ergonomic shapes. One of the brand’s main revolutions was to introduce “cleats” in football boots and “spikes” in running shoes, in both cases to increase the foot’s grip on the ground. It was in 1970, when Adidas started using modern technologies such as EVA rubber, that the performance of its footwear reached its peak and became massively established not only in Europe but also worldwide.

In the meantime, however, in the early seventies, other companies were making a name for themselves in the world. Competition in the footwear field was increasing, especially with Onitsuka from Japan and the rivalry with his brother’s company Puma, so much so that they felt the need to reinvent their brand and create a dynamic logo that could show the world a renewed, different and avant-garde Adidas. It was during this period that the legendary Clover or “tres foil” was born. Three leaves coming together in a figure of a plant, cut horizontally in the middle with the ever-present 3 stripes symbolising the Olympic spirit: strength, loyalty, sacrifice. The logo was used in the period 72-97 and only in 1991 was it joined by the other, for the Equipment line known as “the pyramid”, consisting of three thick diagonal stripes, which is the main logo the company currently uses.

The 3 Stripes have made a name for themselves in many different contexts, from sport and athletics to the worlds of music, fashion, and art. They have been adopted as a symbol for the identity of various underground and mainstream subcultures and continue to offer cutting-edge designs for the contemporary era. Practicality, versatility and flexibility are the elements that have allowed the logo to adapt to all kinds of contexts to become a worldwide icon.

ADIDAS AND MUSIC

The link between the two, which is strange to say if we think of the trendy imagery in today’s concerts, does not historically belong to the skinhead and punk subcultures. Instead, it is proper to those street cultures that are in some way linked to sports: hip-hop because of basketball and skateboard, and rude boys because of football and athletics. It is no coincidence, in terms of aesthetics, that the first punks and skinheads adopted a fashion that was foreign to the prevailing canons: through the symbolic weight given to this aspect, on the one hand they also visibly marked the border between “us” and the society that we can conveniently define as bourgeois, and on the other hand they recognised themselves among equals, enhancing that feeling of constituting a world apart that is at the basis of every subcultural impulse. As we mentioned, in the 1970s (thus in the Golden era of the skinhead movement and in the period of the punk explosion) Adidas was a more than established brand, occupying advertisements in Europe and around the world, creating sportswear worn by ordinary people for running or practising sport by imitating world icons; it could not be used as a distinctive element of rupture with bourgeois society. A third case was the Casuals, whose relationship with the three-striped brand obviously also derived from a connection with sport and sportswear, although not directly practised.

ADIDAS AND HIP HOP

The first shoe model to be adopted on the streets in a massive and widespread way, due to a massive marketing operation, was the Superstar, and it happened in the middle of the 80s in America. This iconic Adidas model is characterised by a soft-protect in the heel, thick padded tongue in the front, huge laces, the iconic reinforced rubber shell toe – hence the nickname shell shoe – and the 3 stripes on the sides. They were born in 1969 as low leather basketball shoes and were immediately chosen by famous Lakers player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Fifteen years later, they were the subject of a historic commercial agreement: for the first time in history, a sports brand creator of technical clothing signed a sponsorship contract not with an athlete but with a music band. In fact, after the band Run DMC dedicated the song ‘My adidas’ to them, and a video in which they appeared entirely dressed in stripes with Superstars on their feet, the German brand recognised the great commercial potential of these artists, and got them to sign a 1 million dollar contract. Run DMC became the first non-sports ambassadors of a sports equipment brand while launching the fashion of the no-string forward tongue: “With no shoe string in ‘em, I did not win ‘em”. By the mid-90s, Superstars were so popular that they even conquered the skateboarding world by crushing the Vans myth and started appearing everywhere on the feet of skateboarders and rappers, as well as high school kids, who could pose as b-boys by adding the famous fat laces to the silhouette. These trainers were the symbol of belonging to a club, to an exclusive niche that everyone wanted to be a part of, especially in the States. We can say that the Adidas Superstar was the first great universal “trainer”.

ADIDAS AND RUDE BOYS

In addressing the topic of youth subcultures, one cannot fail to refer to one of the most representative historical cases of suburban youth social phenomena: the “Rude Boy” culture, in vogue in Jamaica since the 1950s/60s and relocated in the early 1970s to England. The representatives of this youth subculture tended to identify with the cultural credentials typically embodied in Jamaican music (ska, rocksteady, and reggae) and the rules of street life. With reference to street life, mainly centred in shady underworld scenarios on the threshold of poverty, the youths were mainly marijuana dealers and/or hitmen with ties to the underworld. As journalist Mario Giancristoforo points out in an article: “the iconography of the underworld exerted on this youth subculture can be traced in the classic gangster attire (coppola, smart three-button jacket and black shoes). In those days, in Jamaica, rude boys tended to fill dance halls and challenge each other to music fights, until the situation degenerated completely into shoot-outs and stabbings between gangs, freely impeding the smooth running of the evenings.” The Rude emigrants to England mainly settled in the English working-class neighbourhoods and suburbs and came into contact with other subcultures (Mod), also belonging to the working class. They imported two things: the style of dress and the street attitude. Rudes and Mods frequented the same circles and slowly began to mix, giving rise to the Hard-Mod subculture (the most extreme version of Mod culture, which inherited from Rude culture its own influences regarding dress and culture). Later, the new hard-mod youth subculture would evolve into what would become the skinhead movement. The young rude boys were fascinated by sporting and musical icons who had enjoyed huge success outside the small Caribbean Island: reggae musicians like Robert Bob Marley and phenomenal athletes like Lennox Miller were the main products that Jamaica was known for in the world, besides marijuana. Musicians and athletes had just one thing in common, apart from their Caribbean origin: Adidas on their feet. “First place is music. Above everything is music, for me, and nothing can ever surpass it. But right after that there is football. Because football is freedom.” We can start with this quote from Bob Marley to convey the importance of football in his life and how this resulted in his devotion to Adidas. The Jamaican singer had never hidden his love for the sport, in his everyday life he dressed as if he were always ready for a football match. There are many photos of him playing with friends on the field with this outfit. At the same time, many African American athletes, at the Mexico ’68 and Munich ’72 Olympics, churned out sensational sporting successes, lowering world records and delivering exceptional performances in terms of sporting and social significance (of which Tommie Smith’s clenched fist after the world record in the 100m flat is just one example). Being an Afro at that time meant looking up to those icons and all of them had Adidas shoes on their feet, from jumper Bob Beamon to sprinter Melvin Pender. Adidas – in those editions of the games – dominated the sponsorship of winning athletes. The rude boys began wearing the only black, shiny Adidas shoes (as the street “thug” outfit dictated) produced at the time: the Adidas Samba, stylish on the street and comfortable in the ballrooms.

ADIDAS AND TERRACES

The third case, that of the Casual culture, is enormously broader – and an equally vast bibliography attempts to trace its crucial aspects. Here we will limit ourselves to recounting its most significant moments, starting with the identifying slogan that recurs like a mantra in the genesis of these firms: “Dress well, behave badly”. This ideal and intimately connected lifestyle was born around the 1980s, in England – mainly between Liverpool, Manchester and Aberdeen – where the phenomenon of hooligan clashes in previous years had spread to the point of reaching worrying dimensions even for the central government. The movement took hold on the terraces of local stadiums, i.e. the bleachers, frequented by the notorious hooligans, shaved heads (skinheads) and hard mods, always looking for a confrontation with the police or opposing supporters. Faced with the rampant violence in and outside the stadiums, the police ran for cover, often going so far as to arrest, even massively, young men wearing their team colours and corresponding to these aesthetic canons: shaved heads, Crombie coat and amphibians. There’s a countless number of photos of young skinheads stopped on the street, outside pubs and in the vicinity of stadiums, forced to strip, remove belts, scarves, and coats, even the laces on their boots, undergo personal searches and be taken to police stations. So the hooligan, in order not to be easily identified and to mix with other supporters and be able to continue to follow their team, began to wear “average English man” clothes, a “Sunday sports” type of supporter, rather than a real football one: the Lyle & Scott jumper usually worn by golfers, the Sergio Tacchini or Fila sweatshirt, the Fred Perry polo shirt worn by tennis fans, the C. P. Company Millemiglia coat for motoring fans, the white Diadora or Adidas shoes as those who follow athletics. In the United Kingdom, Adidas were all the rage in all their versions, from the very popular and colourful Gazelles – worn and sported by music and sports stars on every occasion – to the first City Series such as Forest Hills, London etc., while in Italy the all-white shoe culture was all the rage in the stands. A particularly lucky pair of trainers were the Stan Smiths: these also found their origin on the tennis courts, and were the first shoes made entirely of leather. They were designed for Robert Haillet and kept the French tennis player’s name until 1971, the year of his retirement. In 1973, tennis player Stanley Roger Smith and Adolf Dassler met by chance in a Parisian club. From that moment on, thanks to a reciprocal liking, the legend of the shoe symbol par excellence of casualism began. So, moving around in the underground or on intercity trains dressed in this manner allowed people to move between English cities inconspicuously, looking like an ordinary man travelling to watch a tennis match, only to gather with the other members of the firm in front of an enemy pub and seek a clash with opposing supporters. To this day, Casuals culture presents several controversies of its essence which, briefly, can be summarised in three points: the first is the economic paradox of a style that was born from and for the working class, but incorporates elements typical of the bourgeoisie if not of the aristocracy (such as very expensive brands like Burberry, Aquascutum, Stone Island etc.); the second is that of the mingling and influence suffered by one of the most noble sports in the world, without real “supporters”, and in which, on the contrary, silence dominates the scene, namely tennis. The brands worn by the tennis players are the same ones that colour the stadiums of the United Kingdom on Saturdays: Fila shirts or Sergio Tacchini garments, with its typical “white, off-white” colour à la McEnroe, are the most popular. The third and perhaps most important has to do with the genesis of it all, the ultimate purpose for which to be casual: as the years go by, the meticulousness of the casuals in their choice of clothing transforms the cover into a real uniform. The original intent of the casuals’ fans, which was to escape the eyes of the police, becomes by the 1990s the primary cause of their recognition outside the stadium, losing the ultimate purpose of it all.

ADIDAS AND PUNK

The worlds of music and fashion changed forever in the summer of 1977. On both sides of the Atlantic, London and New York were teetering on the brink of socio-economic collapse at the same time: while the British capital was on its knees being battered by constant IRA attacks and Margaret Thatcher was about to exercise the Iron Fist Law, New York was on the brink of chaos, grappling with long series of murders, constant blackouts, shop raids. Suddenly, the atmosphere of economic prosperity and optimism of the 1970s, the long-haired hippies and tawdry discos with dance music no longer held any fascination for the young, who, frightened by the absence of a concrete future, were blowing up social and aesthetic codes. Punk had arrived: a social reaction against capitalism and conformism without precedent and of exceptional proportions, redefining an entire generation of disgruntled young people. Within a few weeks, a dozen seminal punk albums came out, one after the other. London had the Clash, the Damned and the Sex Pistols, while in New York the innovative and pioneering music of Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers and the Ramones was spreading. And, of course, as punk became the soundtrack of a dissatisfied generation, its look became its uniform. In London, punk had an outrageous look: the more brazen, shocking, and disturbing the clothing, the better. PVC and S&M paraphernalia became the norm and the makeup for girls radically changed from coloured disco glitter to glossy, fierce black war paint. Meanwhile, tight jeans and bondage straps, collars, torn shirts and pins forced men to break gender distinctions and social rules. On their feet were Dr Martens, the shoes of Sid Vicious and the Who. They were the first to wear Dr Martens 1460s. Pete Townshend, founder of the band, made them his favourite footwear. In the song ‘Uniforms (Corp d’Esprit)’, the band talks about the famous boots made in England, singing “Wear your braces round your seat / Doctor Martens on your feet / Keep your barnet very neat / For credibility on street”. In the 1980s, punks, who often only used Converse or Creeper as an alternative, made Dr. Martens their official footwear, clearly visible in ’82 on singer Joe Strummer’s feet in the video for “Rock The Casbah”, as well as on Sid Vicious, the Rolling Stones or the Damned. Clothes, in fact, are never limited to being only clothes to be worn, but can always also be traced back to an image of the self that one wants to offer to the outside world; that is, they express a message, a code, a subjective and objective value. In this sense, such outrageous clothes can deny or disturb a normalised social context from the point of view of coherence and rationality, like a practice that disrupts an ordered thing and overturns the model on which it rests. One takes an object that everyone has, uses or wears (be it a t-shirt or a safety pin) and tears it up, overturns it. In this subversive viewpoint, of creating a different and alternative imagery, there was no room for the three-striped brand.

ADIDAS AND SKINHEADS

This brings us to the most important part of the article: to this day, it is widely believed that wearing Adidas – mostly Samba – is synonymous with belonging to the skinhead subculture. Even Wikipedia mentions this garment in the identifying paraphernalia of the modern skinhead! Beyond the current evaluations on the comeback of this model and the invasion of the modern market (mainly due to the commercial operation of Bella Hadid, the American supermodel with 56 million followers who – in the summer of 2022 – flaunted this garment on several occasions and with multiple provocative combinations, gaining enormous popularity among young people and influencing other stars such as Hailey Beiber and Kate Moss), and remaining in the underground movement, outside of mainstream fashion, today we all associate Samba’s with skinheads. But this only happens in modern times! In fact, one must differentiate between two moments of the skinhead cult: the first phase, better known as Spirit of ’69, and a second more recent one. When the skinhead cult was born, nobody wore Adidas, quite the contrary! As Flavio Frezza correctly analyses in his Italia Skins: “By 1969 the skin subculture was a different thing from the mod one. The outward appearance was codified – though of course it had not ceased to evolve – and the term skinhead had become established. […] Hair was short, sometimes very short but not to the point of zero. The boots worn were initially work or army boots, with eight or ten holes, preferably with a steel toe, which was particularly useful in fights and assaults: only later did the more comfortable Dr. Martens become popular. Among the shirt models in vogue at that time, button-downs with checks or stripes or white, especially from the Ben Sherman brand, prevailed. Other distinguishing features were Fred Perry brand tennis polo shirts and narrow braces”. It was ultimately a hard, clean-cut look, the essence of which could be summed up in the motto “dress hard, dress smart”. In these early years, being a skinhead allowed a kind of freedom on the way of dressing (between t-shirts or shirts, braces worn or not, Crombie or Harrington style coat) but was not transgressive on shoes: all the guys who belonged to skins crews wore boots on their feet. In the last part of his “Spirit of ’69 – the skinhead bible”, George Marshall alphabetises a list where he summarises in order all the identifying codes of the skinhead cult, going from the Chelsea cut to the Monkey boots, up to the tattoos and the colour of the braces. He mentions nothing about the Samba (even though they already existed, given that their creation dates back to 1949, with modernisation in ’54 and massive introduction on the market around ’63-’64) and he does not speak in any way of Adidas stuff. In his second book, also a reference for the international skinhead movement, again George Marshall writes about Adidas wearers, using derogatory tones, that: “We were still most definitely a bootboys crew and still wore DMs, the most important part of the bootboy uniform. There were others in different towns who called themselves bootboys, but they didn’t look the part in desert boots, Adidas trainers, flared Levi’s, and leather jackets.”. Yet, photos of skinheads in the 1990s dressed in Adidas, from t-shirt to shoes, fill up the archives. Indeed, in its second wave, known as the “revival period” and corresponding to the second half of the 1980s, the skinhead style also changed and evolved. Particularly by adopting elements from the military world, we find the inclusion in the clothing of items such as the aviator bomber jacket, the wide camouflage trousers with pockets and embroidered patches, which take space away from the elegant Crombie, braces and shiny boots. In the same period, the skin cult landed overseas, in the States, where it spread, fuelled by fundamental bands of the international Oi! scene such as Warzone, Agnostic Front, Doug & the Slugz, etc.
In the same period, the skin cult also spread widely in Europe, arriving in Italy (on this subject I recommend Flavio Frezza’s already cited book Italia Skins: notes and testimonies on the skinhead scene from the mid-1980s), Spain and France.

It is extremely difficult to establish what influenced what, whether the chicken or the egg was born first, but in order to understand why the Adidas brand was so massively adopted by the second skinhead wave, we have to consider a few factors, which I will try to enucleate: firstly, in the USA the (typical) military style intersects with the skinhead scene from Britain, generating what later became known as American Oi! hardcore. Some key members of the scene, such as Raymond Raybeez Barbieri were even veterans of the U.S. Army. Others, as Miret himself recounts, lived in squatted houses in the suburbs and ghettos of the big cities, among rats and beggars. They did not have the financial means to dress in Ben Sherman or Fred Perry brands, and therefore began to prefer – or to “make do with” – varicoloured jeans and self-made t-shirts, amphibious boots salvaged from the draft or clothing stolen from shops (hence of commercial brands such as Adidas). Secondly, exclusively in European countries, the military style became necessary at times, due to the escalation of gang wars. Although they had always existed within the skinhead cult – often between rival gangs and for territorial reasons – they took on greater importance during the revival period, because they were politically connoted. In other words, redskins and Nazi bonheads literally started to wage war against each other, with ambushes, fights, assaults on landmarks and murders. Clothing inevitably reflects these dynamics and is affected. The shirt and braces gave way to more comfortable jeans and t-shirts, even acetate tracksuits (on the subject of how to dress and procure clothing, I recommend watching “Antifa Nazi Hunters” – Chasseur de Nazi – sub.it.avi, a documentary available on YouTube).
Furthermore, as a third factor, there is the mixture that skinheads and ultras (or hooligans in the UK) had in the 1980s. An analysis that must be made distinctly: in the ’80s in Europe, the ultras phenomenon went through perhaps its most impressive phase, becoming what it still means for many to be ultras; oceanic journeys, drums and smoke bombs to colour, group memberships and the search for confrontation with the opponent. Allow me to go further: these methods seem to work, also due to the inability of the repressive forces to understand and foresee the phenomenon. It is in this period that historic and crucial episodes (for better or for worse) of the European ultras movement are recorded, for the quantity of masses mobilised and for the level of violence. The 1980s also pervaded the curves in their clothing. You don’t have to be a skinhead to represent the hardcore side of the supporters: other subcultures, with their own stylistic characteristics, invaded the bleachers and equally satisfied the young ones (mods, freaks, teddy boys, etc). In England, on the other hand, we see the first wave of Casualism, as mentioned above, thanks to which the young skins who still frequent the terraces realise that by “softening” their style, they can continue to frequent the corners despite the war on hooliganism imposed by Margaret Thatcher’s Football Spectacular Act (on this topic I recommend reading Indro Pajaro’s article in the web magazine Ultimo Uomo https://www.ultimouomo.com/margaret-thatcher-hooligans). English casualism “imposes” the colourful and flashy Adidas shoes. Perhaps too much for skins, accustomed to the shiny black of the boot. Samba trainers would seem to be the right compromise. Lastly, as a fourth and final element, we must remember the mixture that the skin cult, with the passing of time, undergoes together with other cultural and musical phenomena: that of Black Music, from which it is generated and to which it is forever linked, and that with ’90s hardcore punk. In the first case we have already analysed the presence of the three-striped brand, in the second case something needs to be added. Because – if it is true that the ’82 punks wore ripped black jeans, pinned studs and big Dr.Martens boots – the hardcore ’90s introduced clothing from exquisitely American and typically sporty brands, revolutionising – in this sense – the purely punk conception of being “alternative”.  Champion sweatshirts, Converse t-shirts, Vans checkered shirts made their entrance onto the punk scene. With them also Nike, Reebok and Adidas tracksuits.  All those – skinheads for many years – whom I asked why they wore Samba and where they thought this choice came from, whether it was influenced by something or not, answered differently. But undoubtedly the percentages go in favour of the “connection to the stadium” reason. Some answered that it was common to see youngsters dancing to soul and black music at rallies and mod nights wearing low-slung 1461 amphibians or shiny Adidas with elegant designs such as Samba or Beckenbauer or Munchen. Many, on the other hand, put the reason down to the link with casual culture, the frequenting of the bleachers and a non-need to protect themselves in case of assaults and fights (objectively, as the years passed, less and less frequent within the skinhead and ultras scene). In the 1990s, many fans began to make casualism a real cult, and frequenting the terraces meant being influenced by this style.

Whatever the reason why a commercial brand has been able to establish itself so predominantly within the style of a niche subculture, allow me a concluding thought: Adidas is a brand as well as one of the largest multinationals on the planet, one of the many drivers of today’s global economy, a company with thousands of employees, businesses, and industrial locations all over the planet. Reasons that lead us to always look at it with a critical eye and a spirit of protest, since the logic behind its business is that of capital: accumulation of wealth, exploitation of the workforce, cuts in workers’ rights, pollution of the planet, and countless other iniquities. At the same time, it is pointless to deny that, at least in the past, Adidas has been approached with ‘left-wing’ ideas: this is because of its sponsorship of communist, socialist, openly anti-US countries (from the GDR, via Cuba, Venezuela, the Soviet Union itself until 1991 and others) and in years when other multinationals preferred to avoid it. Even in more recent times, Adidas has taken public positions on certain social issues such as civil rights, environmental protection, the inclusiveness of disabled people, the fight against racial discrimination on and off the playing field, even on the Israel-Palestine issue. But it remains a multinational – the largest sportswear manufacturer in Europe and the second largest in the world – and scepticism is in order because any kind of “washing” is always functional to capital, to its sales aimed at establishing itself in other virgin market slices. The anti-capitalist critique must underlie any reasoning on the style of our subcultures. So, it simply remains a brand capable of (with a certain design line) making the eyes of the kids shine – kids who, aware of the infinite contradictions that this economic system imposes on us, wear Adidas just for standing, not for running.

Article by Andre Ardecore

This article is an unedited piece written by Andre Ardecore for Radio Punk, the result of months of research and work. Its sharing is free but if you would like to republish or quote it write to us at info@radiopunk.it

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