Discharger
Firing off conflagratory ruckuses are Haymaker's ringleader Tim S. and confreres of infamous repute. "Don't let punk and skinhead gigs be fucked up 'cause of politics / So leave your fucking politics at home." An armored Oi! anthem that cudgels wisdom as sound in 2026 as when it first jumped up from 2015 LP Until We Die's slashy grooves.
Videos: "Politics" (live) Live at Vault 27 in Barnsley, 9/13/2026
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Eastside Dogs / Bootboys
Effectively slams down the uni-dimensional spleneticism that once fueled "Punk-Bashing Boogie." To paraphrase Nick Tosches, nothing brings mates of diverse stripes together like placing a chord barrage betwixt them.
Video: "Punx and Skins Unity Worldwide"
Instagram (Eastside Dogs)
Facebook (Bootboys)
Los Problemas
Oi!, Punk, Streetcore -- all roads lead to Rock'n'Roll. And it's in the neon night, when purpose, aimlessness, kicks, and ugly dangers thrive equally -- and bottles are uncapped -- that the echo of boots stomping on macadam smacks upside brick walls and slices carbonated ether.
Video: "Together Drinking on the Streets"
Haymaker and the rebel tradition
An examination of Rock'n'Roll's 1950s's origin points up the style's innate foreigness from divisive hate agendas.
Rock'n'roll was born from a multiplicity of racial and cultural idioms, including R&B, Hillbilly Country, Blues, Bluegrass, and Gospel. Proudly embracing that taboo diversity, it thrust its middle finger into the aghast mug of stilted, button-down propriety. (I speak here of the raw, original item, and not subsequent, commercially-cultivated simulacra.)
Remember that among rhetorical brickbats hurled at the burgeoning form by Officialdom were non-veiled racial ones like "jungle music." The White Citizens Council in Birmingham decried the "race-mixing" potential of the upstart sound's "raw, savage tone."
Among many other things, that attitude was stupidly intolerant. It's more than passing ironic, then, that some within the 2026 Rock'n'Roll community, having fallen for lazy mainstream journalists' kneejerk stereotyping of skinhead Oi! rockers, register equally high on the intolerance meter.
Meet the current bigot. Same as the old bigot.
For the uninitiated: One account holds that the skinhead movement was birthed in the 1960s, when ska-nodding Jamaican Rude Boys immigrated to England and blended with Rock'n'Roll-loving white working-class youth.
That multi-racial, populist upswell was later infiltrated by racists, sadly, and has since been falsely depicted by corporate media as institutionally hateful, malicious, and imbecilic. But neo-nazi dimwits were a miserable subset -- far away from the entirety and the punchclock sect's true essence.
But for fake-news wretches to actually do research and report complexities? Too much work, and unproductive to their preferred cultural narrative. Easier to unthinkingly crank out pre-formulated prejudices.
Haymaker are apolitical descendents of original skinheads. But, angry products of this crisper time, they bludgeon with two-fisted Punk.
The group rallies like-minded, workaday masses to boots-and-braces unity, and appeal to upholding unique cultural identity. ("You're a working man and you are proud of it / You get blamed for whatever, but you don't give a shit!," declares Tim Steinfort in a robust reading of Bohse Onkelz's 1986 "Stolz"/"Pride.")
Haymaker's shoutalong firebombs doubtlessly engender boulevard-marching, scalped choruses with fists thrust aloft. One hears a stomp battalion nearing.
Race-hate is entirely irrelevant; it doesn't even enter into the calloused-hands equation.
"Why do I have to put 'I hate racism' on my jacket," Steinfort once asked. "Every normal human being is against racism. I think also everybody knows that I'm not a racist...I say to left-wing extremists: 'Fuck you!' Because, of course I hate Nazis, but I hate left-wing extremists as well. And maybe more. And do you know why?
"Because, constantly, you're accusing me of being a racist. Well, you know I'm not. Instead of standing up, saying 'I know Tim, you can say what you want, but he's definitely not a racist.' Instead of that, you stay away from me, because of what other people think. Well, fuck you...
"Of course, when people wear Swastikas or 'White Power,' okay - get 'em the fuck outta here!"
Individuals like Tim thinking for themselves and rebelling against conventional judgements is entirely in the spirit that fired our music to begin with.
Which is a wordy manner of saying: Pretty fuckin' Rock'n'Roll.
Tim Steinfort on being unpolitical (9:46)
Videos: "Hooligan" "Haircut" "Proud" "Skinhead"
Squelette
Within night clouds overhead brews a wicked, lightning-streaked torrent. Oi! street soldiers, inured by city impersonality and with splenetic notes jarring in hearts, strike back instinctively at pretty much everyone and everything.
Video: "Soir d'Orage"
Haymaker
"Even an angel can become a hooligan!" is the angry/happy/don't-much-care notion at the heart of skinhead Oi! power-source Haymaker's anthem for neer-do-wells aprowl for blistering, splintering, smash-skull bacchanalia. Knuckles are no friends of dentistry. "'Cause when we drink too much, we all become a fool again!"
Video: "Hooligan"
Stomper 98
s/t
(598 Records)
Righteous indignation swings knuckles. Mobs of shop-floor yobs, heads shaved and boots laced tightly, storm down boulevards as impassioned, anthemic Oi! pounds out its proclamations. This is the good fight, the crusade of the average man whose labors build things and turn economic gears. And barre chords bruise
(Misapprehensions fester in benighted quarters. This statement from the band's website slices away shit: "Stomper 98 see themselves as a working-class Skinhead band and sing about what's happening around them. We don't care about your skin color or your background. There's no room for racists or fascists here.")
Recommended: "Der Stachel im Arsch," "Erkennst Du dich Weider," "Auf Die Stimmen Einer Generation," "Deutschland im Chaos," "Alle Gegen Alle, Jeder Gagen Jeden," "25 Jahre," "Alex - Schatten der Nacht," "So Lange Her," "Achtundneunzig Nächte"
Videos: "Der Stachel im Arsch" "Erkennst Du dich Weider" "Alle Gegen Alle, Jeder Gagen Jeden" "Schatten der Nacht"
The Flame 69
s/t EP
(Guns of Brixton Records)
It wasn't the 400 who birthed the Rock'n'Roll we love. Men who worked with their hands made music that gave them expression and release. Just so, The Flame 69 shout of regular people's pains and resoluteness. Don't look for this principled storm to top corporate charts; it's too real.
Recommended: "We Only Have Time," "Sons of the Working Class," "The Skinheads," "Voices From the Sky"
Video: "Voices From the Sky" "The Skinheads"
