Suggestions
Suggestions
Synth-punk drives rock’n’roll and punk energy through synthesizers and drum machines, with automated marching beats and robotic intonation. Suicide, Devo, the Screamers and Chrome are its core names, and most of its innovators have been American. Suicide billed a 1971 show as a “Punk Music Mass” when their line-up still had a drummer and a guitarist, then cut down to Alan Vega’s voice and Martin Rev’s keyboards, cheap synthesizer and drum machine for their 1977 debut. In late-1970s Los Angeles the synthesizer-based Screamers were widely seen as the most popular club band, though they never released a record, and Big Black later pushed the approach toward hardcore aggression, a line that led to Six Finger Satellite and Brainiac in the 1990s.
On their self-titled debut, GOM JABBAR run an original 1989 Game Boy live, four square-wave channels plugged straight into the mixer beside a distorted guitar. Los Angeles artist N8NOFACE fits 1980s and 1990s synthpunk nostalgia into one- and two-minute tracks. UK duo fakeyourdeath put electronic and industrial weight under post-hardcore energy, and Mississippi’s MSPAINT leave guitars out for distorted bass, synth textures and heavy drumming. Head Wound, the Kuwait project of a musician who once played in London synth-punk band Fatherland, makes loud, experimental synth-infused punk.