Given their status as the high-priests of moral correctitude, it’s strange to think that a key influence on vocalist Ian MacKaye came from the far-right loudmouth Ted Nugent. You Fail Me, the New Englanders’ fifth album, is a work of astounding brutality from a band with the musical chops required to drive their needles purposefully into the red.

punk albums every music fan should own - The Telegraph 50 punk albums every music fan should own - The Telegraph

With a history of drug addiction and general punk rock mayhem, LA’s Fidlar – F___ It Dog, Life’s A Risk – are in one way a throwback to the time when the ‘SoCal’ scene was feral and dangerous. Although at the time a part-time band from Los Angeles, and a second-tier one at that, their apparently minor third album relit the pilot light on a scene that had shrunk to almost nothing. Unluckily for them, the elevation of Refused to punk rock’s hall of fame occurred after the group had disbanded. Viewed with suspicion by their big city peers – a little too suburban, a bit too late to the party – as heard on Rattus Norvegicus, their debut album, The Stranglers are a menacing force.Each night before taking to the stage The Interrupters prepare for their show by watching the British film Dance Craze. Before "White Wedding" and the rest of that crap, Billy Idol was the charismatic frontman for the catchiest band on the London scene. Green Day recently caused mayhem when they played Dookie front to back at an intimate Vegas show ahead of their headlining slot at When We Were Young. Suffer was the band’s first album for five years – its predecessor had sold in the hundreds – and their singer, Greg Graffin, was a full-time student at UCLA (today he is a lecturer in evolution at Cornell University).

The Best Punk Album In The WorldEver! 2 by Various Artists The Best Punk Album In The WorldEver! 2 by Various Artists

As it turned out, Rob Cavallo’s figures were wrong; by the time the cash registers had stopped ringing up copies of Green Day’s latest album, the Oakland trio’s one true masterpiece, American Idiot had sold more than fourteen million copies. With the release of Frankenchrist, the third album from the Dead Kennedys, the US authorities decided they’d had just about enough of the country’s most provocative punk band. The familiar complaint that the contribution to British punk rock of The Damned has been undervalued is one to which the Buzzcocks might reply, ‘Well, what do we get? New recruit Travis Barker added seriousness to their playing with his breakneck speed, which balanced out their crude humor and set them apart.A messy and costly affair, it is not unreasonable to believe that the state jeapordised the liberty of an independent band lacking in corporate muscle simply because it could. In time, Epitaph Records would become the most important imprint in the history of punk, with millions of sales to its credit, but to this day Suffer remains its most important release. R. Giger’s painting Penis Landscape in the inner sleeve, the group were charged with violating the Californian penal code.