In the late 70's, the UK was mired in a stew of government corruption, suburban and urban squalor, social upheaval, youth riots, inflation, and faced with a dire economic recession in general. It's not surprising this bleak environment produced what is, effectively, "hardcore" as we now know it. The lyrics were usually politically-charged, or at least irreverent and nihilist to some degree.

The sound was easy enough to pin down: you had that simple booming bass, the down-stroked razorblade barre-chord attack, and occasionally some sludgy doom-metal on top of manic rhythmic tempos. The punks wanted anything other than the Stones-influenced pub-rock that was so prevalent at the time. These kids loved the energy of the new standardized punk sound of the Sex Pistols and the Damned, but evidently found it hard to ignore the Deep Purple, Sabbath and Hawkwind influences they grew up with.

Yes, the English punks represented on The United Kingdom of Punk: The Hardcore Years really did have something to be pissed about: their anger, anti-government stance, and true fuck-all rage was-- at least for a while-- an acceptable surrogate for anything resembling talent. It certainly wasn't enduring music that lent itself to a long, Rolling Stones-like legacy.

Most of these bands could have learned a thing or two from the Pistols: make one or two earth-shaking albums, then throw it all away before you become a redundant self-parody. In fact, every time one of these bands even hinted at detouring down any kind of a careerist path, they soon found themselves on a road to nowhere. Major labels would usually give these bands one shot at becoming the next Clash or Sex Pistols (this of course would never happen) before dumping their poor punk asses back on whatever suburban curbside they sprung from.

The Exploited are quite possibly the best known of all the bands on this compilation. Like most UK punk outfits, the Exploited were as politically- conscious as they were fashion-conscious. They were spawned from Edinburgh, and in fact, most of these bands found their origins in tiny, lower middle class suburbs like Sheffield-- far, far away from the thriving artsy hub of Manchester and commercial buzz of London.

Although fairly inconsistent as a whole, the early stages of The Hardcore Years scorches, friend. The mighty "Paranoid"-like opening chords of the Business' rip-roaring "Harry May" kicks things off with some gutsy Sabbath- on- methedrine punk. Then, immediately cut to the glorious nihilistic rants about the death of English society on Vice Squad's Slits and X-Ray Spex-fueled "Last Rockers." Our friends the Exploited even turn in a fine, appropriately nasty rendition of a minor classic of sorts, "Dead Cities."

Unfortunately, though, the compilation does hit a few snags. We're subjected to the lame Bad Company-aping gorilla-rock of the Angelic Upstarts and their hyperbolic song, "The Murder of Liddle Towers." Um, it's about some poor bloke being wasted by the pigs, or something. Their take on punk is conventional blues-rawk guitar soloing, not to mention a blatant Who rip-off section smack-dab in the middle of the song. The vastly overrated GBH also turns in a typically boring performance, smacking of hardcore manque and one-dimensional punk schtick on "City Baby Attacked by Rats."

Luckily, though, the humor section of the album soon kicks in with the ridiculous Anti-Nowhere League's laugh-riot, "I Hate People," ("And they hate me!" merrily retorteth a chorus of punks in the background). Peter and the Test Tube Babies, evoking the Lurkers or Eddie and the Hot Rods, do a comical rant against pedestrian pub-rock mentality, "Banned from the Pubs."

Then, suddenly, you're hit with by far the catchiest three-chord wonder on the entire album from the Adicts. Musically, they're close cousins of the Buzzcocks and the Jam, and not really related to the Pistols at all; fashion-wise, instead of leather and spikes, they opted for the "Clockwork Orange" look. "Chinese Takeaway," with its unrelenting monster hook, checks in with a refreshingly apolitical stance on the lack of good fast food in Britain. It could easily have influenced the Vapors' "Turning Japanese."

Trash-metal outfit Chaos UK, with their Godzilla-voiced vocal overkill, and the equally un-punk Discharge exhibit exactly why no one except tasteless pansies like Metallica and a handful of other cappuccino-sipping metal-wimps claim to give a damn about these bands' forgettable legacies. Rounding out the compilation is some pretty inessential punk filler, the blatant Dead Boys posturing of the Varukers' "Nowhere to Go," and Disorder's "Driller Killer," a track that presages the sound of 80's dick-wagging dude-metal a la Judas Priest.

Unfortunately, the hardline political stance of bands like the Exploited weren't quite as influential as their carefully-chosen squatter attire and porcupine-quill hairdos. They certainly provided the fashion blueprint for many an American crustie and pseudo-punk-- at least until said young punks were forced to move out of their parents' lavish suburban homes and get jobs at Big Six accounting firms.

Let's face it, in the sadly complacent consumer-swamped society we live in, the sort of hardcore punk represented by this mostly worthwhile and relevant compilation is as dead as Elvis' bloated corpse. Hell, you can't even sleep in parks or successfully squat in New York anymore. As for the vanguard of today's "hardcore" punks, we're given little more than the feeble neo-punk posturing of Rancid and the junior high revolutionary posing of laughable corporate whores Rage Against the Machine.

Real revolution? Why even bother? After all, arenas full of screaming prepubescent brats, blow jobs from 14-year old groupies, and gigantic royalty checks from gigantic record labels yield more palpable and gratifying results than stubborn allegiance to some zany idealistic political message.

With that said, I'm off to my militant Maoist neighbor Jerry's apartment. There, we'll listen to The Hardcore Years, plan future political uprisings, and devise novel strategies to incite rampant class warfare-- a struggle that will eventually result in the overthrow of the American political system as we know it. Plus, I hear he's got a wicked new bong from Mexico. The seeds of the new revolution will soon be sown!

-Michael Sandlin