GBH

Perennially maligned by younger punks for not knowing when to snip off their spikes, Birmingham, England’s GBH has the kind of authority that heavy bands of any generation should envy. Although the band has been accused for years of sounding generic, it bears the rare distinction of having been innovative in the first place. It was among the first to forge the inevitable alloy of punk and metal that will plague us well into this century. But luckily, in the case of GBH, the results were more punk-palatable than most. The songs are short and sharp, and singer Colin Abrahall bleats like a normal guy (albeit, one who’s really confused and pissed) rather than employing phlegm-gargling theatrics. To ears callused by successive generations of faster-and-harder punk, GBH’s three-chord buzz actually has more in common with the Buzzcocks than with Discharge — and that’s a good thing.