U.K. Subs

The U.K. Subs (short for Subversives, thanks) are burly, sweat-stained veterans of the black-and-white-poster era of ’70s UK punk bands. And though the Subs’ early songs about nuclear warheads date them to the Cold War, the paranoid rants about intelligence agencies infiltrating our midst are pretty much spot-on for Ashcroft’s America. Other BBC favorites, including the Damned, the Buzzcocks and even the Fall may be reconciling to reclaim their sound from American upstarts, but these Subs are one of the few first-wave bands that never properly went away.