In neo-punk, rage finds an unlikely ally: Hope, says Sanjoy Narayan

The birth of the genre, in the 1970s, was marked by nihilism. Today, Gen Z doesn’t just want to ‘tear it down’; they are already building alternatives.

When Iggy Pop recommends a band on his BBC Radio 6 Music show, it’s time to stop and listen.

Cover art for the album Love Like Snow by Candy.

The man who turned stage-diving into an art form, and survived both The Stooges and a heroin addiction, doesn’t waste airtime. So when he recently championed the British band High Vis, it felt like benediction by a high priest, confirmation of what those paying attention already knew: that punk is back, and it has never sounded more vital.

It is now something stranger, more ambitious, and infinitely more necessary.

The parallels with the genre’s 1970s origins are almost too obvious. Britain then was a place of soaring unemployment, rampant inflation, and millions of working-class youngsters staring a bleak future in the face. Sex Pistols responded with God Save the Queen (1977) and its snarling promise of “no future”.

Fast-forward to 2024 and the script feels familiar. We have economic anxiety, democratic institutions under strain, and a generation locked out of home ownership, job security or even, in many cases, a good life.

Gen Z has inherited a world literally and metaphorically on fire. The climate crisis, economic precarity and rise of authoritarianism worldwide make their parents’ struggles look innocent by comparison. Yet, unlike the nihilism of the punk of the ’70s, today’s version mixes rage with something unexpected: hope.

These young people don’t just want to tear it down; they’re already building alternatives.

Consider Philadelphia’s Mannequin Pussy, whose 2024 album I Got Heaven careens from dream pop to hardcore, refusing categorisation. It is confrontational without being nihilistic, political without being condescending.

Or take High Vis, the London band that earned Iggy’s endorsement. Their 2024 album Guided Tour shouldn’t work on paper: hardcore punk energy meets baggy Britpop swagger meets house music’s communal ecstasy. Yet that incongruous mash-up works brilliantly.

High Vis have figured out what the best punk rockers have always known: the trick is to channel anger into something that makes people move, think, act. Songs trade mosh-pit vibes one moment, veer into dance-punk territory the next, all while vocalist Graham Sayle turns societal contempt and hopefulness into magnetic choruses.

“Is the price of life too much to bear? / If you can’t see it, is it not there? /

They owe you more than a f***ing living /…

Somewhere in between our hope and fate / Nothing ever comes to those who wait…”

goes the track Mob DLA (the title a play on the UK’s disability living allowance).

DISCORD SERVERS

What makes this neo-punk moment fascinating is its refusal to be preachy.

Genre purists might bristle, but that has always been a sign of vitality. Take Candy, a bi-coastal American band pioneering “hypercore” (metallic hardcore colliding with industrial electronics, ’90s breakbeats and experimental noise). Their 2024 track Love Like Snow manages to be both crushingly heavy and achingly tender, a desperate cry for human connection wrapped in mechanical rhythms. It is advancement, not revival.

Then there is San Diego’s SeeYouSpaceCowboy (sadly disbanded this year) whose music blended theatrical pop-emo with bone-crushing metalcore in ways that recalled the mid-Aughts Myspace era but pushed it somewhere new entirely.

London’s The Chisel, meanwhile, revives British street punk not as museum curators but as contemporary working-class chroniclers, writing anthems that frontman Callum Graham has described as songs “about d***heads, working class people, punching people, getting punched”.

What connects these disparate sounds is punk’s DNA: the DIY ethic, rejection of corporate control, music that channels frustration into kinetic energy.

Whether through Candy’s industrial experiments or pop-punk’s mainstream revival via singer-actor Olivia Rodrigo (check out her duet with Robert Smith, covering Friday I’m in Love, at Glastonbury this year), the core remains intact.

Gen Z gets dismissed as phone-addicted narcissists, coddled snowflakes and nihilistic doomers. Reality paints a different picture. This generation is leading worldwide protests, confronting corruption, inequality and authoritarianism.

The pop-punk revival speaks directly to their anxieties. Amid the pandemic, economic turbulence and climate disasters, they have found in punk’s cynical and aggravated tropes a perfect vessel. It is no accident that the resurgence can be traced to 2020, when artists such as Rodrigo, Yungblud and Pale Waves brought its ethos to mainstream audiences, while underground acts pushed its boundaries further.

Events such as Greece’s annual Punk Against Capitalism (PAC) prove the DIY ethos is alive. These autonomous festivals, organised through mutual aid and voluntary participation, represent collective responses to what PAC organisers call “the daily brutality presented to us as normality”. Old punks and teenagers mosh together, united by the belief that another way is possible.

SOUND AND FURY

As a newcomer, where might one start exploring? High Vis’s Guided Tour and Mannequin Pussy’s I Got Heaven, are essential listening. For maximum intensity, try Candy’s It’s Inside You, Knocked Loose’s You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, or Gouge Away’s Deep Sage, all of which were released in 2024, and push hardcore into new territory. The Chisel’s What A F***ing Nightmare and Bad Cop/Bad Cop’s Lighten Up offer more traditional punk templates rendered with fresh fury.

Perhaps what is most encouraging about this renaissance is its refusal to choose between artistic experimentation and political engagement, accessibility and uncompromising vision, rage and hope. The best of these bands understand that punk was never really about a specific sound; it was about an attitude, a refusal to accept the unacceptable.

This music isn’t about instant gratification. It is about the combined weight of sound and fury.

All of which is to say, when Iggy Pop tells you something important is happening in music, it’s time to listen. The man knows rebellion when he hears it. And right now, this rebellion sounds necessary, vital and alive.

(To write in with feedback, email sanjoy.narayan@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal)