Punk Blues
Located in 2 routes
Punk Blues strips blues and roots rock down to menace, repetition and distortion: one-chord vamps, slide guitar abuse, primitive drums, shouting, sleaze, gospel tension and lyrics that feel closer to possession than virtuosity. It rejects polished blues-rock soloing in favor of punk damage and trance. The style is blues as a haunted garage ritual, often nasty, funny, sexual, minimal and physically loud.
History
The Cramps and The Gun Club connected punk to rockabilly, blues and swamp myth, while The Gories, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Flat Duo Jets, The Oblivians and Bob Log III pushed the sound into trashy underground blues-punk. The White Stripes and The Black Keys brought simplified garage blues to wider audiences, though the underground version stayed rougher and stranger. Punk blues persists because blues riffs survive almost any level of distortion.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- AllMusic punk blues and psychobilly-adjacent overviews
- garage-blues histories
- artist discographies
- Crypt Records histories