Razorblade

Punk is a fast, abrasive, and minimalist form of rock music built around short songs, stripped-down instrumentation, and confrontational, anti-establishment lyrics. It emphasizes DIY ethics, raw energy, and immediacy over virtuosity, often featuring distorted guitars, shouted or sneered vocals, and simple, catchy melodies. Typical songs run 1–3 minutes, sit around 140–200 BPM, use power chords and basic progressions (often I–IV–V), and favor live, unpolished production. Beyond sound, punk is a cultural movement encompassing zines, independent labels, political activism, and a fashion vocabulary of ripped clothes, leather, and safety pins.

Skinhead Oi (often shortened to Oi!) is a blunt, chant‑driven strain of British punk that crystallized around the late 1970s skinhead and working‑class youth scenes. Musically it marries first‑wave punk’s power‑chord attack to pub‑rock directness, terrace‑style football chants, and barked gang vocals, producing anthems about work, boredom, loyalty, and life on the estate. Coined and popularized by journalist Garry Bushell after the Cockney Rejects’ on‑stage “Oi!” interjections, the style aimed to reunite punks and skinheads around unfussy “street” music. While far‑right groups later tried to co‑opt parts of the scene, many cornerstone Oi! bands and subsequent skinhead factions (e.g., SHARP/RASH) were explicitly anti‑racist; today Oi! persists globally, with periodic revivals and fresh local inflections.