‘All your Labor votes bought yas; drones in the sky, Dead end culture – circles like a fucken vulture, Mad Max paying off speeding fines, It’s less like prison, more like being in fucken primary school for the rest of your life’ (Australienation)

Punter’s 2023 self-titled debut album was a raucous whirlwind.  And yet beneath this rollicking exterior, there was an uncompromising dissection of the social inequity that was riven through Australia’s pandemic response, its privileging of corporate interests while punitively punishing already marginalised communities.

Now, of course, we were all told that that our communal efforts to fight the pandemic would herald a rebirth of the social democratic values that have been vanquished over the past forty years.  Yeah, right.  The failed economic ‘common sense’ has not only endured but become even further embedded, despite the decaying public services and poverty ravaged lives in clear view.  And Australienation provides us with the perfect soundtrack to this spiralling descent.

The Melbourne band continue to unleash bracingly angry punk that is injected with a brazen rock’n’roll swagger, laced with killer melodies, and delivered with a bristling, at times, surprisingly burly hardcore intensity.  A further dimension is Punter’s ability to deftly integrate a myriad of musical inspirations.  Bagpipes, Hammond organ, piano, and saxophone, all flare up to rich effect throughout the album.  Similarly, the backing vocals introduce swells of melodic layering and detailing in quite unexpected ways.  There really is some terrific ‘ooohing’.

Meanwhile, the lead vocals sweep from densely rhythmic, sarcasm saturated snarls to howls of despair, and even occasionally carry a hint of melody.  They drip with disdain and no little black humour as they dive into the landscape of contemporary Australia, from the soul sapping suburbs of Turflayer (‘Please tell me your opinion on the immigrants and gays’) to the blazing outback on No Normal (‘They’re gonna smoke us all out in the end’), by way of the technological hollowing-out of life on Rise Of The Technocrat (‘You wouldn’t shoot up at the dinner, so how’s about some eye contact?’), and the sheer existential dread of Ask The Community (‘How can we hope to create change when we can’t even be fucked with the washing of the dishes?’).

The title track is a stormer but there so many great moments.  Ask The Community’s bewildered monologue, the vibrantly layered finale to The Golden Hour, the contagious chorus of Purgatory Is The Pub, and the enraged, organ fuelled diatribe that concludes Chinstroker to flag but a few that will make sure you keep coming back.  We may be heading headlong into the abyss but Punter are determined to make sure that we do so with our eyes wide open and a tune in our hearts.