The Best Album by Punk’s 15 Biggest Artists

Punk rock has always been about expressing aggression and attitude as much as it is about the music.

But those lines aren’t so easily defined. On the surface, bands that arrived during the genre’s early years had in common the sneers, a limited number of guitar chords and shared animosity toward anyone with authority. But beyond that, the threads connecting Sex Pistols, Television and Bad Brains are thin at best.

Like all great music, punk comes in many shades — from fist-flying hardcore to radio-approved pop hooks, rock ‘n’ roll history-covering virtuosity to rudimentary instrument bashing. Raw, polished, personal, universal — the best punk rock finds reason to exist; it matters because it sounds like it matters. Not since rock ‘n’ roll started making waves in the 1950s had music been played with such purpose.

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The below list of the Best Album by Punk’s 15 Biggest Artists goes back to 1970, when the initial records of the genre began to separate from the previous decade’s garage rock, and stops in the mid-’90s, when a new generation of snotty kids with guitars started applying their experiences to the music’s core foundations.

The best of these acts discovered their voices within the structures they broke down; one thing you can say about the music made during punk’s golden period in the late ’70s and early ’80s is that not much else sounded like it in the clubs, on the radio or television, when, during rare offerings, they were invited to share their music. The albums below represent the best of the best.