LIVE: Slam Dunk South 2026

What’s rarer than a Bank Holiday heatwave? A Slam Dunk lineup this scorching. Slam Dunk South might have seen temperatures high enough to make us regret wearing our black scene gear for our day out, but it would turn into a day of revelations: acts we’d relegated to the

Slam Dunk South 2026

LIVE: The Menzingers @ The Underworld

People debate what constitutes ‘real punk’ all the time, but whatever that intangible quality is, it’s in the air for the Menzingers’ duo of anniversary shows celebrating ten years of ‘Rented World’s release at Camden’s Underworld. Guitars are piled on the balcony, and we wear our pit-hardened dedication on

Top 25 Albums Of The Year

The Menzingers – ‘Some Of It Was True’

There was a time when The Menzingers were the favourite band of people with their finger firmly on the pulse of the punk scene. While that’s still the case to an extent, their output in recent years has shown they have what it takes to cross over and reach

LIVE: Slam Dunk Festival 2023 @ Hatfield Park

Sold-out and stacked with some huge names, 2023 marked the now iconic Slam Dunk’s biggest event to date. Fans sardined in caused plenty of teething problems on the day, but did the music deliver? Silly question, of course it did. Words: Aaron Jackson and Yasmin Brown

Pass Away – ‘Thirty Nine’

By and large, punk has connotations of being an aggressive, reactionary and often political genre of music. Conversely, pop-punk has a reputation of being whiny and overly emotional, lacking the edge of its parent. Recent years, however, have seen a middle ground emerge that’s equally as emotional as it

The Menzingers – ‘From Exile’

It’s hard to think of a better name for ‘From Exile’, the latest release from Scranton, PA’s The Menzingers. The record is a track-for-track acoustic reworking of latest album ‘Hello Exile’, and was completed in lockdown – or exile, if you will.  Recording occurred remotely, with each band member

Top 25 Albums of the Year

The end of a decade: The most important bands of the past 10 years

2019 is rapidly drawing to a close, which means – somehow – the end of a decade is upon us. The alternative scene has provided us with so much value over the past 10 years, so much so that the Punktastic team couldn’t help but take a moment to reflect