Punk blues fuses the instrumentation and scales of Blues Rock with the rawness and attitude of Punk Rock , while not necessarily adhering to its traditional sound. The merge of Punk ’s rowdy energy with Blues can be traced back to the Proto-Punk and Garage Rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s, with artists such as Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and The Modern Lovers all having experimented with pushing the kinetic boundaries of blues rock.
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Punk blues fuses the instrumentation and scales of Blues Rock with the rawness and attitude of Punk Rock , while not necessarily adhering to its traditional sound. The merge of Punk ’s rowdy energy with Blues can be traced back to the Proto-Punk and Garage Rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s, with artists such as Captain Beefheart, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges and The Modern Lovers all having experimented with pushing the kinetic boundaries of blues rock.
Punk blues first emerged as a genre in the early 1980s, split into two regional scenes. In the United States, the genre was more sonically akin to conventional punk rock, specifically Psychobilly (The Gun Club and The Cramps) and Garage Punk (The Gories and Pussy Galore). Meanwhile, in Australia, a band known as The Birthday Party took the concept of blues-tinged punk music in a more experimental Post-Punk fashion. Other acts in this scene included The Scientists and The Wreckery. The Birthday Party disbanded in 1983 but ex-members Nick Cave and Rowland S. Howard went on to other projects, pursuing the sound of punk and blues with them. Bringing along members from Crime & the City Solution, Howard formed the group These Immortal Souls, a bluesy and melancholic execution on Southern Gothic literature. On the other hand, Cave went on to form Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
Through the mid-1980s and 1990s, under the Bad Seeds name, Cave explored elements of Country , Gospel , Piano Blues and Singer-Songwriter , all while pushing the limits of punk blues. Meanwhile in the 1990s, artists like PJ Harvey and Jon Spencer (of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) took the genre and added an Alternative Rock spin. By the end of the decade, Rowland S. Howard would later release his own solo album, Teenage Snuff Film, following similar musical cues from Nick Cave.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, new artists started to emerge, influenced by blues and punk. The White Stripes, The Deadly Snakes and The Make-Up, for example, started making boisterous blues-inspired songs in the context of the Garage Rock Revival . At the same time, the Australian musician Gareth Liddiard would lead a band known as The Drones, taking the genre and fusing it with touches of Art Rock , Experimental Rock and Post-Rock . Liddiard would continue the group through the 2010s, later forming a new project called Tropical Fuck Storm, blending punk blues with Art Punk , Psychedelic Rock and Noise Rock . During this decade and well into the 2020s, acts like Iceage, Algiers and Bambara would experiment with bluesy chords under a post-punk sound and continue to propel forward what the genre can be.
