Been a while since you heard from us, hasn’t it? Last December, we celebrated what had been an exceptionally productive year for Creases Like Knives. Then, as if to undermine any hopes we’d become a ‘proper’, ‘professional’, or regular publication, we only gave you one article in the whole first four months of 2024. The truth is precisely this: we aren’t professionals, nobody’s paying us, and we just happened to have lots on our plate lately. One thing’s for sure: Creases Like Knives isn’t ceasing operations – I think in some form we’ll always be around. But our levels of activity will vary, depending on what else life throws at us. In this sense, apologies to the good folks from Common People, Primator Crew, Une Vie Pour Rien, Hellnation and Ballroom Blitz Records who sent us most of the albums reviewed here – we made some of them wait for ages. All reviews by me this time.
Matt Crombieboy
Tag: Zanzara Oi
CROPHEAD RECORD ROUNDUP #8
Various: Zombie Rock – A Worldwide Tribute to Nabat LP
(Timebomb)
This slab of wax came out in the middle of the lockdown. Things weren’t looking good for Vecchio Son, the rehearsal space and music venue in Bologna run by none less than Steno, the Italian granddaddy of Oi who’s been singing in Nabat since 1979. It seemed that the rent could no longer be paid and Steno & Co. would be forced out. But Steno isn’t one to die on his knees, so he organised all kinds of fundraising campaigns to keep this important venue open. I’m not actually sure right now if part of the proceeds of this compilation were going to said cause, but I seem to remember so.
In any case, it’s only appropriate that this is an international tribute. Nabat are not just a local band, after all – their incredibly powerful Oi and borderline-hardcore punk was internationally influential and continues to be so today: in the 80s, you were as likely to see their name printed in British skinzines (which were notoriously insular) as on homemade patches worn by skins in Poland. Behold, for example, this picture sent to me by an old skinhead from the southern Polish industrial town of Sosnowiec. “A friend made this patch for me”, he tells me, “and I wore it on my camouflage army jacket. That was before I started wearing a denim jacket, so definitely before 1987”.
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