UK punk/oi! band Blitz rather perfectly embody the passionate but brief lifespan of the original oi! movement. It gathered up speed quickly, went fast for a moment, but crashed and burned all too soon. Think about Blitz’s career as an oi! band: they formed in 1980, released a few singles and an album that defined the whole genre, and by 1983 had abandoned their old selves entirely. Quite a few of the original oi! bands had a similar trajectory.

But what an album that debut album, Voice Of A Generation, is. When asked people for their favourite oi! album of all time, this will often be the answer. It will at least be one of the runners up. Blitz may not have been responsible for the best individual oi! tracks among the original bands – although their best moments will give anyone a run for their money – but the best original oi! era album? Few contenders.

Most CD re-releases come with the essential single tracks in addition to the album itself, so I’ll talk about those as well in this text. This is the format in which I got to know the album some twenty years ago, when I first bought it. That truly is the ultimate package: Voice Of A Generation and the singles from 1981-1982. For vinyl fans, Radiation Records’ single and demo collection Time Bomb is an absolutely essential companion to the album itself. No punk and oi! collection is complete without these; I will not be listening to counterarguments.

In so many ways, Voice Of A Generation crystallizes everything oi! was about, and still is. It’s tough as nails, uncompromising, full of attitude and utterly disillusioned with ideologies and politics. It’s the voice of the disillusioned youth on the streets, with the young factory worker or office drone getting a horizonless future of menial work shoved down his throat. It’s not so much for this or that as it is against everything and anything any authority promises, seeing behind the hollow promises. But it’s not nihilistic in the same way as, say, Sex Pistols were. Yes, both see the world and society for how rotten they are, but ultimately, where Sex Pistols could see no way out except a heroin needle – at least as far as Sid Vicious was concerned – Blitz defiantly declare a fight and refuse to bow down. We drink the beer while you hold the glass!

Musically, Blitz’s lethal combination of catchy singalong choruses, hard riffs, energetic bass lines and snarling vocals laid a blueprint for oi! perhaps better than any of the other early oi! bands with the exception of early The 4-Skins. Take for example some of the single tracks such as Razors In The Night with its oi! oi! oi! chorus that hundreds of bands have copied since, Someone’s Gonna Die’s brutally matter-of-fact description of street violence, Fight To Live’s boisterous declaration of intent – “‘Cause we fight to live, we live to fight!” – this is the mother’s milk bald headed young punk musicians drink to this day.

Of course, Blitz weren’t so far apart from many of their colleagues musically. Let’s be honest, despite outliers like The Crack, early oi! wasn’t exactly the most diverse genre. Blitz do lean towards the rougher edge of the early bands, with a definite UK82 influence to their racket of a sound. But, by and large, these songs do fit in quite nicely next to The 4-Skins, Combat 84, The Partisans and other bands of the time.

But still – I do claim none other band managed to capture the essence of early oi! quite like Blitz did with their early singles and debut album. Even though Attak did try to repeat the achievement by shamelessly copying Blitz’s sound.

It’s also quite amazing how fast Blitz matured. Both the Time Bomb compilation and the 2008 double CD edition on Anagram Records I own (pictured in the top picture) contain demos from 1980 and album demos. To be honest, the 1980 demos suck. The band sounds sloppy and the vocalist is abominable. Even the LP demos are a far cry from the album itself, though unlike the 1980 demos, they do display an inkling of what was to come. But in 1982, when the album was released and Blitz released an impressive four singles, Blitz were on top of the oi! game.

To be honest, the album isn’t all killer. There’s a bit of filler, too: it’s hard to get excited by the throwaway T.O.? and Bleed, or the rather tepid and stiff Lou Reed cover Vicious. But opposite to each such track stands at least two tracks that are iconic. I mean, honestly, the album contains no less than 12 tracks (out of 17) I’d consider classics of the genre. On the CD editions, complement these with the single tracks, and it’s hard to find a more impressive compilation of punk or oi! by a single band.

Blitz’s story didn’t end with Voice Of A Generation, but it might as well have. They went on to release two more albums, 1983’s absolutely abominable Second Empire Justice, which saw the band dive deep into post punk territory – with little skill to do it. Blitz were a godawful post punk band, who amazingly did manage to squeeze out one great track, Husk, as B-side to the Solar single. Their third and final album, The Killing Dream from 1990, did see the band add back some grit into their sound, but too little – too late. These two later albums primarily tarnish the name.

The band did also attempt a comeback in the 2000’s, which was cut short with sole original member Nidge Miller’s tragic death in a car accident in 2007. A sad ending to the story of a band that created some of the most formative early oi! records.

But the brilliance of Voice Of A Generation remains, and has made the band immortal.

---

In From The Vaults we take a dive into the record collection at Only Death Is Real HQ and write about about items of iconic stature or personal significance; rarities and oddities from the archives; obscure gems that deserve more attention; classics of yore deserving of a moment in the limelight; and so on.