Punk rock bands that inspired us: The Stranglers

The Stranglers were strikingly different from any other band on the ’77 British punk scene. They were older (Jet Black, the drummer was 39 years-old in 1977), they had a keyboard player who looked like a shepherd, and their karate freak bass player, JJ Burnel was beating up everybody who pissed him off. And it was quite easy to piss him off.
The same aggression defined the way Burnel played the bass. In his hands it wasn’t an instrument, it was a weapon. Fact is, nobody ever played the bass like him. No wonder he inspired legions of punk rock bass players, including the guy from Bankrupt. Continue reading

Punk rock bands that inspired us: The Clash

The Clash have always been a major inspiration for us. They were the coolest band on the ’77 British punk scene with their catchy melodies, smart lyrics, immense energy, and picture perfect urban guerilla image. They invented the punk version of reggae, so that 23 years later we could write a song called The Bridges Of Novi Sad. Just like Bankrupt, they also had two distinctive singers who complemented each other perfectly. Continue reading

Punk rock bands that inspired us: The Ramones

This is gonna be a series of posts about punk rock bands that inspired us throughout the years. Who else could we start with if not the Ramones?
The Ramones were the first punk band ever, starting out in Queens, New York as early as 1974, and the mastermind was a Hungarian guy (Tommy Ramone). They influenced the whole ’77 British punk scene. (Sid Vicious always wanted to be Dee Dee, but he kinda overacted his role.) They were a major influence on every decent punk rock band ever since. That includes Bankrupt as well. It’s not just that we have songs like Listen or Cinderella which are obviously indebted to the Ramones, but we even wrote a tribute song to them, Farewell To The Cretins. Continue reading

Hungarian punk rock bands we like

There’s a handful of local punk rock bands we dig, cos we have things in common. They play good music and fun to hang around with. Here’s the list:

Rotten Tomatoes: These guys play energetic melodic punk rock with influences like Rancid, the Misfits or Therapy? They sing both in Hungarian and English. (We prefer the English versions of their songs, they sound better.) They are booking gigs for foreign punk bands, (like we used to until we had enough) and they have the right punk rock attitude, which is quite rare down here. We have played with them 3 times already and we’re gonna play with them in October again. Continue reading