Sonic Boom Six - CD collection

[originally posted March 14th 2024 on cohost]

The new compilation album RE:Generation came in, and that gives me an excellent excuse to talk about one of my favourite bands and show off my collection!

Sonic Boom Six are a band from Manchester that I personally consider one of the most essential bands in the UK ska punk scene. They've been pushing the boundaries of the genre ever since their inception in the early 2000s, throwing together anything from punk, to ska, to metal, to rap, to electronic music into a wild, ever changing mashup, laying the groundwork for representation of women of colour in the scene and consistently going their own way and pushing back on the toxicity of a punk audience whose expectations they did not meet. Their songs cover a variety of leftist topics like celebrating multicultural unity, consumer society and the exploitation of the global south, feminism, online right wing radicalization, urban planning and car dependance and much more.

The EP Sounds to Consume and the debut full length album The Ruff Guide to Genre-Terrorism show a gradual refinement of their sound of punk rock, rap rock, and ska, that gets perfected on their 2nd full length Arcade Perfect. Their 3rd album City of Thieves shows the first harsh shift in sound, getting faster and heavier and having a stronger emphasis on electronics than ska, although all elements are still present on the album. City of Thieves is my personal favourite album of theirs, being extremely high energy, catchy and varied. Everything up until then was summarized on their first best-of compilation Rude Awakening, that also features a cover of an early Chumbawamba deep cut, who are, as some of you may know, also one of my favourite bands that I have spent extensive effort on building up my collection for. Their next studio album is self-titled, which sees them going for a sound more inspired by nu metal, with heavy guitar riffs and heavy use of electronics, much of which is inpired by D'n'B and dubstep. This is also an album that extremely grew on me and now rivals its predecessor for my favourite. According to the band, this is the record where they aimed for mainstream success, but in my opinion they did it without compromising their message or any of their love of experimentation, which is something I'm usually very happy to see. I do love underground music, but I'm not immune to a good hook. Afterwards they took a harsh u-turn away from heavy guitars and made the feminist pop-ska record The F-Bomb (also their last full-length album to date), that they also dedicated to trans punk musician Laura Jane Grace in its booklet. Cardiac Address is an EP which is almost exclusively dedicated to playing straight forward punk rock. Afterwards, it got quiet around the band for quite a while, until the new compilation RE:Generation, that summarizes their output since the last best of Rude Awakening. I hope that this new comp that features two new tracks is eventually gonna lead up to a full on revival of the band, as we haven't had any new material since 2017.

As far as collecting goes, this is one of the parts of my collection that I'm the proudest of, as it's a completed album discography, they're one of my favourite bands, and they're also a band that are often kind of hard to find physical copies of. Particularly Arcade Perfect and City of Thieves I had to get really lucky to get my hands on a copy, as they were released by their own record label and have not been reissued. RE:Generation I of course had to get my hands on as well because I wanted to make sure I keep up with all their major releases. Although most of its contents is stuff I already have, it also contains two new songs and two stand-alone singles that I previously was missing. I got it directly from their online shop, and I got my copy signed by all band members, though shipping from the UK means that I had to pay an extra 7€ customs fee upon delivery, even for a package that was just one CD, because everything related to the UK as a country is horrible now.

RE:Generation is a great compilation that feels very coherent and gives a good overall impression of their output in the 2010s. It is very short for a compilation though and is missing some track I would've liked to see, but there definitely is value in having such a concise package of a period of their output. It is very heavily gravitating towards the self-titled album though, containing 4 of its songs, while only featuring 2 from The F-Bomb. The two new songs that have already been released with a music video prior to the release of the compilation are great and fit in well with the remaining tracks, though they most likely won't become my favourite tracks of the band. Future Shock sounds like it could have fit in very well with the mid-tempo, heavy sound of self-titled, while One of the Boys is a little lighter on the sound and leans more towards ska. Great compilation that shows a very promising sign of life from the band and that I'm happy I can add to my collection (although with shipping and customs I have paid way too much for it in the end).

If you're into rowdy, eclectic music and have never heard of them, please give this band a shot