Rancid (1993)

Following the dissolution of Operation Ivy, guitarist Tim Armstrong and bassist Matt Freeman had a few false starts with other bands before finally settling on Rancid, who would go on to become one the premier punk acts of the ‘90s. The album is as much about a lifestyle as a social critique, and on songs like “Hyena” the band wears its street-rat status with pride: “Absent from political authority an animal I’ve become / Total disorder and confusion is the life style that I run / Permit me to do what I want and I will I'm a nomad to travel / Concrete, glass, stone and gravel.” Armstrong has perfected his punk rock voice, the hoarse rallying cry of a battered warrior. Like their heroes the Clash, Rancid turn their attention towards the working class. If not for its breakneck riffs, “Whirlwind” could be a Bruce Springsteen song: “My old man worked his troubled life in a nowhere dead end job / He drank the pain away I'll be damned if that's me having my dreams robbed / The working class carries a country that has been rotting inside for years / The pigs cuffed my old man in the front yard I saw through my eyes of tears.”