Well here we go again. It only seems like five minutes since I was compiling all the votes into last years Best Of that saw The Rumjacks romping home with Album Of The Year. This year has been a bit quieter on the Celtic-Punk front but as last year was so busy that is perhaps not surprising. That’s not to say their weren’t some fantastic releases as their were plenty and it was still really difficult to come up with the various lists below. Not so many big bands this year so it was left to the lesser known bands to shine but remember this is only our opinion and these releases are only the tip of the iceberg of what came out last year. Feel free to comment, slag off or dissect our lists. As a bonus we are adding the Readers Poll again this year so you can even vote on your favourite release of 2019 yourself. If it’s not listed then simply add your choice.
We don’t pretend to be the final word as that my friends is for you…
(click on the green link to go where you will find more information on the release)
1. THE WALKER ROADERS – Self Titled
2. MICKEY RICKSHAW – Home In Song
3. FEROCIOUS DOG – Fake News And Propaganda
4. GREENLAND WHALEFISHERS – Based On A True Story
5. BARLEYJUICE – The Old Speakeasy
6. THE NARROWBACKS – By Hook Or By Crook
7. McDERMOTTS TWO HOURS – Besieged
8. PIPES AND PINTS – The Second Chapter
9. THE RUMJACKS – Live In Athens
10. SELFISH MURPHY – After Crying
11. TORTILLA FLAT – Live At The Old Capitol
12. FIDDLERS GREEN – Heyday
13. THE RUMJACKS – Live In London Acoustic Sessions
14. THE WHIPJACKS – This Wicked World
15. 13 KRAUSS – Redención
16. ALTERNATIVE ULSTER – Craic Agus Ceol
17. AIRES BASTARDOS – Self Titled
18. THE TEMPLARS OF DOOM – Hovels Of The Holy
19. THE FIGHTING JAMESONS – A Moment In California
20. ANGRY McFINN AND THE OLD YANK – Songs of Whiskey, Women & War
21. THE SHILLELAGHS – Ripples In The Rye
22. HELLRAISERS AND BEERDRINKERS – Pub Crawl
23. BODH’AKTAN – De Temps Et De Vents
24. HEATHEN APOSTLES – Dust To Dust
25. SONS OF CLOGGER – Return To The Stones’
26. THE CHERRY COKE$ – Old Fox
27. THE FILTHY SPECTACULA – The Howl Of The Underclasses
28. THE POTATO PIRATES – Hymns For The Wayward
29. TC COSTELLO– Horizon Songs
30. THE TENBAGS – ‘Bags o’ Craic’
How to compete with last year? Every single top band in the genre released an album so things were always going to be a bit quieter for 2019. Top spot this year unsurprisingly goes to The Walker Roaders Celtic-Punk super group! With Pogues, Mollys and Dropkicks making up the team how could they possibly go wrong! Everyone’s ‘next big thing’ Mickey Rickshaw came in a well deserved second and Ferocious Dog took third after releasing their best album, for me, since From Without. Greenland Whalefishers celebrated 25 years on the road with their best album for quite a while and what Best Of would be right without some bloody brilliant Irish-American bands challenging at the top too. Pipes And Pints new album with a new singer received acclaim from across the Punk media and The Rumjacks couldn’t follow up last years unanimous victory despite having two album releases (both sort of live) in the top thirteen. Fiddlers Green continue to make consistently great albums and go into 2020 celebrating thirty years together! Good to see homegrown bands The Whipjacks, The Tenbags, The Filthy Spectacula and Sons Of Clogger making it too. The top thirty was made up of thirteen countries from USA, England, Norway, Czech Republic, Australia, Switzerland, Germany, Argentina, Japan, Quebec, Hungary, Spain and Japan.
1. THE LUCKY TROLLS – Self Titled
2. DRUNKEN DOLLY – The Party
3. LORETTA PROBLEM – The Waltz Of My Drunken Dream
4. THE CLOVERHEARTS – Sick
5. KRAKIN’ KELLYS – Irish Tribute
6. THE PLACKS – Rebellious Sons
7. GYPSY VANNER – Five Distilled Celtic Punks
8. THE RUMPLED – Grace O’ Malley
9. FOX’N’FIRKIN – Hey Ho! We’re Fox n Firkin
10. SHANGHAI TREASON – Devil’s Basement
The Lucky Trolls took #1 spot with their brilliant self-titled EP following on from fellow countrymen the Krakin’ Kellys multi award winning 2018. Trust me it would have taken an exceptionally good release to keep The Party by Drunken Dolly off the top spot but that is what happened. Dolly’s excursions over to these shores this year j=has seen them grown in stature and you can’t go to a Ferocious Dog gig without spotting at least a dozen of their shirts. Loretta Problem wowed us with their single ‘Waltz Of My Drunken Dream’ which took us right back back to The Pogues glory days and what about that accompanying video too!! If we had a award for best video then that would have walked it. The Kellys had a quiet year with comparison to ’18 but still managed a respectable #5 and great debut releases from The Placks our sole representative from a Celtic nation (big things are going to happen to this band in 2020 mark my words), Italian/Aussies The Cloverhearts and, from just down the road from my Mammy, Shanghai Treason from Sheffield who only put out one song… but what a song! Eight countries represented from Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, Italy, Scotland, Argentina, Australia and Yorkshire!
AIRES BASTARDOS– ‘Self-Titled’
Argentina is becoming a bit of a hot-spot for Celtic-Punk with not only some well established bands but also some new ones starting up too and with this release Aires Bastardos announced their arrival on the international scene too. Not afraid to dive straight into a folk number after a Cock Sparrer cover they veer from standard Celtic-Punk to Folk and back to fast as hell Punk but in that really accessible way that only Celtic-Punk (and maybe Ska-Punk) bands can do.
1. THE DREADNOUGHTS – Into The North
2. CROCK OF BONES – Celtic Crossbones
3. 6’10 – Where We Are
4. BRYAN McPHERSON – Kings Corner
5. CALLUM HOUSTON – Gravities
6. PYROLYSIS – Daylight Is Fading
7. SEAMUS EGAN – Early Bright
8. LE VENT DU NORD – Territoires
9. DONNY ZUZULA – Chemicals
10. DERVISH – Great Irish Songbook
The Dreadnoughts don’t really think of themselves as Celtic-Punk so I reckon they’d be happier to win this than Celtic-Punk Album Of The Year. A superb collection of sea shanties that is a pleasure to listen to that was always going to be #1. Crock Of Bones representing the London Irish in 2nd with an album of trad folk with punk rock attitude and it’s especially good to hear some originals done in the style of the ‘auld ways’. 6’10 challenged for the top spot as they always do with everything they release and Bryan MacPherson and Callum Houston both produced great releases of singer-songwriter acoustic folk with Irish roots.
Sadly the Celtic-Punk world has shrunk a little regarding Web-Sites. Winners of the last two years the Mersey Celt Punks have been slacking (sort it out lads!) and enjoying their gigs too much to tell us while Shite’n’Onions have been too busy transferring everything onto a different platform and preparing for a bit of a re-launch I expect. Sadly celtic-rock.de have shut up shop after twelve 
years so it just makes it all the more clear how much we all miss Waldo and his fantastic Celtic-Folk-Punk And More site. As regular as clockwork and all the news that was ever fit (or not!) to print. Closing down the site in its 10th year in March must have been a tough decision to make and so this year we award best Website to Waldo and let it be known that no Celtic-Punk site will ever come close to replacing you. We would certainly not exist without his kind help and inspiration. All the best comrade enjoy your retirement! One welcome addition is Michu and his Celtic-Punk Encyclopedia site from Poland. Worth checking out especially if you are in a band.
We are not alone in doing these Best Of 2019 lists in fact all the major players in celtic-punk do them so click below to check out what they thought.
THE CELTIC PUNKCAST
FOLK’N’ROCK
MERSEY CELT PUNKS
So there you go. Remember we don’t pretend to be the final word on things in fact if you check the other Celtic-Punk media I’m sure we’ve all come up with relatively different lists. Our Best Of’s are cajoled and bullied out of the admins from the London Celtic Punks Facebook page. The assorted scraps of paper and beer mats were then tallied up please remember not all of us heard the same albums so like all the various Best Of’s ours is also subjective.
This is our 8th year of making these Best Of lists so if you would like to check out out who was where in our previous ones then just click on the link below the relevant year.
Last year we introduced a new feature THE READERS PICK. We had no idea if it would work or not but it was a raging success so we going to do it all again this year. With well over 500 votes cast you lot chose the debut album from the Krakin’ Kellys as a worthy winner. Only the Top Ten albums are listed but there is an option to write in your favourite release or just to send us love… or abuse!
You are allowed to vote twice but not for the same artist.
The Poll will close at midnight on Friday 31st January with the result announced soon after.
remember any views, comments or abuse or slander we would love to hear it…
Sláinte, The London Celtic Punks Crew- January, 2020
Welcome to the third and final instalment of our yearly Round-Up of Celtic-Punk, and related, releases from the past twelve months. As the scene becomes more popular we are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with everything so for a week in December we give a short mention to those bands that have slipped the net. Each and every band here are worthy of your time so please be sure to check them out. To start with in Part One we featured releases from North America (
The Cherry Coke$ may have one of the daftest names in Celtic-Punk but they are far far far away from being any kind of joke band. Celebrating their twentieth anniversary with the release of their ninth (!!!!) album Oldfox Japanese Irish rockers The Cherry Coke$ were probably the first band in the scene from outside of one of the ‘traditional’ Celtic-Punk countries (the ones with substantial Celtic diasporas) to become famous. Basically playing fast as hell trad Irish folk they became as close to superstars as is possible in the Celtic-Punk scene for a while and though their star may have waned a little over the years that they are still producing the goods recording wise is testimony to how good a band they actually were and still are now too. They have got a bit faster and a bit punkier but the unmistakable sound of Irish music can be throughout Oldfox. With a multitude of members playing every imaginable Celtic instrument yet it always seems, just like the band that influenced them the most- The Pogues, to always be leading the way.
A few years ago Brazil was the leading country in South America when it came to Celtic-Punk but slowly and surely the balance of power has slowly been moving to the country that is Brazil’s great rival in everything- Argentina! With several bands on the go at the moment (more on them below) Aires Bastardos have released their debut album onto the scene and it is a corker as we say in England. We get eleven songs clocking in at almost forty minutes and though the majority of the songs are Aires Bastards originals their are a smattering of inspired covers as well. Lets get them out the way first with two great versions of The Ramones ‘We Want The Airwaves’ and Cock Sparrers ‘Because You’re Young’ which adds fiddle and banjo to these great songs while Pablo’s gravelly voice is perfect for belting out these numbers which are definitely in the Celtic-PUNK scheme of things. Singer Pablo is also responsible for most of the lyrics here and is a well known member of the Celtic-Punk scene networking across the web and promoting not just his own band but in the spirit of Celtic-Punk all the other Argentinian bands as well in #OneBigCelticPunkFamily ! The third cover here is the auld traditional Irish folk song ‘Drunken Sailor’ and to say it is well covered is a bit of an understatement with just about everyone having a go at it at sometime. Assisted on vocals here by Zeta Vaccaro from Angry Zeta And The Hillbullys (more below) and Gabriel Leão from their Brazilian next door neighbours the Celtic-Punk band 
With Celtic-Punk releases from the ‘Rest Of The World’ being a bit thin on the ground in 2019 I have had to cast my net a bit far this year to reel in some bands that will interest you all. I actually came across this band while writing the review for Aires Bastardos above and with one click of a button I found a new band to love from Argentina! Angry Zeta & The Hillbullys are from Buenos Aires and Live is the bands second release. The band play mostly Country-Punk (it use to be called Cow-Punk back in the day) versions of famous C’n’W and Cowboy songs like ‘Rawhide’, ‘Sam Hall’ and ‘Cocaine Blues’. The music is intense acoustic music with the spirit of the west throughout. Male and female shared vocals compete with some absolutely astounding banjo plucking and fiddle work as well as some double bass pounding. Their debut album is available as a ‘Name Your Own Price’ download on the Bandcamp link below if you want a taster of Live go check that out. The band have toured Europe before so keep an eye for them appearing at anytime. Here’s a stripped down version of ‘Glory’ taken from Live but as gloriously ramshackle as could be!!
CELTIC-PUNK ARGENTINO!
1. THE LAGAN- Let’s Do It Again
1. MARYS LANE- Wild Unknown 
One of the most established bands in the Celtic-Punk scene and yet still widely unknown outside their home The Cherry Coke$ release their eighth studio album, The Answer. Now veterans of the scene since their humble beginnings back in 1999 they have gone onto become huge at home mixing traditional Irish folk music with fast and furious punk rock in the same way as Flogging Molly. They rose to prominence after the release of their debut album 
The sixth album from a band that is new to me but one I will be definitely checking out. The band formed in Portland, Oregon in 2004 later moving to Los Angeles, living, so they say, in squats and abandoned buildings before spending four solid years on the road dragging their asses from town to town defining their sound. They certainly are a novel band with hardly two songs on The Trail sounding the same. The band mix up a chaotic blend of rockabilly, psychobilly, punk rock, bluegrass, folk and metal to make what some have labelled as ‘hobo-core’. Kicking off with ‘Grassmuncher’ a mental instrumental which begins with the folk elements of the band coming together before the band unleash and metal guitar soon takes it far far away from the finger-in-the-ear folkies. The vocals and music here is gritty and hard and not for those of a gentle disposition. That is not to say that The Goddamn Gallows can’t knock out a quality tune and this album is full of them. Cut from the same cloth as one of my favourite bands Phantom Of The Black Hills (who we did a feature on recently 
With some similarities to The Goddamn Gallows this is another release that is certainly not Celtic-Punk but interested me enough to give it a far few plays this year. This is The Goddamn Gallows with all their rough edges gone and a shave! That’s not to say it is in any way weak or wimpy just that its coming from a different angle. Beautifully played Americana with some of the best banjo of the year from a band that has been together for eighteen years! With six albums behind them Captain Nowhere was my first experience of Railroad Earth but carries on in the same tradition as that first album, The Black Bear Sessions, back in 2001. The EP kicks off with the marvelous banjo and mandolin laden ‘Blazin’ A Trail’ accompanied by the glorious sound of an upright bass its utterly fantastic and a surefire foot-tapper if not thigh-slapper!! The kind of song that is guaranteed to get you off your backside and jigging about.
Now The Cherry Coke$ won’t win any awards for Best Name but when it comes to celtic-punk then that is more than possible. Formed in 1999 in Tokyo in Japan they play extremely tight and fast traditional Irish music. Absolutely huge at home, they regularly appear on TV, and this is their ninth release since forming. I have only heard two of their previous records but I can tell you that this self titled album is at least as good as what I have heard before. As mentioned they are tight and powerful and as clear an example of what James Stephens said back in the 1840’s that “it is not blood that makes you Irish but a willingness to be part of the Irish nation”. Easily as good as anything in celtic-punk this is proper party music and a perfect example of what the album has in store is the opening track ‘Rise Again’ for which they and Japan MTV produced this great video.
Now for something well out of ours (and yours too no doubt) comfort zone. Its one thing to review a Japanese band in The Cherry Coke$ but they been around for years and most celtic-punk ‘knowitalls’ would have heard of them but SMZB are the real underground celtic-punk band… from China. Yes China and they have been playing punk rock since 1996. Their lyrics and music are not appreciated much by the Chinese authorities so three of their albums have been banned. They toured Europe in 2005 and around this time took the decision to move away from their original raw sound of early British punk, ska and ’80s hardcore and add bagpipes, flutes and fiddles to their sound. How or why they decided this is unknown as the internet don’t have an awful lot on them. They have though received plaudits galore from the various celtic-punk sites and sounding like a combination of The Pogues, the Murphy’s and Rancid they have gone on to be absolutely huge in their native country. Previous releases include a split LP with celtic-punk legends The Greenland Whalefishers. A Letter From China makes the bands intentions clear. The cover features a red tank with the caption ‘1989-2014 25th Anniversary’ as well as their rather interesting band logo (have another look!!) Its basically well played melodic punk sung partly in English but with bagpipes chucked into the mix. Its all very very catchy and opener ‘A Song for Chen Huaimen’ seems to be about the singers grandfather where he compares himself to a Chinese fighter pilot who fought against the Japanese. Fourteen songs in just under a hour and some real beauties especially in ‘Smash His Statue’ SMZB hit the real celtic-punk highlights and its songs like this that get them into trouble and long may they rebel! There’s an oldish interview with Wu Wei from SMZB 
If there was an award for most hard working on the other hand then I think it is The Go Set who would deserve it. Yeah I know The Mahones never stop touring but for an independent DIY band to be able to finance themselves to be able to tour quite as much as The Go Set do is quite an amazing achievement. This year not only did they play a pretty long tour of the USA but they also made in over here to Europe including Blighty to play a few gigs around the big Rebellion punk festival. Formed in 2003 in Melbourne in Australia we have long been big fans of the Aussie celtic-punk scene and The Go Set are one of the biggest and best bands among them. With a bunch of first rate and critically acclaimed albums The Go Set released seventh album Rolling Sound to a helluva lot of expectation and it didn’t disappoint at all. The album begins with a bagpipe dirge that grows in sound before exploding into ‘Bones’
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