"This might be seen as quite an obvious choice but, for me, this album was a gateway drug. When I was a kid, I remember my older brother and his mates getting really into Forever Changes and thinking, "This is just incredible." From that point onwards, I just wanted to hear more and more of that kind of music. We were all skateboarders in Cardiff back then. People always think of skateboarders being into proper hardcore music. My brother and his mates were into Love and The Doors… some were even into proper sunshine psych. We weren't team sports kind of people – we were the last people picked for football or rugby; a weird sort of outsider gang. Da Capo was a big milestone for me growing up as part of that gang. I loved the fact that Arthur Lee was very West Coast – a smart guy and definitely not a hippy; a freak-flag flier. There was something punk about their attitude. I love the story about him moving into a new neighbourhood in LA, somewhere properly rough. His whole thing was like, "Right. I'm going to let people know I'm here and that I'm the fucking toughest guy in the neighbourhood." He was a hardcore dude. They knew how to make proper aggro psych."

"I first encountered Alex Cox’s sci-fi slamdance when I was a sullen, unworldly, unformed teenager—which is the perfect time to find a movie both as rageful and as hopeful as Repo Man. So much of the film’s DNA has been Brundlefly’d with my own—from its hardcore-punk soundtrack to its corporate-conspiracy mindset—that I rewatch it at least once a year, just to make sure I can still connect with Otto and his legion of goons. And the cover artwork, by the great Jay Shaw, is absolutely my favorite bit of Criterion edition art (I’m still trying to track down a poster on eBay)."

"Really Red are from Texas and they released Teaching You The Fear in 1981. My friend Smithy and I had a fanzine called Attack and that was one of the records that came through. Our first band Mr. Epp eventually played with them. There's a lot going on in that band for a so-called hardcore punk band. There was a lot of cool stuff coming out of Texas in the early 80s like Big Boys and The Dicks, a little later the Butthole Surfers. Really Red was quite a political band. So many political punk bands were really strident like Crass but in the wake of Maximumrocknroll fanzine many of them were 16-year-old kids spouting shit about stuff they didn't really understand. And who wants to take advice from someone with a very small worldview? Really Red were a little older, maybe five to eight years older than me, and I know this because Ronnie Bond eventually moved up to Seattle and I got to know him a little. Those guys were old enough that when The MC5 came through Houston in the early 70s they hung out with them. Really thoughtful guys but most importantly kick-ass songs. Kelly Younger was a really unique guitar player. They also referenced Nico and The Velvet Underground as well as political punk stuff. They just seemed a little broader than a lot of things that were happening at the time in the hardcore scene in particular."

"Now this is an important record. It’s the first American hardcore punk record with some production. It was mind-blowing at the time, like, wow – there’s fuckin’ real guitar blaring out of the right side and you could hear everything, especially Don Bolles on drums. Darby Crash’s lyrics were this different thing where you couldn’t hear one word he said but he made you read the lyrics. It was like really dark poetry that you couldn’t figure out – we were too young too figure all that shit out. As a record, when you first hear it, you can’t understand it at all. Then on the fourth listen it becomes one of the best you’ve ever heard."

"Yeah, back to Raymond Pettibon again. This was one of my favourite images along with the Sonic Youth cover when I was 16. It's cool how he was doing all of the Black Flag artwork as well as Sonic Youth because I guess they have a similar feeling, similar aesthetic. He's also been doing the sleeves for another band called Cerebral Ballzy who supported The Horrors on tour last year. The other guys aren't really into hardcore. I always liked Minor Threat probably a touch more than Black Flag. That decision is probably swung by the fact that Minor Threat did that Wire ‘12 X U' cover which was great. I like Wire a lot."