Best Oi! Records of 2025 by Freddy Alva

These Windy City boot boys are one of the most important American Oi! bands at the moment, and fittingly enough, they don’t sing in English but in a non-apologetic Spanish that reflects it being the second most spoken language in the USA. Themes include immigrant working-class struggle, the perils of crossing the border for a better life, injustice reflected in a mother’s tears shed in their hometown, and pride in being part of a maligned subculture. It’s projected that by 2050 America will be the largest Spanish-speaking country in the world; Fuerza Bruta are harbingers of this change.

Fantastic current band from Paris that upholds two traditions I’ve always associated with classic French Oi!. The first is the incredibly catchy, tough but tuneful choruses that get stuck in your head, and the second is being stridently on the left wing of the political spectrum: militantly anti-fascist, to the point of hiding their identities for live appearances as they physically back lyrics like “Goodnight White Pride, Redskin for life”. I must say that sometimes the best of sentiments, that I happen to agree with, don’t always produce the best music, but Saccage, as their name suggests, rampages through those notions and delivers a kickass album full of grit and heart. And it wouldn’t be French Oi! without some saxophone parts tastefully sprinkled in.

See more: Video for the song “Paris”

The words “pure unadulterated listening joy” are rarely uttered when listening to an Oi! album, but that’s the best description I can come up with for these Montreal rockers and their debut LP. The patented “woooah, woooah” backup vocals complement the 7 Seconds meets Sham 69 vibe that’s influenced by classic French and Italian Oi! bands, but one doesn’t need to know any of this background info, or understand the language being sung in, to immediately get swept up in the infectiously catchy riffs, beat, and vox. Album of the year for me, and I’m not just saying that because I recently put out a two-song flexi by them. C’est magnifique all around!

See more: Beton Armé, Renaissance review

It’s hard to find any info online about this Barcelona-based outfit, but their debut EP is a powerful rager with a female vocalist singing in Catalan, a language spoken in the autonomous regions of eastern Spain. I don’t know if any of the band members are skins, but the Oi! influence is clearly evident in the gang choruses and the anthemic vibe of the song structures. It’s cool to hear a woman not trying to sound gruff like a man, unlike a lot of female-fronted Oi! projects, and from what I can gather, the lyrics are more personal in nature, with some of them touching on their shared but separate national identity from the Spanish state.

Sometimes you just need to hear full-on aggro, brickwall-type tunes, and the boys from the Steel City deliver the goods and then some on this four-song rager. Since 2013, No Time have done a couple of LPs plus an EP of seriously tough Oi! with hardcore energy, but this release throws in some cool bovver rock riffs and piano on the title song, and it’s a direction I would love to see them expand on. I’ve always dug what the singer said in an interview: “you don’t have to be a skin to love Oi!” This release proves that point; anyone into aggressive rock’n’roll with an attitude will enjoy blasting the hell out of this.

Speaking of bovver rock, these guys have only put out a couple of songs this year, but this one is a pure scorcher, maintaining that tough-as-nails edge that bands like Suede Razors brought to the table, approaching that bovver rock’n’roll sound more from the Oi! angle as opposed to coming from the glam side, if you know what I mean. The line in the song saying, “we were kids in the ’80s trying to fit in,” resonates deeply no matter what youth subculture you pledged allegiance to back in that fateful decade that continues to influence everything musically and aesthetically I’m involved with.

There was talk going around a couple of years ago about a “Cold Oi!” wave that referenced Blitz’s Second Empire Justice LP as a primary influence, followed by the dark undertones in French outfits like Camera Silens and Paris Violence, so it’s entirely fitting that a Gallic outfit like Rancœur coined the name for this burgeoning subgenre. On their second LP, they’ve amped up the post-punk sound with an Oi! vibe that fits like a glove. Angular, tension-filled rhythms complement the rough vocal patterns, and while it might not be traditional Oi! fare, it’s cool to hear how the sonic range of this music can expand without losing its essence.

See more: Rancœur, Fatalité review

The cover of No Heart’s 2025 LP is a bit deceiving, as it looks like just another straightforward Oi! record. Nothing wrong with that, but this long-running band from Victoria, British Columbia has put out a smashing mod revival and glam-tinged release with soulful vocals that doesn’t sacrifice any of the power and aggression we associate with this genre. I can think of classic bands like The Crack that mined similar territory in the ’80s, so it’s really cool to see a current version of this vital synthesis. Bonus points for the righteous Slade cover that’s only found on the vinyl version of the LP.

This one might be a bit of a stretch, but hear me out. Bands like The Business strayed at times from their straightforward Oi! punk sound, and as evidenced by demo tracks like “Strangers” and “Streets Where You Live” from their Official Bootleg 1980–81 LP, they are decidedly more on the melodic and poppy side, with strong 1960s invasion-era overtones. Spleen approaches their material with a similar angle, and sharing the same singer as Beton Armé, with a band pulled from the fertile subculture scene in Montreal, it’s a fantastic celebration of guitar-driven rock’n’roll from that aforementioned time period and how it was updated by Britpop in the 1990s. If you enjoy well-crafted melodic tunes with an incredibly inventive vocalist, seek this out, as well as their first EP from 2023, both released on the great cassette label RoachLeg.

See more: Spleen featured in Top 15 Punk Records of 2025 with Iggy Punx

The third and final issue of Freddy Alva’s Oi! The Black Book zine, chronicling the Oi! and graffiti scene, is available from Urban Styles NYC.