NJ has a long, rich punk history, and its latest, greatest export is Teenage Halloween. The Asbury Park band debuted with the Eternal Roast in 2017, and they now follow it with their first full-length, which is a massive step-up from the EP and one of the strongest punk debut LPs I've heard all year. They dabble in '90s/'00s style melodic punk, soaring heartland rock, Thin Lizzy solos, ska-punk style horns, emo, folk punk, and more, and though those are all familiar sounds on their own, you probably haven't heard them combined like this. It's an album that probably could've come out at any point in the past 20-25 years, but the way that it breaks down barriers between scenes and genres so naturally feels like a very modern development. It's an album that should bring together fans of anything from The Lawrence Arms to Jeff Rosenstock to The Hotelier, and sealing the deal is singer Luke Henderiks, whose raspy voice and personable lyrics about growing up queer in the New Jersey suburbs make Teenage Halloween stand out from the bands that might seem "similar" on the surface. The music is too personal to boil it down to comparisons, and you can feel genuine emotion and passion in every syllable Luke sings.

Nightmares of the West has six originals alongside a Blocko cover (which vocalist Thomas Barnett discussed in our interview with him), and it's technically an EP, but it doesn't feel like a short project or a stopgap release of any kind; it feels as complete as any of their full-lengths. Sometimes seven songs is all you need to say everything you need to say (just ask Pusha T). The songs are fueled by seeing and feeling the effects of injustice, but they don't necessarily feel negative; they feel uplifting. Strike Anywhere wrap their messages in triumphant, ultra-catchy melodies and bolster them with a driving, hard-hitting backbone. Like all great punk songs should, these songs hit you in the heart, the gut, and the bones all at once, and they make you think too. They give off the kind of visceral rush that makes you wish you were living in a time where you could get to a show and scream along at the top of your lungs. These songs don't just deserve that kind of reaction; they make it damn near impossible to hear them and react any other way. This EP is about as ideal as punk/melodic hardcore gets in 2020. It's loud, smart, and emotional. It scratches the familiar itch that all punk fans have but it manages to feel fresh too. And that freshness is all the more impressive coming from a band who are 20 years into the career and haven't released music in over a decade.

Skeleton Coast is a graceful late-career album that stands tall next to their classics. Punk is often seen as a young person's game, but The Lawrence Arms have really figured out how to progress and mature their sound without losing the charm that fans fell in love with 15-20 years ago. Skeleton Coast has everything you want from a Lawrence Arms album -- Brendan Kelly and Chris McCaughan's trademark dual vocals, big anthemic hooks, adrenaline-rush tempos, and just the right amount of tenderness bubbling up beneath the rougher surface. Read Brendan and Chris' track-by-track here.

Operation Ivy frontman Jesse Michaels is back with his first new music in eight years and a new Classics of Love lineup: Jesse with Sharif Dumani (Exploding Flowers, Alice Bag Band) and Peter John Fontes (Los Nauticals). The first Classics of Love album was a killer ska-punk record and the most Op Ivy-sounding thing Jesse had done since Op Ivy broke up in 1989, but World of Burning Hate is something much more abrasive. Across these five songs -- which clock in at under 10 minutes -- Jesse embraces straight-up hardcore, and it should be no surprise that he's a beast at this kind of thing too. Op Ivy were obviously influenced by this kind of stuff, but I don't think Jesse has ever gone full-on gnarly, whiplash-inducing hardcore like this. Hints of the more melodic side he's usually known for show up on "Crime Pays" and "Walking With the Lost," but even those songs are total scorchers. The whole EP rips, and Jesse somehow sounds even more throat-shredding on this than he did over 30 years ago in Operation Ivy. Who says punk is a young person's game?

The Suicide Machines' last album was 2005's War Profiteering Is Killing Us All, an angry political punk record released in direct opposition to the George W. Bush era and the Iraq War, so when they announced that they'd finally release music for the first time in 15 years with an even worse president in office, it seemed very much like the right time for more political anger from The Suicide Machines. However, the first new song they chose to release was "Awkward Always," a bright, upbeat ska-punk song that sounded more like their classic 1996 debut than where they had last left off. It also found the band sounding super refreshed and re-energized and it's one of the best punk singles of the year so far from any band, old or new, ska or not. Now the whole album is here, and it's actually kind of the exact middle ground between the debut and War Profiteering. It's got the rawer punk aesthetic of the debut and some more where the bright, upbeat ska-punk of "Awkward Always" came from, but it turns out that song was sort of a red herring. A large chunk of Revolution Spring does indeed find The Suicide Machines in pissed-off punk mode, taking on the sad state of the world. It's a good balance -- an anti-police brutality song like "Bully in Blue" sounds cathartic in an era where police brutality is still all over the news, but also sometimes when things are this bad, the escapism of the fun songs goes a long way.

After living his whole life in New York, Jeff moved to LA while making this one, and that's reflected not just on the album artwork but in the sound of these songs. This sounds more like a '90s California pop punk record than anything else Jeff has made as a solo artist, and Jeff knows how to recreate '90s California pop punk in a way that sounds tasteful and fresh. NO DREAM might be the most wall-to-wall fun album Jeff has released under his own name -- almost all the songs are short, fast, punchy, and Jeff even writes "we hope it makes you feel good" on his Bandcamp -- but like his last few albums, it's fun music with a purpose. It may sound like classic pop punk but the lyrics are never carefree or juvenile or any other negative stereotype associated with the genre. NO DREAM is an angry, socially conscious record that tackles Trump's immigration policies, capitalism, hypocrisy, and other topics in a way that's smart, incisive and avoids cliche punk sloganeering. NO DREAM makes you feel good, but it also makes you think, and as has been the case with Jeff's last few records, I have a feeling it'll keep making you think as time goes on. His music has an immediacy and instant adrenaline rush to it, but it also has layers buried deep within the songs that reveal themselves over time. I can't claim to have cracked the surface just 48 hours after the album came into our lives, but I already can tell there's a lot to dig into on NO DREAM, and that it's gonna be worth it.

You could almost call Kill Lincoln veterans at this point, but if Can't Complain is your introduction to them, you're probably not alone. It's a fast, thrilling, super catchy ska-punk album in the spirit of '90s bands like The Suicide Machines and Slapstick but it breathes totally new life into the genre. It's nostalgic yet fresh, and if you're looking for an entry point into the current ska scene that's approachable at first and rewarding over time, this is a perfect one.

Since the early 2010s, LA's Bad Cop/Bad Cop have been waving the flag for catchy, driving, political punk that brings you right back to the genre's explosive '90s era but sounds fresh today too. With their third album The Ride, they just may have written their best record yet. As the band broke down for us in a track-by-track discussion of the album, The Ride tackles heavy subjects like singer/guitarist Stacey Dee's breast cancer diagnosis, America's oppressive immigration laws, the casual sexism that women deal with on a daily basis, and more, and Bad Cop/Bad Cop turn this stuff into one of the best adrenaline-fueled punk albums I've heard this year. Read more here.

Battery frontman turned famed punk producer Brian McTernan (who's helmed classics by Converge, Cave In, Thrice, Circa Survive, Hot Water Music, Strike Anywhere, and more) has returned to singing and songwriting for the first time in nearly 20 years with his new band Be Well, whose lineup also includes current and former members of Fairweather, Darkest Hour, and Bane/Converge. Their debut album is full of kick-ass melodic hardcore songs that nail the balance between unfiltered aggression and good hooks, and Brian drives them home with the kind of confessional, vulnerable lyrical content that's so raw and real that it could only come straight from the heart. Read more about it (and an interview with Brian) here.

X's classic debut album Los Angeles turns 40 this weekend, and the band would be playing an anniversary show in LA if you-know-what didn't happen, but instead, the punk legends surprise-released this album, which is their first in 27 years and first with the original lineup in 35 years! It includes last year's "Delta 88 Nightmare" / "Cyrano de Berger’s Back" single, which were both songs X wrote back in the day but recorded recently ("Delta 88 Nightmare" dates all the way back to the Los Angeles sessions), but the other nine songs were all newly-written and those songs sound like classic X too. There's no mistaking Exene Cervenka/John Doe harmonies for any other band, and it's really not everyday that you hear a four-decade-old punk band making new music that captures the spirit of their classic material like this. The recording quality is as modest as it was on Los Angeles, and the band really sound fired-up on this record. I'll admit I had my doubts, given how long it's been since they made music, but I guess sometimes it just takes writing the right songs to get the wheels turning for a comeback, and these were definitely the right songs.

No matter how much the music world begs, who knows if we'll ever get a Fugazi reunion (never say never), but Coriky's debut album is the closest thing to new Fugazi that we've heard since their final 2001 album The Argument. It's the new band of Ian MacKaye, his Fugazi bandmate Joe Lally on bass, and his wife/Evens bandmate Amy Farina on drums, with all three members splitting vocals, and much more so than with The Evens (who are great in their own right), you can hear the spirit of Fugazi informing Coriky. The chemistry of Joe Lally's rhythmic bass playing and Ian MacKaye's percussive vocals is heard on a song like "Have A Cup of Tea" nearly as much as it was heard on Repeater, and Ian's roaring vocals near the end of opening track/lead single "Clean Kill" recall his '90s era more than any music he's put out in a while. Coriky also has a softer indie rock side cut from a more similar cloth as The Evens, and the songs where Amy sings lead of course sound more like Evens songs than Fugazi songs. It's kind of the culmination of the various types of music Ian has made since Fugazi's early days, and as is really always the case with his music, it sounds new and fresh and inspired. We keep wanting his old band(s) to reunite, but Ian MacKaye has always been about pushing forward, and Coriky is the latest example of him doing just that.

Back in 2015, I saw Refused play a surprise 2 AM set at Brooklyn's Saint Vitus where they covered classics by Black Flag, Fugazi, Snapcase, Earth Crisis, and more. It was obvious that Dennis Lyxzén was having the time of his life playing legendary hardcore songs, and he was good at it too, so it was very exciting when we learned that Dennis would now be fronting the new supergroup Fake Names alongside some of the very hardcore legends who paved the way for his band: Brian Baker (Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, Bad Religion), Michael Hampton (S.O.A., Embrace, One Last Wish) and Johnny Temple (Girls Against Boys, Soulside). Of all the members' many other bands, Fake Names sound the most like the mid/late '80s melodic hardcore/proto-emo of Dag Nasty, Embrace, and Soulside, and sometimes they echo the hardcore-informed alt-rock that Husker Du was doing in Minnesota around the same time the Revolution Summer was going down in DC. The production's a little cleaner than it should be for this kinda thing (the rawness of Brian Baker's other current punk supergroup, Beach Rats, would be more fitting), but it's tough to deny how catchy these songs are and it's fun to hear Dennis indulging in his most straight-up punk tendencies.

At this point, Days N Daze really have a sound they can call their own -- folk punk is at the core of this album, but the phrase "folk punk" (or even "thrashgrass") doesn't really cover how much Days N Daze pack into these songs. There's a ska-like side from Whitney's trumpet lines, a raw hardcore side from the moments Jesse and Whitney bring their voices to a gnarly scream, and a dare-I-say-pop-punk side just from how damn catchy these choruses are. And Blueprints really reminds you that DnD's "-grass" suffix is earned. Not only is the band rounded out by a washboard (Meagan Melancon) and gutbucket (Geoff Bell) player, but they really channel bluegrass and other traditional folk styles in their music. They're very much a punk band, but they sound as indebted to centuries-old folk music as, say, The Decemberists. There's a lot going on here lyrically too, with topics spanning from the sad state of politics to more personal subjects like addiction, and Days N Daze deliver it all with conviction. I know folk punk gets a bad rap (undeservingly!), but this is a really special, genre-defying record that I recommend checking out even if you don't think you like this kinda stuff.

Who knew railing against fascists and white supremacists could sound so upbeat and catchy?