Bristles – Ban the Punkshops Jungle Hop International ‎– – 1985 – Cassette ♬ Face A MP3 192 kbps ♬ Face B MP3 192 kbps ♬ Face A / ♬ Face B

Österportskolan – demolished in 1985.

There was an article the end of last year in the paper Helsingsborgs Dagblad on the Landskrona band the Bristles in which Michael Svegbrant (guitar) mentioned that the shipyard industry in the city moved abroad 1982. According to him, that event made people loose hope about the future and there was a lot of demonstration and a school (Österportskolan) was squatted. The later was a school which the city wanted to replace by a parking lot whist the kids wanted to transform into a culture house. Sadly the city won that fight. In in the middle of it: the Bristles – young and angry. A perfect fertilizer for good punk.

1982 picture of the band.

The first line-up was Viking (vox), Michael “Svegis” Svegbrant and Nelle, (guitars), Rotcher (Bass), Lankan (drums) but Nelle left quite soon and later Ingemar played the bass as Rotcher left the band. With this set-up they released the Don’t give up EP in early winter of 1983. This tape, Ban the Punkshops seems to exist with two different takes. The first one on Ägg Tapes & Records have Viking on vocals. As he quit and Puma started to sing, some new songs was added and some old was re-recorded. In other words – it exist two versions of this tape. I have not heard the original Ägg Tape so I cannot compare. In 1984 the band released the EP Boys Will be Boys (now with a new drummer) that apparently have two different rear sleeves. That was news to me. The collector-scum will possible also love that there exist a few discarded sleeves of the Don’t Give Up EP . Images can be found here. Of some reason the band has not included the 1986 EP Free the Prisoners in their own discography. They called themselves Bristles D.C at that time. Either they have issues with Rosa Honung or they are just embarrassed with it. I suspect the latter. The band was also on the Really Fast Vol. 2 and the MRR 1984 compilation.

The 3 Bristles EP’s. From left – Don’t Give Up, Boys Will be Boys, Free the Prisoners.

Officially the band broke-up in 1985 after playing in total 50 gigs. However- the Bristles started to play again in 2008 and instead like all punk-corpses currently touring they make new records but also plays a lot of gigs.

Some mention the Bristles in the same sentence as oi-bands. They were clearly influenced by bands like the Exploited and GBH and I presume that the Bristles rather would be referred as Rå-punk in the early days.

For more stuff on Bristles, check their web-page

Click on the images to expand the higher resolution to see track-list etc.