CONVICT CLASS — Not the Enemy.Best proper punk album of the decade!!!! Convict Class aren't a nostalgic act, they are the real deal. Review by Mark.J.

(Randale Records, 2026)

Warrnambool is not Melbourne. This is worth saying upfront, because so much Australian punk coverage gravitates toward the capital cities and their venues, their interconnected scene politics, while the regional centres do the actual work of keeping the music alive in the places where it has always mattered most. Convict Class are from Warrnambool on the Great Ocean Road — Peek Whurrong and Kirrae Whurrung country — a four-piece who formed in October 2021 and have moved with a speed and seriousness of purpose that makes a lot of longer-established acts look like they're standing still.

This zine described their debut, Generation of Discontent (Goatsound/Jason Fuller, 2024), as a glorious punk classic, and the assessment holds. Twelve consecutive anthems. "We Are Not" and its "fuck caviar, we eat pub grub" precision. "Dirty Monarch" going for the Royal Family's throat with the specificity of a band that actually means it. "Conspiracy Theory" hit the dynamic peak that the debut was building toward. ..and "Wank Sock." The full structural self-assurance of a band that knew exactly what they were doing on take one. The thing that the review tried to establish, and that the band have since made impossible to argue with, is that Convict Class aren't doing nostalgia tourism through the British punk and Oi! movement — they're doing the actual thing, from a place nobody expected it, for reasons that remain entirely their own.

The Rebellion Festival in Blackpool confirmed it at scale. Standing in that room — forty-plus years of the scene's institutional memory in the audience, people who saw the original movement first-hand and have seen every imitation since — and watching Sten Gun, Benno, Shane and Al make a room full of strangers know every word before the set is over is not a small achievement. An Australian punk band from regional Victoria earning that response at Rebellion isn't a novelty; it's a result. 

The band returns to Rebellion this year, and a mini- UK tour after, which reinforces the argument further — turns out the songs work everywhere the conditions are right, which is to say everywhere people are tired and angry and still showing up anyway.

Not the Enemy is the second album, and it opens with "War" — not a metaphor, not a scene-setter, just the word and the proposition behind it, immediate as a door coming off its hinges. The record's sequencing is deliberately brutal in that way: "Loser" follows without a breath and thrives in it's Pistols/Clash/Sham 69 guitar glory, "Old School Punk" plants the flag for exactly what this band believes constitutes the term and this is wild, blistering number makes you rock out immediately with classic solid hard rock/early Oi! vibes, and by the time "Anger Management" arrives as track four, you've had no opportunity to settle. This is the correct approach. Punk records that give you time to get comfortable before they make their argument are doing it wrong.

"Have You Been Told" sits at the record's midpoint with the lyrical precision that makes Convict Class consistently worth paying attention to — this is a band that writes about specific things that are actually happening to specific people, not vague discontents dressed up in leather. "Down On The Docks" is the record's most explicitly working-class statement, geography and labour, and the particular texture of a life lived outside the cities that generate the coverage. Both of those tracks remind me of some of The Business's finest tracks; "Only Fans" does more with its title than the obvious joke would suggest, pointing to the broader economy of attention and who profits from it. Plus, any damn track that starts off with a Minder sample is solid gold in my eyes. And the thing is, Convict Class are witty and funny as hell, whilst being utter geniuses at songwriting! These bastards hook you in with every track.

Then track eight: "Not the Enemy." The album's title track in position eight is a structural statement — you've earned this by now, the record has been making the argument, and here is the thesis with the full weight of everything that came before it sitting behind every word. Anyone who watched it land at The Tote, at Rebellion, anywhere on the UK run, knows what it does to a room. The studio version doesn't soften that; if anything, it clarifies the target. "Maximum Impact" and "Planet Earth (brilliant Duran Duran cover)" close the record without flinching, the latter doing the work that every genuine punk record's closer should do: leaving you with the question of what you're going to do about it rather than giving you an easy exit. Also dug how Maximum Impact reiterates the famous Last Resort slogan-No Mess No Fuss, Just Pure(or Maximum) Impact.

Benno's guitar work carries that bluesy pub-rock quality — the Angels, the harder end of Australian rock — that gives Convict Class more tonal range than straight Oi! typically allows. 

Shane and Al are the kind of rhythm section that makes this look easy, which means they're very good. Sten Gun sounds like a cockney pirate, and this is a compliment. There's a rawness that studio polish would destroy; the recordings know better than to try.

Not the Enemy is a stronger, more assured record than the debut, which was already very, very good. That killer trajectory is the most intriguing thing about Convict Class right now. Warrnambool shouldn't have to send its best punk band to Blackpool to get noticed. The fact that it did, and the response it got, is something worth sitting with. This world-shattering band has achieved so much in so little time, and the wild thing is Convict Class is only beginning their clear global punk domination.

THIS BRILLIANT ALBUM DROPS AT THE END OF JUNE ON RANDALE RECORDS.

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