The Pop Group

However one might describe their music, the Pop Group most certainly were not a pop group, and while they rose to popularity as the first wave of British punk had yet to break, they weren't really punk, either. Despite that, their aggressive fusion of funk, noise, dub, free jazz, proto-punk, post-beat poetics, and untold volumes of forbidden knowledge could probably only have coalesced in 1977, when the rules of rock seemed to have been temporarily suspended in the U.K. Their searing debut album, 1979's Y, was a bold, cathartic work whose unique sound became wildly influential in the post-punk era. After breaking up in 1980, the Pop Group reunited in 2010 for a reunion tour, and the 2015 album Citizen Zombie found them as uncompromised and confrontational as ever.