Continuing my looks at records I’ve been meaning to listen to (or re-listen to) for sometime with the third full length album from The Damned, Machine Gun Etiquette.

While I’ve always appreciated The Damned, until seeing them live, early in the day at a big Green Day show in Hyde Park a few years ago, I’d always (very unfairly it turns out) thought of them as just another of the early British punk bands.

My view now though is that, along with The Clash and Sex Pistols, they are one of the three cornerstones of the British version of the sound bringing a much needed levity to proceedings while veering off into other areas as they went on which is, in many ways, where Machine Gun Etiquette, picks things up.

As the album kicks off with Love Song, which has become a long standing favourite for the band, it’s clear isn’t just another straight ahead punk record as while it keeps one foot in that sound the vocals and the bass lines hints at something more, a trend continued by the title track.

I Just Can’t Be Happy Today marks an ever greater change as the band begin their first forays into what became goth rock. Here it takes a rather basic form but is more than evident and develops further with Anti-Pope and later the horror punk tinged Plan 9 Channel 7.

Noise, Noise, Noise and Liar take things back in more classic punk directions (with half of The Clash apparently helping out with backing vocals on the former) before Smash It Up (parts 1 & 2) round thing off on a (by punk rock standards) epic finale that tie all of the sounds heard across the album into one package that is a highlight.

With the band seemingly firmly in control of the record for the first time, and with extra instrumentation in the form of keyboards which add a whole new dimension to proceedings, it’s clear why Machine Gun Etiquette remains one of the band’s most well regarded albums.

It also marks the beginning of their development away from basic punk with goth, psyche and more thrown into the mix, the reverberations from which can still be heard not just in their music but throughout alternative music today, but it still has a brilliantly raw edge that lifts the whole thing brilliantly.