You would almost forget it if you were to judge by the streaming behavior of the average Spotify listener, but a lot of exciting things are happening underground, almost everywhere in the world. Wild Honey Records gave Wilson Wilson – singer/guitarist of the great Bee Bee Sea – free rein to put together a compilation to show a wider audience what’s going on in the wild and weird garage-punk scene in Italy. That led to Hit Mania Rok ’24 (subtitle: Rok sounds from Spaghettiland), a collection of unreleased songs by fourteen young Italian bands with illustrious names: Five Bucks, The Bad Plug, WWWILSON.IT feat. TEGI, DADGAD, SNÜFF, Sleap E, Brioss, FREEZ, Teo Wise, Siouxie & the Skunks, A/LPACA, (+39) 375-649-94-64 My Telephone Number, YUZZ, and of course Bee Bee Sea with the closing track.

The tunes have in common that they are raw and straightforward, quite lo-fi, and with ‘ROK’ in the title, even when that is not necessary (as in the cover of Misfits’ Hybrid Moments by FREEZ, here renamed Hybrid Moments ROK). Wilson explains: “If you’re wondering what the word ‘ROK’ means, I’ll admit that I’m not entirely sure either. I just know that at some point, the words ‘rock’ and ‘rock n roll’ started to feel redundant. I think it was years ago when someone—probably Perthe, the guitarist in Yonic South—wrote ‘ROK’ in the description of a Facebook event or in Ig stories or whatever. From then on, we started using ‘ROK ‘ more and more until it became something we can’t live without and that now belongs to everyone.” Nevertheless, this is so much fun that any country where a counter-voice is needed, should have an album like this released every year.

Hit Mania Rok ’24 is out digitally and on cassette through Wild Honey Records.

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