Anti-Nowhere League

Formed in 1979 in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Anti-Nowhere League belong to the first wave of English punk with a raw, fast and confrontational sound at the intersection of punk rock, street punk and hardcore. Fronted from the start by singer Nick “Animal” Culmer, the band came to notice in the early 1980s with the single “Streets of London” and, above all, “So What”, a track that became central to their career both for its provocative lyrics and the controversy surrounding its release. The debut album We Are… The League appeared in 1982, followed by The Perfect Crime in 1987 before the group split at the end of the decade. Revived in the early 1990s—partly in the wake of Metallica’s cover of “So What”—Anti-Nowhere League resumed gigging and later issued Scum in 1997, Kings and Queens in 2005, The Road to Rampton in 2007 and The Cage in 2016, on which the band hardened its approach further. In 2017 they released League Style, an outlier devoted to reggae covers, illustrating a repertoire that remains rooted in British punk energy while keeping ties to the oi! and street punk scenes.