This week on Lost in the Static, BMC looks at Rancid’s Tomorrow Never Comes, the band’s 2023 return after a six-year gap, produced by longtime collaborator Brett Gurewitz. There’s also a look at Bad Religion’s Recipe for Hate, the 1993 album that brought songs like “American Jesus” into heavier MTV rotation just before the band’s major-label period, and Pennywise’s Straight Ahead, a late-90s skate-punk record shaped by the band’s momentum, politics, and the loss of founding bassist Jason Thirsk.

The episode also spends time with the UK side of punk and ska, including The Specials’ double A-side “Rat Race” / “Rude Boys Outta Jail” and The Beat’s “Mirror in the Bathroom.” Both songs sit inside a moment when ska, punk, reggae, anti-racist politics, and working-class frustration were colliding in British youth culture.

There’s also a look at Sham 69’s early chart success with “Angels with Dirty Faces,” a band whose chant-like choruses and working-class identity made them one of the most recognizable names in late-70s British punk, even as their shows became notorious for violence in the crowd.

This week’s history also highlights a few major punk figures: Joe Keithley of D.O.A., whose work helped define Canadian hardcore while carrying anti-war, anti-racist, and labor-minded politics into both music and public office; Robert Quine of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, whose guitar work connected New York punk with jazz, avant-garde ideas, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and even the Velvet Underground archive; and Dee Dee Ramone, whose songwriting helped shape the Ramones’ identity through songs like “Rockaway Beach,” “Commando,” “53rd & 3rd,” and “Poison Heart.”

There’s also a look at the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen,” one of punk’s most argued-over chart moments, wrapped in Silver Jubilee controversy, Virgin Records promotion, Malcolm McLaren provocation, and Jamie Reid’s now-iconic sleeve design.

The episode touches on The Damned’s continued evolution into the 1980s, Rise Against’s major chart success with “Savior,” and the strange, high-energy world of Peelander-Z, whose future became uncertain after a serious crash left members badly injured and their equipment destroyed.

Newer and recent music also runs through the show, with tracks from Rat Boy, The Jackets, Goo, Go Betty Go, Pat and the Pissers, and it also features the music of other great bands like Zeke,The Black Keys, Dog Rotten, Agent Orange, The Jam, Motörhead, and more.