http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3943/

Extract:

"All of a sudden, former punk bands evolved into something far more intense and foreboding, bleak and brittle, twisted and metallic: a soundtrack for the oncoming economic and social depression. Post-punk music wasn’t all about blanked-out resignation, however. This dark era in modern British history also evoked a wide-eyed combativeness amongst young people getting into the music business. Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, Josef K and the Gang of Four - to name a few - all dovetailed with the prevailing social climate: they were uptight, tense, eyes-on-stalks, borderline volatile. With the glorious benefit of hindsight, punk’s teenage tantrum in 1976 was a lashing out at the postwar consensus, a desire to break the mould of the cosy conformity that seemed to last from the end of the Second World War to the 1970s. "