Punk music made a strong comeback in Malta yesterday, as veterans of the local scene shared the stage with a younger generation of musicians and fans at GrintaFest in Tigullio, St Julian’s.
Older acts such as RAS, Batteries Not Included (BNI) and Il-Pupi tal-Logħob brought back music familiar to Malta’s long-standing punk community, while many younger members of the audience were watching some of these bands perform live for the first time. Il-Pupi tal-Logħob, in particular, returned specifically for the festival after a period away from the stage, while BNI — whose roots go back to the 1990s — have also been attracting a new generation of followers in recent years.
At the same time, the festival showed that Malta’s punk scene is not simply living off nostalgia. A newer generation of acts has been developing alongside the older bands, with the GrintaFest line-up including BRUDA, 5 Years From Now and BILA, as well as the debut performance of Il-Banda ta’ San Ċipress, a Xtruppaw tribute band. The mix of returning veterans and newer acts gave the festival the character of a meeting point between different generations of Malta’s underground music scene.
RAS played their long-time classic “Xiż-Żobb Trid”, with Ray Schembri still commanding the stage with charisma and energy after decades in Malta’s punk scene, delighting the crowd with songs that have long formed part of the local underground repertoire. RAS itself dates back to the 1990s and has traditionally been considered as the flagship hardcore punk rebellion in the music scene.
BNI and Il-Pupi tal-Logħob, meanwhile, revisited material from their older repertoire, reconnecting with listeners who remember Malta’s earlier punk scene while introducing those songs to an audience that in many cases was hearing them performed live for the first time.
On the other hand, BRUDA offered something distinctly contemporary. Fronted by Rachelle Bezzina, who performs as REA, with Kathryn Morrison on guitar and Nina Musumeci on drums, the all-female trio has brought an explicitly feminist voice into Malta’s punk scene. Their music deals directly with themes including women’s bodily autonomy, misogyny and queer representation, bringing issues that remain largely absent from Malta’s mainstream music into a deliberately confrontational punk setting.
In that sense, BRUDA taps into the wider tradition of feminist punk and riot grrrl that internationally produced acts such as Bikini Kill and later Le Tigre, while giving that tradition a distinctly Maltese voice. Their emergence is also notable in a local punk and rock scene that, historically, has been overwhelmingly dominated by all-male bands.
GrintaFest itself was conceived as a continuation of Malta’s DIY punk tradition. Organised by the team behind the Smashed to Shit: The MaltaPunks Zine, the festival drew inspiration from Festaħwid, the influential punk festival that gave local underground bands a platform during the 1990s and early 2000s. Rather than simply recreating that past, however, GrintaFest brought those roots together with a younger scene that is increasingly producing its own bands, audiences and ideas.
Feature image: BRUDA.
Newsroom
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