It’s a tough task to try to define or even place punk in the 21st century. If only because I was never punk, I don’t feel like punk is a salvation, but do feel a deep affinity and association with said culture. But we’ve traveled so far beyond post-punk now, far beyond even mall-punk, and even farther beyond pop-punk, what’s left? While there’s not much besides punk and post-punk that I personally feel as redeemable and sacred, there has been a lot of, ahem, power-pop punk cutting a discernible line from Jay Reatard to Exploding Hearts to Cheap Time to Thee Oh Sees and onto Ty Segall and the whole of Dirtnap Records’ and perhaps Burger Records’ rosters. What’s most noticeable is the adherence to hooks, the pliable melodies that drive songs past just a rudimentary, yet cathartic and affirming, beat or rhythm or primordial grunt.

The duo of Jeff Burke and Mark Ryan know how this strain is bound to evolve. Moving onward from the Marked Men to Radioactivity, the hooks have gotten sharper and the melodies much brighter. Somehow their latest, Silent Kill (Dirtnap Records), is less punk, but manages to be just as aggressively pummeling as their Radioactivity self-titled debut. I hate to make comparisons, but there’s a Promise Ring sweetness in the slickness of “Battered” and “Way Out” and a crunchy ode to mid-90s melancholy in line with Jawbreaker and the Smoking Popes. Then again, the new style isn’t that much in tune with that most recent history. I hear Kiss, Thin Lizzy, Foghat, and Grand Funk in much of what Radioactivity does. Giant anthems like “No Connection” and “With You” reflect some kind of FM radio alternate universe where speed finally trumps style.

Seeing the entirety of Silent Kill played live, I can attest that Radioactivity are best ingested about five feet from your face. They provide an unrelenting gauntlet of what exactly punk is in the present moment. It’s everything that it wasn’t supposed to be when it started, and according to Radioactivity, sugary sweet, precise and practiced for celebration and reflection rather than rebellion. Sounds like a brand new era.