The Hates: 30 Years of Hate 1978-2008

Houston's Hates — or at least the trio's sole remaining original member, singer/guitarist Christian Arnheiter — have been waving the circle-A punk-rock flag loud and proud since 1978. How long ago was that? Sid Vicious was still alive, Joey and Johnny Ramone were still speaking to each other and Arnheiter was four years away from his signature Mohawk, a thing of beauty to which all us other Houston Mohicans aspire. Its title sounds like a career-­spanning retrospective, but 30 Years of Hate is all new material that hews to punk's classic themes of protest ("Big Brother," "Moral Majority") and partying ("Gonna Get Pissed Tonight," "Get Wild"). Likewise, save sporadic outbreaks of Irishness — the Pogues-like "Game as Ned," the Thin Lizzy riffing of "Running Riot" — the music is confined to strident first-wave UK gobbers (Sham 69, X-Ray Spex) with dashes of early-'80s California hardcore. The Hates pretty much do one thing, and after three decades of largely thankless toiling in Texas's punk-rock trenches, they do it well. On the band's Web site, Arnheiter writes of a recent Pasadena warehouse party where The Hates had kids one-third his age (he's 52) moshing like mad. Some things never change. Some things don't need to.