Sometimes, even when you are way ahead of the pack, you don’t get the credit you deserve.

Bearing that dubious distinction in punkdom are imitable Australian stalwarts the Saints. As the Brisbane band found out, sometimes you are just not quick enough on the draw. Though they’d been playing a supercharged, aggressive brand of rock that would become known as punk since 1975, they were beaten to the punch and have long been overlooked in the history books. Ed Kuepper, guitarist and Chris Bailey’s coauthor on most of the Saints early classics, summed it up best in an interview Australian Broadcasting Corp in 2003:

“One thing I remember having had a really depressing effect on me was the first Ramones album. When I heard it [in 1976], I mean it was a great record…but I hated it because I knew we’d been doing this sort of stuff for years. There was even a chord progression on that album that we used…and I thought, ‘Fuck. We’re going to be labeled as influenced by the Ramones,’ when nothing could have been further from the truth.”

Though the Saints are hardly the household name they deserve to be, Bailey and Kuepper penned a string of punk rock classics: mindblowing, primal rock-and-roll surging with guitar-driven blasts, explosive rhythms and always topped by Bailey’s vocals up front. It’s become almost de rigeur, textbook stuff for punk bands to ape the sonic pummeling of the Saints, but few to none have equaled the power and ferocity of the Saints in their prime.

Kuepper split after 1978’s Prehistoric Sounds. Bailey carried on with the name through the 1980s, hitting worldwide with 1987’s All Fool’s Day, while also getting out a series of solo records. This past July saw Bailey and Kuepper back on stage together after three decades for the occasion of the Queensland Music Festival, where they ripped through the band’s classic material. Bailey and the latest version of the band come to Buffalo this week for what is bound to be a memorable and loud Monday evening.

The Saints play Monday, October 29, at 9pm at Mohawk Place, 47 East Mohawk Street (855-3931). Handsome Jack and Trailer Park Tornados open. $12.

The Rundown: Three essential Saints classics

(I’m) Stranded (1976)

A nihilistic shot of barroom rock turned way up and made fast, aggressive and dangerous. The title track—a catastrophic salvo of Kuepper’s buzzing, razor-sharp guitar and Bailey’s snarling, disaffected vocal—has been credited as the first punk single released outside of the US, beating the UK blitz started by the Damned by a month. It’s as crystallizing and anthemic as any punk single you can muster, whether you look to Iggy, the Pistols, Clash or bruddahs Ramone. Like any great rock-and-roll song, it sounds as fresh today (30-plus years, if you can believe it) as it did then. As an album, (I’m) Stranded doesn’t rest on that title track; it comes fully loaded with tracks like the ragged blues sprawl of “Messin’ With the Kid” and the potent “Nights in Venice.”

—donny kutzbach

Eternally Yours (1977)

The title of the Saints’ second record has proved prophetic; some 30 years after its release, the album remains a classic. Building on (I’m) Stranded’s wall of guitars, primitive rhythms and swaggering vocals, album number two added plenty of experimentation, both lyrically and sonically. For quick proof, check out the horn-driven classic “Know Your Product,” a three-and-a-half-minute indictment of the commercialism and glad-handing sales pitches that the Saints were unintentionally coping with at the time. Indeed, the album was likely a statement to the record company execs, critics and fans who hoped to pigeonhole the band into the easy “punk” category. Coupled with softer touches—the song “Memories Are Made of This” flirts with balladry while containing the catchy little couplet “You’re living your life in a chain gang/You’re so well guarded/You’re living your life in a chain gang/You’re so retarded”—and lyrical drama, Eternally Yours is the Saints’ undisputed masterpiece. Too bad the band’s record label didn’t feel the same way. Despite boasting a klatch of single-worthy songs, Eternally Yours suffered from zero promotion and immediately slipped into cutout bin obscurity (and cult album glory).

—mark norris

Prehistoric Sounds (1978)

Described by many as the Saints’ lost masterpiece (due in no small part to the fact that the band’s American label, Sire, didn’t deem it worthy of release), Prehistoric Sounds proved to be the last album featuring the dynamic Kuepper/Bailey songwriting team. While the album has earned a certain historical significance as the Saints Mk. I’s swansong, it’s hardly a nostalgia trip. The record took the stylistic experimentation presented on Eternally Yours to new levels. Album opener “Swing for the Crime” focused on tight, jazzy arrangements while a subdued Bailey compared the band’s plight (among other things) to the sin of the century. A raging take on the Otis Redding classic “Security” certainly didn’t tear up the charts, but it did reaffirm the Saints’ reputation as the era’s most effective song interpreters. Brooding and hypnotic, Prehistoric Sounds was actually the group’s most “evolved” record to date, despite its title.

—mark norris