The Meanest Of Times is a good album, but with regards to Celtic punk or whatever you wanna call it I much prefer Flogging Molly the Tossers and (of course) the mighty mighty Pogues. Dropkick Murphys are a pretty decent band, but personally I wouldn't really rate them any higher.

eh, I don't have an articulate way to say this, but those other bands are more celtic than DKM. I'd almost call DKM music that was influenced by them, but wasn't a part of them.

If the instruments make the genre, then Korn and Ac/Dc are celtic as well.

If the fact that they cover irish songs makes them celtic, then so is Springsteen and Waits, and both also happen to be african americans too.

Theres clearly a youth there, that grew up on the Pouges, but I don't think DKM ever wanted to be the pouges. In all, I think its part of being in the melting pot, the influences are there, but with each recording and especially the vocalist switch, they have moved further away from the old days of recording punk versions of Finnigans Wake.

meh, I find the Dropkick Murphys music completely uninteresting (and quite boring), but i am bias as I find most modern punk to be quite a bore

I loved them with Mike McColgan on vocals, but once Al Barr replaced him, I mostly lost interest. I liked Al Barr with The Bruisers, but I didn't think that he fit with Dropkick Murphys style at the time. Perhaps they have evolved differently with him by now... presuming that he is still the vocalist at this time. I haven't followed them for nearly ten years now.

Love them.

Picked up The Warrior's Code a while back since I liked the one DKM song that was in The Departed. I quite like it. I'm Shipping Up To Boston is a rockin' track.

The only song of theirs that's caught my attention is "The Stae Of Massachusetts".

the rest is pretty generic, been done 100 times already

I heard DKM for the first time at the Big Day Out this year and they seemed great live, however I rushed home to download their music and discovered it didn't really satisfy as though I'd thought. My conclusion is they're a good pub band to get a kick in your gears.

Yea. They were great with Mike McColgan.

Agreed. I got their album after hearing im shipping off to boston on itunes. I think it was free or something, and then the rest of the album just didn't do much else for me. Good song though.