How It All Began
If someone had told me I'd write another post here after fifteen years, I probably would've laughed. Yet here we are. This isn't a revival of the blog, but a small trip back in time to explain what happened, why the posts stopped, why Pankerijada existed in the first place, and what this little corner of the internet meant to me.
Back in 2006/07, I began writing about punk music and local events on my original blog (which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore) on a local blog community website. At that time, I had already discovered more than plenty punk bands from all over the world, and I wanted to share what I was finding with others. However, I quickly realized that the local blog wasn't enough. It reached people around me, but I wanted to connect with the wider punk community around the world.
The Birth of Pankerijada
"Pankerijada" in Croatian roughly translates to a "Punk Gathering", "Punk Festival", or a "Rally of Punks". That meaning perfectly captured the exact spirit of what we eventually set out to build. I believe, if my memory serves me correctly, that I probably had another Blogspot page before Pankerijada, although I honestly don't remember what happened to it. Those were the days of MySpace, Facebook, forums, and endless hours spent discovering new bands and talking with people from different punk scenes. I shared music with them, they shared music with me, and slowly a small international network began to form.
At the same time, I was becoming increasingly frustrated with what was happening around me locally. The scene felt limited, with many people focused mainly on metal and rock, or commercial punk. As a young and frustrated punk kid, I wanted to show that punk was so much more than just Sex Pistols. There were countless subgenres, thousands of bands, and entire worlds of music that many people had never heard.
One of my friends felt exactly the same frustration so we started this blog. We didn't just want to create another blog where people could download a few albums and move on. We wanted to create a place, a community space, where people could discover bands, share music, announce tours, exchange ideas, and maybe one day even help bring bands to play through local promoters. And that was the moment Pankerijada was born.
An Unexpected Community
Looking back today, I still don't fully understand how two young kids with broken English managed to create a blog that suddenly caught the attention of so many people. Somehow, almost overnight, Pankerijada began growing. I don't know what the "secret sauce" was, or if there even was one. Maybe it was simply the right time, the right place, and a genuine passion for discovering and sharing music. For a small punk blog run by two people in 2009, getting around 1,000 to 2,000 visitors per day felt completely insane.
Our approach was actually quite simple. We wanted to find great punk bands, especially the ones that deserved more attention, and introduce them to people who might never have discovered them otherwise. We weren't trying to build some huge project, we just wanted to share the music we loved.
At some point, something changed. The emails began flooding in, first from local bands, but then from much further away. Suddenly we were hearing from bands and people from many parts of the world. It was no longer just about us searching for bands to share. People were sending us demos, asking us to feature their music, and sometimes even mailing physical CDs, fanzines and cassettes because they wanted their bands to reach new listeners. Some of those bands had already disappeared from their local scenes, but their music was still alive and deserved to be heard.
In retrospect, that was probably the moment when we realized Pankerijada had become something bigger than a blog. It became a small bridge between bands and listeners who probably would never have found each other otherwise. The point when I thought, "Okay, maybe we actually created something here," was when Pankerijada reached around 1 million visitors in about less than two years. Don't quote me on the exact numbers, because fifteen years is a long time and my memory is not what it used to be, but I remember that number being completely insane to us.
Shifting Tastes and Dead Links
The downfall began when we ran into problems with hosting the music files. At the time, we were uploading everything to MediaFire, but once they began removing or penalizing accounts and links that contained copyrighted material, things became much harder to manage. After having 200 to 300+ posts, keeping track of everything, replacing broken links, and maintaining the blog turned into a full-time job in itself.
Around 2010, I began to change. My relationship with punk music was not the same as it had been when I launched Pankerijada. I was discovering different sounds, especially hardcore, jazz, hip hop and other genres, and slowly my attention shifted in another direction. Because of that, I gradually lost the same passion for running the blog. It was no longer the same excitement of discovering bands and sharing music like it had been in the beginning.
The final nail in the coffin came in 2011, when I ceased posting regularly. I had lost the motivation to keep writing, and I also began questioning the idea of constantly sharing copyrighted music. By 2012, I decided it was time to officially stop.
Reflecting on it now, it wasn't one single thing that ended Pankerijada. It was a combination of things: the technical problems, the amount of work required, and most importantly, the fact that I had changed as a person and began exploring different music and interests.
A Story Left Untold
A couple of months ago, I suddenly remembered that I still had this old blog sitting. After some digging, I managed to recover the login details, and the first thought that came to my mind was: "Hmm... should I write one more post?"
That simple question was basically how this whole thing kicked off. Not because I wanted to revive Pankerijada, but because after all these years I felt there was a story left untold. A story about why it began, what happened along the way, and why it eventually came to an end. It was unbelievable for me when I managed to log in to my old email and saw that, over these 15 years, bands have continued reaching out to be featured, even in 2026. That is simply mind-blowing to me.
For the Good Old Days
- Title Fight - Shed
- Men I Trust - Untourable Album
- MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday
- Boards of Canada - The Campfire Headphase
- Jon Kennedy - Take My Drum to England
- Basement - Promise Everything
- Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
- DIIV - Deceiver
- Superheaven - Dig Into Me
- Tigers Jaw - Tigers Jaw
- Turnstile - Never Enough
- John Coltrane - Blue Train
- Fontaines DC - Romance
- Elliot Smith - From a Basement on the Hill
- A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
- Mac DeMarco - Salad Days
- The Brian Jonestown Massacre - The Future Is Your Past
- Quantic - The 5th Exotic
- Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther
- Jawbreaker - Dear You
- Matthew Halsall - An Ever Changing View
- Broncho - Just Enough Hip to Be Woman
- DJ Krush - Strictly Turntablized
- Mobb Deep - The Infamous
- My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
- Tommy Guerrero - Road to Knowhere
Moving On and Saying Goodbye
To be completely honest with everyone, this blog will never be revived, nor will I continue posting here. That isn't just because I no longer listen to 90% of the music that was posted on this blog, but also because sharing copyrighted content is illegal. I am genuinely sorry to disappoint those of you who have requested that I re-upload or fix broken links. On top of that, I simply no longer own the physical or digital copies of more than 99% of the music I used to share back then, leaving this blog as a reminiscence of the past. Thanks for all the great conversations, the shared music, and the memories. Keep discovering new music.
