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This book is well worth looking at buying. It does a very good job of covering 20 years of New Zealand rock over 358 pages.

Is New Zealand punk well represented? Yes, the write ups about the late 80's/early 90's New Plymouth Ima Hitt records and Palmerston North's Yellow Bike label total five pages. I last saw these labels discussed in David Eggleton's book Ready To Fly in a couple of paragraphs. As per usual in New Zealand music books Flying Nun receives a lot of coverage(over two chapters).

Gareth Shute does a good job chronicling the newer punk, hardcore and garage bands such as The D4, The Datsuns, Sommerset, Cobra Khan, Evil Priest, Antagonist, Ghidirah, Missing Teeth etc.

There are some nice black and white photos in this book which were provided by record companies and photograhed live by Blink.

Obviously this book covers much more than punk and the depth of which it covers a period of twenty years of New Zealand rock and for the most part suceeds. I spotted a couple of minor mistakes in one chapter on independent and there might be more minor errors elsewhere. This book retails at $45 and is a much better buy and read than a year's issues of Rip It Up.