A guess at O'Brian's appeal to genre readers.
Went out to watch my son's band perform in a tiny venue deep in Hollywood (directly across from Paramount), causing me to reflect on the differences between the punk scene back in the late seventies, when I was going to see X, Black Flag, the Mau-maus, and similar bands I no longer remember (those guys I do recollect both because of the power of their music and because of the abandon and the violence of the attendees), still the songs are the songs.