Characteristics
Due to the predominant use of guitars in punk's rock music roots, the use of synthesizers was controversial within the punk scene even though the punk music culture collectively embraced an anti-establishment political stance. It was very rare, particularly in America, for punk musicians to use synthesizers or keyboards at all to make punk music, let alone replacing the guitars with them. While the rejection of using guitars was an extension of the logic of punk music's anti-establishment politics, synthpunk bands went farther than many fans were willing to extend that principle, and synthesizer-based punk rock groups had small following as a whole. It is probably due to this issue that the identification of a synthesizer-based, sub-genre of punk rock took so many years to become identified as a collective genre.
Synthesizers playing the role of lead and rhythm guitars meant that much of the technique of synthesis relied on making full, harmonic lead timbres, similar to the synthesizer lead roles in some 1970s progressive rock and jazz fusion genres.
As yet, there is no information on the technique of synthpunk musicians aside from an article in Keyboard magazine from 1982 in which The Units are interviewed.
Read more about this topic: Synthpunk