The Panics - Cruel Guards

Cruel Guards is the third studio album by Australian indie rock band The Panics, originally released in October 2007 via Dew Process.

The band started out while Jae Laffer (then known by his actual first name, Justin) and Drew Wootton were still at high school in Kalamunda, an outer suburb of Perth, Western Australia. Laffer and Wootton met on their first day of school. The duo then added Drew's younger brother Myles on drums, Paul Otway on bass and Jules Douglas on slide guitar, keyboards and vocals and formed The Panics.

Cruel Guards was the bands first album after signing a new record deal with Dew Process, and it debuted and peaked at number 18 on the Australian ARIA albums charts and was certified gold in 2008.

The album's lead single "Don't Fight It" was released in August 2007, and was featured in an episode of the Australian television drama series, Underbelly and appears on the soundtrack album.

The album was triple j's feature album for the week of 8 October 2007. At the J Awards of 2007, the album won Australian Album of the Year.

Drew Wootton said "It was amazing to win that award. We celebrated for days with the triple j staff and then just fell over."

At the ARIA Music Awards of 2008, the album won the ARIA Award for Best Adult Contemporary Album while Scott Horscroft was nominated for ARIA Award for Producer of the Year and Engineer the Year.

This album is a 2020 reissue on black vinyl with a printed inner sleeve, pressed in Europe via Dew Process.