Is it just that they are heavily influenced by something great (NC), that came before them,
Of course not, it's more like: How interesting would a new band called "Porno Pistols" playing 3 chord punk versions of "God Save Prince Charles" be? Enough is enough.
This is a great example, perhaps even without you knowing completely why. Calling your rip-off group after your idols, and missing the point of the real genius in the original name: sex/ piss tools, is EXACTLY what makes rip-offs so boring. But great rip-offs exist too, like parodies, or pastiches. A more creative Sex Pistols rip-off group would have worked on the pun, rather than the name itself. A 3 chord version of God Saves the Queen sounds interesting in a way too, because the original had at least six (the pistols had way cool 'middle eights' in their songs, and were sometimes even soloing on different changes in one song. OK, they were simplistic hard rock changes, but nevertheless). To be able to even reduce a pistols song, sounds interesting to me, just like the ramones and sixties thrash bands were cool in reducing fifties r'n'r. Regards, Remco Takken now playing: Jerry Lee Lewis Live at the Starclub in Hamburg