Drexl – The Bee’s
(EP, download)
A self-released quatrain of strangeness and charm from these Plymouth brethren. Opener ‘Phew!’ conjoins restraint and abandon effectively and with precision to create a rare union of rage and wit. There are subtleties here that are not always evident within the sonic maelstrom of the quartet’s live assaults. Presumably, the airless permafrost of the Clipper Bar does them scant justice. Next up is ‘Life becomes Like Song Title’s’, titular grocers’ apostrophes (something of a motif) notwithstanding, the track demonstrates Drexl’s considerable breadth and range. Vocalist Muirs sounds like Mark E Smith singing the Saints before the chorus kicks in and vomits steaming hot chunks of opprobrium into your ears. Meaty, chunky and ultimately nourishing.
‘Climb’ opens with intent as some laconic harmonics lull us into a false sense of security before a full-fledged Bad Brains style shitfit kicks in. There are subsequent passages of respite, glowering petit morts that enable the coruscating attack that follows to achieve escape velocity. Throughout, the vocal delivery is both credible and innovatory. Closer, ‘I Zone Out’ rages from the back of the bus as the whole fucking charabanc careers toward aural oblivion. A broadcast from the last Tannoy echoes across the sonic wasteland, f-bombs are detonated, everyone gets sweaty and we all fall down.
These brothers have their own thing going on, baby. Can you dig it?
The Phobics – Deptford Calling
(album, Born To Booze)
Whither the ageing punk rocker? Indeed we do. That said, it’s apparent that we are withering with some fire in our enlarged bellies. Physically, the Phobics may resemble a biker-jacketed offshoot of the Junior Victor Meldrew Society, but from their nose-pickin’, v-sign flickin’ cover shot and across the dozen tracks assembled on ‘Deptford Calling’, it’s clear that the requisite levels of piss and vinegar remain undiluted, irrespective of the grey pubes.
We’re not gonna change the system, you’re not gonna change the system, the Phobics ain’t gonna change the system. What they are doing is evoking a strong sense of time and place – essentially the frozen wastes of London during the winter of 78/79 and contemporizing it in an effective way. Despite the title, ‘Deptford Calling’ is no homage to The Clash (the only stylistic reference being a brief burst of ‘Tommy Gun’ drums at the end of the Members-esque ‘In My Street’, a song that adds a veneer of romanticism to Mark Perry’s ‘I was born in Deptford, but I can’t walk there any more’). Sonically, their provenance owes more to the Ramonically inclined stylings of the Lurkers, Rudi et al.
The quintet have traded youth for experience – prior to their formation at the end of the century, all parties had served time and paid dues in a litany of bands dating back to Year Zero. Such venerability is evident in the effortless way in which the group can create a hook – particularly so in tracks such as ‘Split Personality’ – a lurkerised slice of social alienation built on a solid ‘Steppin’ Stone’ foundation; the catchy, Dickies-infused angst of ‘One Girl’; and the cheery doomsday nihilism of ‘No Faith’.
In addition to honing their chops, the years of service on the punk frontlines have imbued the group with considerable self-awareness and a strong sense of humour. Opener ‘Punk Rock Show’ is ambivalent, self-effacing and slightly folk-tinged, ‘Make It If You Try’ an exercise in bubblegum irony, whereas ‘Die Slowly’ exposes the ‘Hope I die before I get old’ motto to the stark light of the ageing rocker’s shaving mirror. Elsewhere ‘Like a Child’ evokes Eddie & The Hot Rods at their catchiest, while ‘Boy Band’ succeeds with an attempt at deconstructing the X-Factor phenomenon. The Phobics wrap up by exposing their garage roots with some style – ‘2 am’ whips up a ‘Nuggets’ frenzy with great economy, while closer ‘When You’re Dead’ walks with the Shadows of the Night.
The Phobics know exactly what they’re doing, do it with considerable nous and seem to enjoy themselves. How many of us can top that?
Punk In Ulster
Shellshock Rockers (Spit Records)
Catalogue Number: GOB 2
Released: 8 February 2012
Format: CD
Over the past year, Spit Records has established itself as the virtual home of Northern Irish punk. Founded in 2011 by Sean O’Neill, co-author of the NI Punk bible, ‘It Makes You Want To Spit’, the label’s first release – ‘Vive Lyon!’ – captured The Outcasts on manoeuvres in France back in 1983/84. The label’s second release – a 24-track compilation companion to the oft-bootlegged NI punkumentary, ‘Shellshock Rock’ (the definitive visual compendium of old school punk in Ulster) – contains previously unreleased studio recordings laid down between 1978-81 by six of the bands at the beating heart of said scene: The Androids, Ex-Producers, Shock Treatment, White Noise, The Co-Ordinates and Acme.
Each band contributed four songs apiece, duly spanning the breadth of their active service. As with the previously mentioned ‘Vive Lyon!’ – the artwork is resolutely ‘of the era’ – in stunning black and white! In line with what is fast becoming an established Spit Records qualitative feature, ‘Shellshock Rockers’ comes complete with an expansive 12-page booklet, in which ex-members of each of the featured bands spill the beans on the inspirations, influences and minutiae behind each song.
The album opens in sterling style, with The Androids tribute to the glory of the New York Dolls, ‘Lipstick Heroes’, riding a riff not dissimilar to Devo’s ‘Mongoloid’. The Dolls were a sizeable influence on the nascent NI punky waver scene, with Brian Young of Rudi, in particular, being an obsessive Dolls fan. The Ex-Producers ‘Newer Wave ‘79’ is another atypical piece of NI quality, but my personal favourite on the album is Shock Treatment’s ‘On The Line’ – a two-minute summation of everything that made Ulster such an exciting place to live as the seventies died, and the eighties spluttered into life. White Noise’s ‘BBC/UTV’ isn’t far behind, either – another lost gem, recovered and polished with a little spittle and an oily rag. By the time we reach The Co-Ordinates and Acme, the more commercially orientated elements of the Irish showband tradition move front of stage, complete with handclaps and a certain refinement of melody. This basic pattern repeats itself four times as the disc progresses. To these ears, The Androids, Ex-Producers, Shock Treatment and White Noise have far more to offer consistently than The Co-Ordinates or Acme, but that doesn’t make it an any-the-less-invigorating journey, from start to finish.
Along with a couple of equally essential private press collections compiled by O’Neill’s authorial partner-in-crime, Guy Trelford, namely ‘Made In Ulster: The Best Of NI Punk Volume 1’ and ‘Punk Rock/Powerpop/Pub Rock: The Best Of NI Punk: Volume 2’, the case for an Ulster Nuggets box set is growing more compelling with every passing year. Whether Spit Records are equipped to handle a task of that magnitude will ultimately be made by you lot sticking your hands in your pockets and supporting what, to my mind, genuinely demands ‘institution’ status. Strictly limited to a mere 500 copies, the link is at the foot of the track listing. You know instinctively what to do next!
01. The Androids – ‘Lipstick Heroes’ (2.24)
02. Ex-Producers – ‘Newer Wave ‘79’ (2.21)
03. Shock Treatment – ‘On The Line’ (1.59)
04. White Noise – ‘BBC/UTV’ (1.21)
05. The Co-ordinates – ‘We’re Only Monsters’ (2.18)
06. Acme – ‘Jealousy’ (2.52)
07. The Androids – ‘Nine To Five’ (1.53)
08. Ex-Producers – ‘P-Check’ (2.28)
09. Shock Treatment – ‘(This Week’s) Manchester’ (2.39)
10. White Noise – ‘Conscious’ (1.30)
11. The Co-ordinates – ‘Mercenary’ (3.12)
12. Acme – ‘Beer Hall In Munich’ (2.49)
13. The Androids – ‘Terminal Breakout’ (2.38)
14. Ex-Producers – ‘Never Before Never Again’ (3.16)
15. Shock Treatment – ‘This Must Be Love’ (3.06)
16. White Noise – ‘College Boy’ (2.23)
17. The Co-Ordinates – ‘Prelude’ (4.27)
18. Acme – ‘Johnny Can’t Play’ (2.35)
19. The Androids – ‘Suggestions?’ (1.01)
20. Ex Producers – ‘The System Is Here’ (2.40)
21. Shock Treatment – ‘Future Plans’ (3.01)
22. White Noise – ‘Spidermen’ (1.57)
23. The Co-Ordinates – ‘Disco’ (2.53)
24. Acme – ‘Bad News’ (2.32)
Total running time 70.56
The Androids – ‘Lipstick Heroes’
Global Hardcore Round-Up
Fjordhölla – ‘Absalom Rising’ (album, Nordic Gomorrah)
The three-track debut album from this Tromso-based black thrash combo utilises the octet’s six-guitar attack to create interlocking layers of shredding and that metal noise these bands always make to move dust around in front of speakers. Opening track ‘Abaddon’s Wrath’ goes on for half of side one, before ‘Coughing Up A Beozar’ kicks in sounding much the same. The whole of the flip is taken up by the epic ‘Belial Wants To Wreck’, which bangs on until you could scream. Vocalist Anders Volkaar sounds like he’s choking on a piece of shortbread for most of the disc, but you can make out the odd reference to Dennis Wheatley style dark gods, so he’s evidently some kind of non-orthodox Christian. Ideal for any teenage boy who enjoys wearing black mail-order duds and is yet to see a grown woman naked.
Quim Anger – ‘Puta Madre’ (EP, Jorobado Records)
Corruscating post-riot grrrl four-track from Gijon, Spain. Opener ‘My Pussy Hates You’ sets the tone for a quartet of savage anti-male rhetoric that can only serve to promote unity wherever it is heard. My Spanish is a little shaky, but second track ‘Vagina Dentalis’ appears to be a harrowing recountment of taking one’s fanny teeth to a male dentist that subsequently treats the unfortunate patient with diffidence. On the other side, ‘No Fuck’ sounds like a mash up between Chron Gen and Daphne & Celeste. The closing cover of ‘I Will Survive’ needs to be heard to be believed.
Bondi Cigar – ‘No Strides/White Pointers/Liver Damage’ (Single, OzStraight)
Imagine if there was an Australian version of Peter and the Test Tube Babies. Now imagine them banging themselves over the heads with stacks of Macc Lads albums for about thirty years, then going into a recording studio. However, despite sounding like a clichéd trio of beered up morons, the Bondi’s are actually fierce advocates of the straight edge lifestyle. Bassist Dave Lee claims to have ‘given up almost everything’ and despite a series of health scares that saw him admitted to hospital suffering from a combination of mineral deficiencies, continues to adhere to his ascetic regimen. Similarly, drummer/vocalist Ed Bondi claims only to eat foodstuffs that ‘do not cast a shadow’, while guitarist Steve Cromwell is the radical of the group claiming that abstinence represents an addiction in itself and haven given up everything else is attempting to eschew even that. We wish them well.
Steve Cromwell’s Straight Edge manifesto
Bloodbiscuit 42 – ‘Jakub Avira Are A Motherfucker’ (Album, Wonko)
Odd one this … a thirteen track album entirely devoted to exposing the shortcomings of the eponymous Avira. Although billed as a band, the album appears to be the work of Helmut Gallenstein, a multi-instrumentalist from Bremen. Obviously, Jakub Avira has done him great wrong, as he is portrayed here as if he were some kind of war criminal, or Stuart Maconie. Much of the music sounds like a rough-hewn version of 999, although as a sustained exercise in invective against one man it’d be difficult to top this. No amount of Googling left me any the wiser as to who Aviva is and what he’s done, but whatever it may be it seems as if Gallenstein/Bloodbiscuit is refusing to let it lie. Best tracks include ‘Jakub Go Crazy Felch Dwarf’ and ‘Avira Mom Have Lovely Nose’. Apparently the ‘42’ suffix represents a tribute to Gallenstein’s favourite author, Dan Brown.
Helmut Gallenstein message board
Discourse – In What Ways Are You Contributing To The Furtherance Of This System? (12” EP, Cloy Records)
Thirty-two tracks of damn near identical d-beat from an Ottawa quartet formed from the ashes of Distruct, who broke up last year. Evidently influenced by Discharge (aren’t we all?), many of the band’s song titles are actually longer than the lyrics that adorn the sequential staccato blasts of fuzz and thud. For example, ‘Is It Reasonable To Impose A Regime Of Vegeterianism Upon Household Domestic Animals And Other Pets’ comes across as two three syllable grunts on vinyl. Unless I’m playing it at the wrong speed. In terms of production, no expense has been spared to evoke the state-of-the-art methods used by such groups as Chaotic Discord and One Way System, and the album duly sounds as if it were recorded from within a concrete block by someone in a hurry. Perhaps most impressively, the EP is accompanied by a 128-page book that explores many of the underlying themes that are referenced within the band’s lyrics, as well as providing a first class guide to free drinking fountains in Ontario. Furthermore, the pack also includes a guide to nuclear free resources located to the south of the Ottawa River, and some pictures of the band painting a youth centre and helping an old man across a busy freeway at 3 am.
Discourse Ideological Resource Bank
Devil’s Histories
Paul Woods and Gavin Baddeley (Ian Allan Publishing)
Comprised of God’s Assassins – The Medieval Roots of Terrorism, Saucy Jack – The Elusive Ripper, and Vlad The Impaler – Son of The Devil, Hero of the People, the Devil’s Histories represent a trilogy offering fresh perspectives and insights into some of the darker passages of human history.
All three books examine the role that the past has played in shaping the present, combining historical research with an understanding of modern culture to create an engaging framework of cause and effect, drawing disparate events together in a similar manner to that employed by broadcaster and journalist James Burke in his acclaimed Connections book and television series. In addition to exploring the motivations behind some of mankind’s most inhumane acts, The Devil’s Histories also serve to highlight the way in which society’s reliance upon hierarchies inevitably leads to abuses of power that often manifest in the form of visceral atrocities. While this is particularly evident in Gods Assassins and Vlad The Impaler, it also holds true in Saucy Jack – the mysterious Ripper being the product of a supposedly democratic society, that was – as it is today – controlled by a privileged, largely hereditary elite who attached little value to the lives of its poorest subjects.
Although there are evident themes that connect the trilogy, each instalment stands upon its own merits and represents a fully realised, self-contained recountment of its subject matter.
God’s Assassins, the opening book in the series, traces the roots of what is perceived today as ‘terrorism’ to its origin in the medieval era. However, despite the weighty subject matter, this is no arid slog through the dusty corridors of academic history, as the authors combine effectively realised first person ‘faction’ with reportage of the era to produce an engaging document of the past. This is interspersed with explanations of how events dating from the Christian Crusades, and before, have resonated across the centuries. “We wanted to write something that brought to life not just the dry historical facts, but also the mythology and cultural manifestations surrounding our subjects – from crackpot conspiracy theories to movies or even computer games,” Baddeley explains. “It’s the sort of stuff many eminent historians miss, but can be vital in understanding how the past can impact on our world today.”
Through identifying the genesis of the modern terrorist mindset as originating amid the legendary Hashishim cult (from which we get the term ‘assassin’), Baddeley and Woods not only throw light on the current climate of terror, but also identify the rationale that lies behind the action of many contemporary fundamentalist extremists. The book also effectively explores the modern phenomenon of political assassination, again tracing its source back almost one thousand years.
This is history viewed through the lens of popular culture, and in recounting its sequence of events God’s Assassins touches upon such varied and significant lodestones as the use of drugs to create fanatics, the concept of brainwashing and sleeper agents, and the manner in which William Burroughs evoked the spirit of the Hashishani to create a fictional figure of terror, thus unwittingly echoing the creative fictions that would later be employed by the West to wrest basic freedoms away from their citizenry. “This is popular history that’s unashamed of its connections to the realms of pop culture and disreputable scholarship,” Baddeley asserts. “You can learn something while getting your hands dirty. Just because your research includes reference to Japanese gore films, punk rock lyrics and occult manuals, needn’t mean you’re not entirely serious about delving into more conventional historical sources. We’ve tried to come at our subjects from unusual angles, unafraid to highlight the more lurid and fervid aspects when the topic suggests – or even demands – such an approach. The desired result is a sinister phantasmagoria firmly rooted in solid historical research – essentially the kind of books I’d like to see more of myself, blending a respect for the past with a firm finger on the quickening pulse of cutting edge modern culture.”
Saucy Jack deals with an entirely different kind of bogeyman. Again evoking a strong sense of its core era – this time, the squalid backstreets of Victorian London – the authors follow the creation of the Ripper mythos from its origins, to the present day.
Jack the Ripper may or may not have existed in a physical sense – many forests have been felled to service books aimed at nailing who he actually was. Here, the long list of possible Jacks is identified and examined, with the way in which each subsequent revelation served to exacerbate the legend insightfully explained. Indeed, the authors take their own swing at identifying who they believe the Ripper was, but I’m not giving that away here.
In addition to untangling a wealth of conspiracy theories, Saucy Jack considers the manner in which the developing image of the Ripper has embedded itself in the popular consciousness, a dynamic that has been, and continues to be, extended via books, films, video games and even rock’n’roll. Parallel to this, the way in which the idea of Jack the Ripper as the first, and most elusive, serial killer has compelled others to follow in his bloody footsteps is also fully considered. The book also exposes the manifest hypocrisy of those who evoke ‘Victorian values’ as if the period was some kind of age d’or of enlightened moral fortitude. Woods and Baddeley’s evocation of the period serves to demonstrate how little has changed, as they depict a society controlled by an atavistic elite that exploit those they profess to serve for profit and pleasure.
Like Jack the Ripper, Vlad the Impaler is a figure who has been obfuscated by the mythology that has developed in his wake. In the third volume of the Devil’s Histories, the authors systematically strip away the layers of myth and legend to reveal a ruler who was arguably no more brutal than others of the era in which he existed. Additionally, given the seemingly impossible position that Vlad found himself in as the ruler of a small state (Wallachia) under threat from the 15th century Ottoman superpower to the South and duplicitous monarchies on all other sides, it becomes apparent that there was some justification in his use of extreme brutality to hold his kingdom together and strike terror into those seeking to usurp him.
The book interconnects with both its predecessors in an engaging way. Like God’s Assassins, it examines the struggle for supremacy between competing religious doctrines that continues today, while also shining an objective light upon the way in which Bram Stoker’s use of his ‘Dracul’ sobriquet and aspects of his background to create Count Dracula have skewed subsequent perceptions of him (in the same way that subsequent retellings of The Ripper’s tale have created a distorted image of reality). Indeed, it transpires that Vlad can be viewed as one of the first victims of media demonization – having impaled a number of Saxons disloyal to him, he received a brutal literary kicking once the Gutenberg press got wind of what had been done to their Holy Roman Empire brethren.
As with the two earlier Devil’s Histories, Vlad The Impaler employs fictionalized accounts of actual events that enhance the sense of period and offer fresh perspectives. Similarly, a wide range of figures from popular culture and history are held up alongside the Wallachian Voivode as a means of imparting a greater understanding of the man and his motives.
Although conceived as being an ongoing series, it appears that the Devil’s Histories has fallen victim to the economic clampdown and stalled after its third instalment, with a mooted fourth book on Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey apparently in limbo. Indeed, Vlad The Impaler emerged in a smaller/cheaper format than its predecessors. However, this in no way reduces the appeal of the third book and it would be a great shame if this engaging and enjoyable series were to stop here.
All three books are also available from www.ianallanpublishing.com discerning bookshops and via Amazon
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