REDUCTION "Social Disorder" Ep, 2002

Almost 25 years after the release of the Social Disorder Ep, it is unclear what Reduction were actually trying to reduce either with or through their music. Even if it would be far-fetched to pretend that the jury is, to use a common metaphor, still out - I assume the jury fucked off home a long time ago when it comes to this case - I would still personally endeavour that matters of noise nuisance were decidedly not planned to be reduced by this savage crust band that the cruel world seemed to have forgotten. Record sales or audiences might have taken much of the reducing though.

Although they were from Osaka and indulged in crust, Reduction did not seem to have any strong connection with the mythified Gloom or Crust War crew, a discrepancy which, decades later, from an outsider's perspective that could be totally irrelevant, does not give them enough of an aura for their work to get into the Crust Pants Premier League. If you need proof of that just ponder over the absence of any Reduction bootleg badge on Etsy. Not that I care, mind you, my heart has enough room for crust music of all the leagues. In fact, Reduction were recommended to me by a friend a little before I embarked in my epic and highly successful compilation series Distorted Hope and Cruster Rags which allowed for their well-deserved inclusion. 

The band must have started in the late 90's but although their first 1999 demo tape Disruption boasted an artwork that indicated some noizy-crasher-crusty-core Reduction were much closer to traditional Japanese hardcore in the early days. And I would even go as far as declaring that, beside Social Disorder, Reduction were more a metallic Japanese hardcore band than an all-out crustcore one - which might impact their legacy among the unwashed legion. A bold claim I know but a man must be brave sometimes and stand up for what he thinks is right. In the early days the band had two members of a direct crusty punk band called Chaos of Brutality, Naoki and Atsushi - who would, of course, go on to sing in Ferocious X - as well as a member of Last One Standing (a positive hardcore band!) on the guitar and the drummer of Youth Strike Chord (amazingly another posi-core band). This very lineup recorded the Ep in 2001 and it would be released the year after on Mangrove Records, a Tokyo-based label responsible for works from SDS, DSB or Crow.

What makes this Ep a rather fine slice of Japanese crust lies in its abrasiveness and in the reproduction and execution of the style rather than any songwriting flamboyance. The metallic guitar has a thick distorted sound and sometimes reminds me of SDS - a mighty compliment indeed - and the extremity of the vocals (Atsushi really screams his head off like a possessed man condemned to stub his toe on a particularly sharp coffee table for eternity) also points in that foundational direction. The many mid-paced, groovier moments and the transitions make me think that AGE would have been close to Reduction's collective turntable but the level of distortion and pummeling brutality scatter any doubt as to Reduction's intentions: a good old crustcore attack with a crush on Sweden and Distortion Records. Early Truth of Arize on a date with Iconoclast at a restaurant owned by SDS with AGE in the kitchen? Let's go for that.

After the Ep Reduction underwent significant lineup changes with Atsushi notably gone to yell in Swedish and being replaced by the singer of their neighboring partners in crust, Victims of Greed, and a new guitar player who also made noise in Nationstate. The following records are pretty decent and well worth a listen but the heart wants what it wants and in this case it wants to crust things up with Social Disorder (an Ep that still goes for really cheap). The only critique I would formulate is about the almost unreadable cover. I still have no idea what it is meant to represent so your guess is as good as any at this point. Would it make a good-looking shirt? I'll leave the answer to you.       

Reduction Disorder!

       

  

DISDOMESTIC VIOLENCE "S/t" Ep, 2006

It feels like it was only yesterday when I was gloriously engaging in discussing the odd anarchopunk record and very much enjoying myself in the process, almost supernaturally propelled as I was by some great, singable tunes (my next-door neighbour would probably disagree but then she's well into Céline Dion). Well, those times are over. Just like summer recently bid us farewell, so did the half-listenable music you had the luxury, and privilege, to read about here because we are going back to the basics with some loud, primitive, guttural, mums-scaring crust music from Japan. Fuck yeah indeed, old bean. This time around I have been digging a bit deeper into the ole collection and have excavated some lesser-known records from what could be best described as "mid-table crust bands" if not "the second fiddles of the crust choir", but also some other legitimately atrocious works that have sunk into obscurity for a reason and a couple of (minor?) classics to give you the impression that I also own some actually decent records. I have ripped many a work so we are clearly in for the long run. 

And let's start with a band that went for a moniker that manages to sound both awkward in a silly way and also slightly offensive in its utter nonsensicality: Disdomestic Violence. Yes, them. There was no way we could be content just with brilliant lexical ideas like Disfornicate, Dissober or Disturd (a great band with a poor name) and the world needed a band to take things a step further in the great d-beat dadaism. I assume the band meant that they were against domestic violence even though no lyrics can give any clue on this level beside the very cryptic line "Jealousy disturb take care of woman" which could mean anything and epitomises the sense of being lost in translation. To be quite candid, the first time I read about Disdomestic Violence I instantly thought that they cannot have sold much merch during their run but then I remembered I owned a Genital Deformities shirt myself. You will always find a dorky enough punk to spend money on such things. 

If the name does boggle the mind, the music hits all the right keys and solidly reassures the listener that this is not some dodgy anti-PC grindcore band. Disdomestic Violence played classic 90's-style Doom-obsessed Japanese crust reminiscent of Abraham Cross, Macrofarge (the last song must be an "homage") or Battle of Disarm with a thrashing edge and munificent excessive gruff vocals that would make Jon Doom blush as they sound like a moose and a tractor fucking. Yet, Disdomestic Violence do bring some originality in their classic cavecrust attack both in the sound and in the songwriting as they incorporate some Frost-y evil-sounding proto extreme metal influences in some dark transitions but also in the guitar sound and the almost grotesque incantatory intonation. Scum noise future as they offer? 

Clearly this Ep will prove to be too much for many of us but I personally completely validate it and I am of the opinion that, 20 years after its release, it can stand on its own crust pants. The band itself is fairly undocumented and while I thought they had been going for just a couple of years in the mid/late 00's before dissolving into the grand punk Ether, a new record actually came out in 2019 seeing Disdomestic Violence experimenting a bit with heavy psychedelic influences and sludge/drone moments (I have sadly never heard it, I'm just dumbly paraphrasing a review). There is however a (very) rough 2009 demo on youtube that saw the band already toying with metallic sludgecore. This development cannot be said to be isolated when you consider that these Tokyo crusties appeared on the very good Tokyo Sound System compilation cd that brought together traditional Japanese crust bands and some techno or experimental acts, the common thread being underground noisiness. Again, the compilation is no walk in the park - unless your park is a den of rabid hyenas on speed - but you should check it out, especially if you claim to be an Abraham Cross fan (as I KNOW you must be). 

This 2006 Ep was released on DIY Records, the label of Ryuji from Battle of Disarm and on the whole the discerning punk elite of whom I am a honorable representative deems this humble but fierce and punchy record worth getting if you are an obsessive fan of Doom-like bands or of Japanese crust, which is pretty much the same thing.   

Disdomestic Crust           

ICON A.D. "Don't feed us shit" Ep, 1982

This immodest writeup should be my last leisurely stroll in the flowery gardens of 80's anarchopunk for a while, not that I am growing bored with it but I intend to tackle some faster shit when it's time to go back to school next month, something urgent that makes you want to twat your boss. Icon A.D. therefore feels like the ideal band to momentarily part ways with that specific wave as it is an act that is bound to leave a sweet taste on your all delicate palate.

2006 was a great year as far as I am concerned. As I mentioned in a previous review, it was the year when The Day the Country Died was published and the Overground compilation Anti-Society was released, both of which, although they were, strictly speaking, unrelated, worked together to open up further musical and subcultural perspectives and gave momentum to the nerd machine I was steadily becoming by exposing anarchopunk greats to avid me. Moreover, with Zidane headbutting Materazzi in the World Cup final because of what was basically a "your mum is so fat that" joke, probably costing France the game (or so goes the national tragedy anyway and the official narrative), 2006 was very close to being the perfect year indeed. The stenchcore revival was at its peak and I still had a perfect hairline. What could go wrong?

Just like for many other bands, I first heard of the Leeds-based Icon A.D. through the aforementioned cd compilation and the song "Seeing is believing" which was actually an unreleased number from the band that was supposed to appear on a third Ep that never saw the light of day. Luckily enough, miraculously even, Overground Record released the same year the band's discography, Lest we Forget, shortly after Anti-Society. Truth be told the label focused meaningfully on anarchopunk in the mid-00's with retrospective records of The Mob, Rubella Ballet Naked or The Disrupters, all of which swiftly landed in my collection. Cd's were probably not as uncool then as they are now and must have still sold, but interestingly Overground reissued both Icon A.D. and The System's discography on vinyl just a couple of years ago, a sensible move considering most of the record-buying public no longer buy cd's. 

To get back to Icon A.D. I was obviously as proud as a peacock parading on an Aldi carpark to know a band people from my generation were manifestly so uninterested in. And still are for the most part. Just like The Sears, Icon A.D. never seemed to garner much interest outside of some old-timers' who were really into them and almost always quite dithyrambic. Punk works in mysterious ways I guess especially since, like The Sears again, Icon A.D. had a great-looking Flux-like logo that would just look amazing on the jacket of any Insta-obsessed comrade. The London bias that prevailed in the 80's certainly made it more difficult for bands from the North to get noticed, although their Ep's did do well in the indie charts, but these days the equalizing factor and the decontextualization of music through streaming as dominant cultural practice significantly undermines this aspect as most people cannot even be bothered to check where bands are actually from. At the end of the day, I suppose only the real ones know, or care to.

Don't Feed us Shit is close to being a perfect record. It has everything, from the fantastic memorable tunes you can instantly hum to, the upbeat spontaneous, almost naive, energy, the poppy dual female vocals, it is an Ep that has stood the test of time better than a lot of 80's UK bands can claim. The record opens with a riff reminiscent of the Cockney Rejects but the song quickly goes in a more melodic, positive way as if the Londoners had been fed exclusively on Lost Cherrees or A-Heads. Icon A.D. were primarily an old-school punk-rock band (not to mention a family affair with husband, wife and some siblings) and sounded closer to the original '77 wave of punk than the Crass tribes but with an anthemic quality that unmistakably tied them to the subsequent 80's wave, like a Demob or No Choice for instance. As a result Icon A.D. is a band that can appeal to many people and they often get some airplay whenever my mum comes for tea (oddly enough she was never that much into Chaos UK or Disorder). A genuine classic that never disappoints from.

Don't feed us shit!

  

THE SEARS "If Only..." MLP, 1984

Twenty years ago, Ian Glasper - UK punk's official archaeologist - wrote about The Sears as "one of anarcho-punk's best-kept secrets" and, rather extraordinarily, it still stands true today even though we have access to even the most obscure bands, some that released the one demo in 1983, did just 3 gigs, one of which took place in a shed with bins for drums, and played for about 6 months in total. Alright, The Sears did use bins as a drum kit at some point but they were around for four years and did release a wonderful album on Bluurg Records, a well-respected label run by Dick Lucas from Subhumans, so not exactly your local garage band. And yet, The Sears remain vastly overlooked as the absence of bootleg shirts on Etsy tends to indicate (it's pretty much the unit of measurement to gauge a band's popularity these days), this is all the more incomprehensible that they have a brilliant recognizable logo depicting a bat (or is it a ghost?) that would fit on the fanciest jackets of any postpunk revivalist. Indifference to The Sears is one of history's mysteries, like UFOs or my dad firmly thinking he would have made a decent addition to the French Résistance in 1940 even though he is afraid of spiders, heights and gluten. I can picture the Nazis shitting themselves.

I remember in the 00's seeing quite a few cd's (homemade-looking cdr's sometimes) from Bluurg Records and stupidly sleeping on them but I don't think The Sears ever got that treatment although there is a trace of a cdr on Discogs (I have no idea when it was done and by whom) but thankfully not atrocious vinyl bootleg. Will If Only... enjoy a proper official reissue one day? Pretty likely I reckon what with Mad Butcher Records releasing old materials from the likes of A-Heads or Potential Threat (and any old UK bands really, it's like the label has gone into a frenzy) and with Sealed Records' recent work on Karma Sutra or Alternative there is ground for hope because in terms of quality, The Sears' album was certainly up there. I have no idea why the record is classified as a mini-album as it is 26 minutes in length, a perfectly acceptable format for the genre (I wouldn't have been against a couple of extra songs though if I'm honest) especially by today's rather ungenerous standards - to give you an example modern classics like Vampire's What Seems Forever Can Be Broken or Subdued's Abattoir are shorter than this.

I would have first heard The Sears, who were from the Midlands, thanks to the inclusion of the grandiose track "Not prepared" - that opens If Only... - on Overground Record's wonderful cd compilation Anti-Society from 2006, the third volume ouf of four released between 2005 and 2007 that introduced so many of us to brilliant obscure anarchopunk bands. "Not prepared" was one of the highlights of the cd and illustrated the band's undeniable energy, tunes and intensity, a balance not many bands managed to pull as well as they did. 2006 was also the year The Day the Country Died was published so that it can be said to be a pivotal year for me because, as much of an already massive fan of British anarchopunk as I was (notably through the Mortarhate and Rugger Bugger cd reissues), these Overground cd's and this book further opened my eyes to a world that was much wider than I thought. It was not just The Mob, Omega Tribe, Icons of Filth or DIRT, it was The Sears, it was Anarka & Poppy, it was Famous Imposters, Reality Control and Anathema and it was incredible and it cemented my love for the peculiar and unique scene. Besides the booklets included biographical notices about the bands and therefore provided me with precious intel for the punk trivia nights I quickly started to rule over, ruthless like a vegan at a free tofu festival.

Strangely the members of The Sears are very negative about the album, basically claiming it sounds like shit, that it should have been much better and they cannot bear to listen to it. I understand being a little exigent with what you do but such comments are insulting to those of us who play in genuinely shit bands and can only dream of producing something half as good as If Only.... Apart from the short and sweet UK82 number "System psycho" the songs all demonstrate the writing flair of the band and how they could tell great punk-rock stories in 3 or 4 minutes. The songs have plots with often softer, darker melodic intros, bursts of punk energy in the middle, sometimes epic direct conclusions too and overall, this moodiness and versatility that always sound tuneful, catchy and powerful, and just punk as fuck really, make the work stand out. At times the music reminds me of Lost Cherrees on the eerier poppier softer moments, of A-Heads when the bouncing punk flow kicks in, of The System when there is a need for a catchy chorus, of Conflict when it gets proper angry and confrontational and in your face. The powerful, emotional, haunting female vocals are certainly the band's main assets (some of the best in the genre arguably) but one should not disregard the care put into the songwriting and, as mentioned, "Not prepared" epitomizes how a grand old-school punk hit should sound like. Lyrically the band was on point too with "Body hold" about imperialism or "Statistical rape" being well ahead of its time (it was written by a third person) with its critique of rape culture and how the pigs dismiss claims when it suits them. Apparently the whole packaging wasn't meant to look like this and the band had prepared a different artwork and lots of visuals that ended up not being used at all so one can only imagine if The Sears had gone for a proper booklet and different aesthetics.

Nevertheless If Only... exemplifies the concept of "obscure classic". It has all the elements that make a record great and worthy of adoption into the canon and yet it remains vastly unknown. But if you ask me, it only requires a well-produced reissue for the punters to rediscover this anarchopunk jewel. I bet the prats are not prepared.

Prepared?          

THE SYSTEM "The Warfare" Ep, 1982

The System. A very special band indeed. Fair enough the name is a little strange, if not eyebrow-raising, and whereas I feel like I am the coolest cat in the neighbourhood when I am wearing my The System shirt, passersby look mightily unimpressed ("The system? Well, what about it? Does this prat think he incarnates the System?" I hear them think) definitely because they can't be arsed to spot "is murder" at the bottom and not because I am well into my forties, am about as unthreatening as a 5 year old and yet still believe I'm gonna make it in the wrestling business. But then I often treat them with Coitus or Genital Deformities shirts so I suppose they are also relieved that, for once, my great clothing style does not cause property values to drop. Oh well. I live in social housing so I really don't care.

One of my fondest memories of The System was when my best mate and I, admittedly very drunk, blasted the Thought Control Lp at full volume in the middle of the night many moons ago and started dancing around the coffee table in the living room in some sort of crusty danse macabre, singing along to the brilliant tunes like tuneless crows and clapping our hands like foolish happy seals. Because that's what really set The System apart from a lot of their anarchopunk peers in the 80's: the bloody great punk tunes. Of course the anarcho wave was replete with bands using tunefulness and melodies to get their point across but what worked so well with The System was that they borrowed theirs from the first wave of UK punk rather than poppier stuff like Zounds or Lost Cherrees for instance. I first ran into this Wigan-based act (up North, a name made famous by Orwell) through the aforementioned Thought Control Lp that I ordered directly from the Skuld Releases website sometime in the early/mid 00's. I trusted the label like a skinhead trusts his braces: faithfully. I expected Skuld Releases to deliver and it almost always did although on paper it was odd to see the label release in 1997 an Lp recorded in 1983 by a British anarchopunk band. Needless to say that it was great to be able to say that I technically owned an original record of this beloved wave of mine. That was well before I sold a kidney in order to buy the original pressings of their Ep's. Throught Control provided ace punk songs to sing along to and it sounded like the ideal break from all the dark crust that was omnipresent then.

As I alluded to, The System took their sense of tunes and catchy songwriting from the so-called '77 wave, something guitar player Andy clearly points out in The Day the Country Died. Whereas many anarcho bands from 1981 on started out influenced by Crass and their early followers, The System had been playing together since 1980 and the members had all been dicking around in bands since 1978 so that a large part of their influences, in terms of melodies and versatility and impeccable hooks and catchy compositions, can be located in bands like Slaughter and the Dogs, Crisis, Menace or The Ruts. And of course, the band remained gritty too, and on that level there is also something of the Upstarts in The System, and of course, it is undeniable that when they quickly got to tour regularly with bands like Flux of Pink Indians and the Crass Records crew the band also conveyed a tribal anarcho vibe and the appropriate politics. The System stands as one of these rather rare anarchopunk bands that can appeal to any punk-rock lovers. The music offers tuneful anthems you can sing along to in the shower (you don't actually have to shower, just being in the bathroom works just as well), it sounds aggressive enough to please your average UK82 believer and they have that melancholy, moody atmosphere that will speak to the vegan anarcho crowd and . In the end, just fantastic catchy punk-rock with a message.

The Warfare Ep was released in 1982 on Spiderleg Records, the label run by Flux of Pink Indians (The System's drummer would actually record the song "Tapioca sunrise" with Flux later on) notorious for releasing records by Subhumans and Amebix, and it includes three memorable punk songs produced by Penny Rimbaud, an unbeatable clue that it will have that typical "anarcho sound" that we've grown to associate with that scene. Opening with, arguably, the band's most iconic anthemic number "Dogs of war" with its infectious, boisterous chorus, the Ep has one of my all-time favourite anarchopunk songs: "Their corrupting ways". With its dark guitar leads, its hypnotic bass lines and its potent, passionate chorus, it is the perfect 80's blend of angry old-school punk-rock and postpunk. There are few punk songs that I consider perfect in the sense that they could not be better and I would not change anything about them (Demob's "No room for you", Naked's "Mid 1930's" and The Samples' "Dead heroes" are other significant examples) and "Their corrupting ways" is one of them. The very Flux-ish third song "Nervous breakdown" is another definite win of course with its heavy tribal rhythms (they did love those beats back then) and its simple structure and riffs, just a good way to make The Warfare stand out among the dozens of UK punk records released in 1982. And let's not forget the great artwork with several paintings (and the traditional foldout poster) illustrating the themes of the songs and, while they are no Otto Dix, they absolutely scream "1980's" and look sincere and original. Great stuff. The next year saw the release of the Is Murder Ep, another stellar punk Ep but I do prefer their first one. 

This copy has some patent surface noise so you've got the full English breakfast here. The band's first Ep's and a full demo can be found on the ...Is Still Murder reissue on Overground Records that is still available (on vinyl, the 2005 cd version with additional songs, among which a song from The Insane (!) by mistake, is of course out-of-print. The band is still going, albeit in a different version, and still really good by the way.     

The SYSTEM

EXIT-STANCE "Crime against humanity" Ep, 1984

The transience of punk bands' popularity is a phenomena that should be studied one day. It is dictated by contexts and trends, by fashion and by how what is deemed worthy of likability is connected with who loves it and why they do. I feel it was not so long (although it probably was a while ago actually I just do not want to admit the passing of time) that few people from the "DIY hardcore scene" around me gave little if any fuck about Exit-Stance. Punk bands connected with Conflict were associated with either mohawked punks or crusties, two tribes renowned for asking for cigarettes, or worse some change, at gigs which is generally frowned upon by the heavily tattooed New Balance-wearing population. Anarcho bands like Hagar the Womb had a clear tie to Conflict through Mortarhate Records, run by Conflict's frontman Colin, but because they were catchy and a bit pop-oriented, they were officially cleared to be listened to. Milton Keyne's Exit-Stance did not have this luck and their heavy, beefy and direct approach at first did little to convince large segments of "da scene" to give them a go. 

Well, I did pay a bit more to be honest.

The black-clad crews of course already knew about one of the most potent and original bands of this peculiar punk wave - or they brilliantly pretended to by posting Youtube videos - when vintage anarchopunk and its insta-friendly visuals started to enjoy a larger comeback in the mid 10's and have become, I believe, well respected since then. I also think that the recent appreciation for the band's old material can be linked to the success of Berlin's Industry, a very fine band highly influenced by the classic Exit-Stance sound - by which I mean their first Lp A Self Portrait At The Stage Of Totalitarian Domination Of All Aspects Of Life is basically a tribute and even included a cover of "They kill dogs" - that has been playing many of the coolest punk festivals and, helped by its second Lp being released on London's La Vida Es Un Mus, a label whose reputation and reach pretty much ensure your band will be touring and enjoying great distribution, managed to appeal to many people far outside the International Federation of Anarchopunk Nerds - I happen to be the leader of the French chapter and subscriptions are open. 

On the one hand, witnessing new people, even those who wouldn't know their Icons of Filth from their Anti-System, uttering dithyrambic perorations about Exit-Stance is positive because, first, I also love the band and, second, it allows me to say that I knew them first and mastered their discography since those intensive anarchopunk classes, given by some proper old-timers with bad backs who owned the original records, I took in 2003. On the other hand, it makes me want to behave like a dick and pompously explain that three members of Exit-Stance originally played in the bizarrely named Ethnic Minority, "didn't you know? What a shame, I thought that people wearing an Exit-Stance badge would. And were you aware of Bristol's Exit-Stance, an excellent punky goth band? Yeah, nah, I thought not". But at the end of the day, I do thank Industry for at least making people checking the band and, who knows, maybe other similarly influenced bands would pop up and I would have to shut up for once.

In any case the first Ep of Exit-Stance - a particularly and laughably hard name to pronounce for a French person - subtly entitled Crime Against Humanity stands as one of anarchopunk's hardest and most intense works of the 80's. The three songs included on the Ep were recorded during the same session as "Operation successful", a song specially recorded to appear on Mortarhate's very successful Who? What? Why? When? Where? compilation Lp that showcased the band's strengths that put them on the punk map: punishingly heavy tribal beats, hypnotic guitar riffs and some of the most aggressive, most frontal, angriest vocal flow and prosody of the genre. As a listener you get the impression that that mental lad at the back of the bus decided to sit right next to you and started shouting at you about political violence, oppression and ecology for 7 minutes like an anarchist doomsday sayer. When you mention Exit-Stance people will rave about the incredible, and yet seemingly simple, drumming and the impassioned vocals reminiscent of Conflict or Icons of Filth but arguably even more pissed off. In The Day the Country Died bass player Jevs reveals that the drummer was really into Killing Joke and I like the idea that Exit-Stance blended the heavy tribal beats of this band with the more primitive approach of mid-paced songs from Chaos UK or Disorder or even Flux of Pink Indians and with the angry rants of Conflict, or indeed, Crass. Of course it would be silly to think that the band did it consciously but from the safe place of retrospection it makes sense. 

This is an absolute classic and if you read this you are probably already well aware of it. I don't know why it was not released on Mortarhate like the mini-album While Backs Are Turned in 1985 but on its sub-label Fight Back. Quite surprising. Something to do with pressing numbers? Another hidden reason? It had nothing to do with styles as records from Vex or Legion of Parasites were released under the Fight Back banner. The fact that Crime Against Humanity has not been reissued yet is rather shocking but the Mortarhate (and therefore Fight Back) catalogue having been sold, it is Radiation Reissues that takes care of the operations and from what I see they almost never do Ep's. But then Legion of Parasites' Undesirable Guests originally on Fight Bacl as well was eventually reissued on General Speech so who knows what will happen with Exit-Stance's jewel. 

Exit-Stance of Humanity

   

 

DIRT "Object Refuse Reject Abuse" Ep, 1981

When feeling blue, a lot of people indulge in what they call "comfort food" in order to feel better. Something familiar, predictable that brings back - if temporarily - that feeling of safety and warmth. Granted, some of that "comfort food" must be called "comfort booze," and "comfort hangover," afterwards but I suppose it fulfills the same purpose: getting over shit through what you intimately like, through familiarity, for instance through greasy crisps, a can of cider and the blasting of Why - not that I would ever need to be comforted, I just bought my second yacht thanks to Terminal Sound Nuisance and the fourth attempt at hair transplants seems to have finally worked as my scalp is not as purulent as last time (that one Turkish barber advertised on Youtube was dodgy indeed in the end, I should have been more cautious). I am a spoilt man.

From my tiny spot in this big bad world, a good way to feel better, if only briefly, is, of course, to play a vintage UK anarchopunk records that I have listened to death for the past 25 years and whose corners, circumvolutions, flaws and every single tiny details I have learnt to love. Just as important to this comfort-seeking enterprise is the exact memory of where and when I first bumped into the band, in this case Dirt. It's funny how you can remember - usually fondly, even though it might have been a crap show - gigs that took place so long ago but are barely able to name the opening bands of last Tuesday's concert. I bought my first Dirt record on October, 4th, 2002, at an Inner Terrestrials gig in a venue called Fahrenheit near Paris. Unless you were there at the time, there is little chance that you have ever heard of this venue but it used to play an important role in the alternative punk scene between 1984 and 2008. For the record Nirvana played there in December, 1989 in front of a manifestly rather scarce audience although listening to some old-timers who suddenly pretend to have been there indeed you would think they played to a full house.

But back to my petty story. At this Inner Terrestrial gig, a band I really enjoyed then and still do, Active Distribution had come along and they had set a little distro table with political fanzines I would mostly pretend to be interested in in order to look cool and sophisticated and a couple of cd's the label had put out among which was Dirt's double cd discography Black and White, referenced as Active 1 for you nerds and originally released in 1997 so I suppose I was lucky to find it at all for cheap then (it now goes for more than 40 euros on Discogs). I am aware everybody hates cd's these days because they have no cachet - and because Stranger Things is set at a time when they did not exist yet they will therefore forever be deemed unworthy of coolness and of viral Tik Tok videos - but the cd version included two amazing unreleased songs that were not on the vinyl version. Who's the fool now, huh? 

I would be lying if I said it was love at first sight between Dirt and I and it did take me some time to get used to Deno's unhinged shrieks, especially on the band's early years. When I did totally get it, I couldn't help but think how disturbing and challenging the vocals would have been 20 years before, back when it originally came out. By then female vocals in punk were still tacitly expected to have some melody, some tunefulness to them. Of course, punk-rock questioned gender norms and expectations and bands like X-Ray Spex, Crass of course or Vice Squad did challenge the conventional image of female rock singers and while there were evidently angry and passionate political female rock singers before punk, they did not really sound angry and did not shout in the microphone like demented howls if you know what I mean. Dirt took things one step further in 1981 with Deno sounding deliciously tuneless on this first Ep and showing no pretense of any intellectualism (unlike Crass I guess) or of any London art schools bollocks or of poster punk stardom. The legendary repetition of "Object refuse! Reject Abuse!" concluding "Democracy" remains an iconic (as Gen Z's would say) bit of anarchopunk history and the best way to deter burglars. 

It is easy but nevertheless true to claim that a Dirtless world would have been more boring and many a young punk - female or male actually - might have been influenced by the strident vocal style and by the efficient simplicity of these four songs and thusly galvanised into action. On this level, I would personally argue that Dirt's snotty punky discordance was as important as Chaos UK or Disorder's, although their influence may have been more circumscribed to the anarcho realms (this is very difficult to assess from our perspective as many local scenes then were not as split and tribalism not as prevalent as we can imagine and people freely listened to all sorts of punk and besides, let's keep in mind that no less than 13000 copies of Dirt's Ep were sold at the time). 

In any case, and if the amount of patches and shirts still worn today is any indication (which it probably isn't, the band may just prove to be more Insta-compatible), Dirt remain one of the most loved anarchopunk bands of the era. As mentioned the crazy, defiant shrieky vocals of Deno are still what they are primarily known for - for good reasons as they still sound so mental and spontaneous almost 50 years later as I got to experience by playing the band to my "I listen to a bit of everything" work colleagues - but I would venture that the three-chords simplicity, the raw sound, the energy, the distortion, the primitive tribal beats, the frontal punk vibe and the dual vocals (let's not discard Gary's ace vocals as well) all make this Ep an absolute 80's punk classic. Of course, a less thoughtful, more direct version of Crass is an obvious point of comparison as they definitely borrowed their mentors' love for noise and distortion - and let's not forget to mention that the Ep was obviously produced by Penny Rimbaud whose very precise, strict, inimitable ideas of what bands were meant to sound like went on to define what we know call "the classic anarcho sound". Rereading Glasper's The Day the Country Died I noticed Gary mentioned that they would listen to 6 Minute War a lot in the band's very early days and that Dirt was at first basically a faster, noisier version of their songwriting, which makes a lot of sense sense; and I personally would throw The Epileptics/The Licks in the mix as well - albeit in a much spikier mood. Finally, one might contend that Dirt's long-standing popularity also has to do with their image that, along with their music, was significantly more punk than a lot of their anarcho comrades like Flux, The Mob or Omega Tribe who were often discarded as "bourgeois" or "hippie shit" by the spikes'n'studs crews, especially in the pre social media days. But Dirt never were, perhaps because of the punk-as-fuck spontaneity of their sound, they were paradoxically easier to listen to alongside Chaos UK, The Exploited or The Business, and because later on they reformed before it was fashionable to do so and toured with DIY crusty hardcore bands like Hellkrusher or Final Warning and played many DIY festivals and squat gigs in the 90's, they definitely maintained that anarchopunk street cred, all of these elements making them such a respected and beloved band.

So yeah, there's nothing like Deno's vocals when you are looking for comfort and now that I think of it the band foes very well with a cold can of cider and some crisps. 6 minutes and 30 seconds of delight.

Object Refuse Reject Abuuuuuuse