ASPHYXIA "Wardrugs" Ep, 2002

People do silly things. Like that one time, years ago, when a school friend, out of the blue as we had lost touch, offered me to deejay, for just an hour, at her birthday party. I have no idea what she was actually thinking I was going to do. She probably just supposed that, since I have always had a lot of records at home and was involved in a radio show, I must have known my shit when it came to music and been familiar with songs that have people dance flirtatiously but still feel sophisticated about it. Obviously I agreed to the task and brought with me some bands that, I thought, were listenable or at least bearable enough for an audience that, if I'm being honest, was totally unprepared and for whom Rage Against the Pumpkin was the most extreme band they had ever heard. I did get to play Chaos UK, Discharge and was about to unleash some Sacrilege when I was, understandably, cut short as the room had quickly emptied. For a laugh I had planned to play some Asphyxia as a mercy stroke or a coup de grâce. I was never invited again. Oh well. The gig did come with free beer.

I would argue that Asphyxia is not a band you would get into without context. A novice cannot listen to the demo, if they can make it to the end that it, and be positively amazed. If you are clueless about the historical significance of the band, about its birthplace and about the convergence of influences it represents then most of it will be lost on you. Not that the recording is fatally unenjoyable without background but it's not unlike watching a wrestling match with a Canadian wrestler doing a sharpshooter while being totally oblivious of Bret Hart's work. It remains a good move but it doesn't really meaning anything. Still a great submission move though. Do try it at home.

Although this Ep was released in 2002, the recording is actually a good decade older since Asphyxia were only around between 1991 and 1993. At that time the now legendary Osaka crust scene - that I have previously discussed in ancient times - was very much in its infancy, if not in an embryonic form. Indeed the band that is generally recognized as the inventor of what will be referred to as the Osaka crust sound was still very young: Gloom. With Gloom's two tapes, Self-Interest and The End, being released 1991, Asphyxia were clear contemporaries and should be considered as emerging from the same filthy bowl of soup. In actual facts, the band included a former Gloom drummer, Honda, cementing the connection between both bands. On vocals was Jackie Crust War, now famously delivering scorching käng riffs in Framtid, and Asphyxia was, I believe, his first band - the first that at least made it to a studio anyway - and only about 20-30 copies of the demo tape were ever made, distributed for free at gigs. But if a "studio" was involved, do not expect anything fancy: even for fans of the Osaka raw punk style, the Wardrugs demo will deter more than a few audiophiles, leaving only the true noize warriors standing, deafened and proud.

Asphyxia played raw (duh) and fast raw hardcore punk with a significant UK influence (Jhonio mentions that the band was equally inspired by the nascent Squat or Rot NYC scene but I personally don't really hear it). The rough production - or lack of any thereof - as well as the speed and riffs do point out to no-frills, all-out hardcore bands like Asylum, Dirge and especially Plasmid. Arguably UKHC would be the driving force on these seven songs with (very) obvious nods to Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror too although Asphyxia do not cross the crust and grind borders - the vocals remaining rather clear and spiky. Early Antisect, Anti-System and Warwound would certainly have received invites as well while Iconoclast and early Final Conflict definitely got a friendly phone call. But at the end of the day, Asphyxia were a typical and representative example of what a late 80's anarcho-infused raw hardcore band was supposed to sound like when played by genuine lovers of raw hardcore and I think the best synchronic parallel would be Private Jesus Detector. I would locate the two bands, as far away as they geographically were, on the same punk scale in terms of influences and intention (even if they don't sound that much alike at the end of the crust day). And the fact that Osaka crusties have been loving the Belgians is well-known and has been proven by many academics through out the years. 

Brutal avalanche crust?

At the end of the day, this Ep must be seen as a significant piece of Punkstory more than an obscure overlooked masterpiece of Japanese raw punk. A part of the early Final Noise Attack scene (they played one of the first, if not the first, gigs), Asphyxia never had that Gloom effect that makes one goes mental at the ferocity of the music, probably because they didn't have the time, never really achieved that furiousness and split up before they reached their full potential (a common story it seems). However if you claim to be into Japanese crust and are intent on exhibiting Gloom patches online, knowing Asphyxia comes as compulsory if you want to avoid being called out as a poser.

Following the band's downfall, guitar player Okamoto formed Defiance with members of Gloom, Gun formed Despair and Jackie joined Condemned (I totally forgot I knew this, that's the stuff of trivia glory), all three bands appearing on the mythical Final Noise Attack compilation Ep in 1994. As I said, History in the making. 

Do I need to mention that Wardrugs was released on Crust War Records?

Final Asphyxia Attack

               

PEACEFUL PROTEST "Tsetorp Lufecaep" Ep, 1997

Considering the recent events in France - and those probably to come sooner than later - the irony of writing about a band called Peaceful Protest is not lost on me. To be fair and perfectly transparent it is all a coincidence, your Honour, I am no rizzless class traitor to the Cause - or however Gen Z's call the enemy - even though my student years are well behind me as my critically receding hairline suggests. And I do tend to moan or get angry about mundane things like any aging unfortunate. That's not without its irritating consequences, mind you, since the doctor told me I should start worrying about the old heart rate at my age and he did look very skeptical when I mentioned that I should be alright as long as it doesn't exceed a proper old-school grinding blast beat "like on Scum's first side, if you know what I mean". Which he doesn't. Probably a shoegaze fan. I should see a real professional next time. But getting back to Peaceful Protest and peaceful protests, I had planned to tackle it in third position, revolution or no revolution. Beside, there actually is a similarity between the two: just like Aus-Rotten used to say "They ignore peaceful protests", the government is oblivious to the old-fashioned "let's march from point A to point B chanting behind the Party's banner" protests and punks don't seem to give a damn about Peaceful Protest either. 

I may be a little thick at times because I didn't instantly connect the Ep entitled Tsetorp Lufecaep with the band Peaceful Protest. I suppose they thought it was funny or even wittily modernist to write the band's name spelt backward. I first thought it was in Esperanto or some other language reflecting that peculiar, challenging idiosyncrasy of (hyper)polyglotism in Japanese hardcore (Swedish, Italian, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese and, indeed, Esperanto) before I realized I was a fool. Did it keep me from getting this humble one-sided Ep? Did it fuck! I am a forgiving customer if anything.

Peaceful Protest can be said to epitomize the lower-mid card position during the golden age of Japanese crust and d-beat (aka from 1993 to 2006 roughly). It was a tough league, undoubtedly, and the competition may have been fiercer than I candidly imagine, so why should you care about and give some of your precious time for a humble Tokyo band that was only active for a couple of years (they stopped playing in 1997) instead of being busy salivating on pricy Gloom or Confuse long-sleeves on Instagram? 

First, there is about only three minutes of noise on the record so the act of listening will not take all day. Second, Peaceful Degree, as short-lived and footnote-worthy they may have been, could boast some pedigree. Indeed, drummer Tetsuya was part of an early Battle of Disarm lineup (he played on the excellent split with Brainstorm notably) while guitar player Asai played in an early incarnation of Frigöra (I haven't been able to identify whether the bass player and the singer have been doing else punk wise) and Abe from Life produced some of the songs on this Ep.

But what about the "music" I don't hear you ask? Peaceful Protest proudly and openly played old-school Garanterat Mangel and this is exactly what you are getting served here. There is little - if any - production value on these four songs. Raw, urgent and punker-than-you is the sound. The obsession with Swedish hardcore among Japanese punks was nothing new, even then, and bands like the aforementioned Frigöra, Collapse Society, Crocodileskink or, of course, Disclose were all already dealing in mangel and käng and therefore Peaceful Protest must be thought as belonging to that same maniacal trend. They may not have been the best to do it - I suppose that if you really had to pick a national Mangel Champion it'd be Frigöra - but they sounded the most spontaneous with a vibrant, youthful energy highly reminiscent of Mob 47 and a very snotty and possibly spotty singer. This is a very fun, very fast and very RAW Ep with four songs, the last one being a cover of Shitlickers recorded in the Philippines (I assume the band played over there which is pretty ace). 

The cover is rather minimalist and cheap-looking, this is not fancy at all. It was released on Peace Punk Records (a label that released Stracony or Social Genocide) and there were several versions of this Ep with four different colour sleeves available - mine is green as your discerning eyes have noticed and I have never seen any of the others. The band also released a split Ep with Medellin's punk legends IRA and in 2005 the label Aktiva//Protest Rekordo, run by members of Voco Protesta (a fine distorted raw hardcore band in Esperanto of course), released the Ep A Noise Barrage Against Authority, recorded in 1997 and originally meant as a demo because the world was rightly begging for it. Let's throw in here that singer Satoshi Kase actually became a movie director and shot Spinning Kite, a film I haven't seen but has had good reviews. Is there any raw punk on the soundtrak? You tell me. 

By no means can it be said to be an essential record but if you are into distorted Japanese mangel this will be your kind of shit.

They ignore Peaceful Protest

           

       

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