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.
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