The Rock Blogger

Amebix . Arise . 1984. 4 stars .

(Note to readers: this started out as a conventional review but soon became a rant about politics and punk music. Please bear with me).

What a difference 24 years make. Since the heyday of Amebix, the UK’s famed anarchistic, squat dwelling crust punks , punk music has been filtered and manufactured into easily digestible soma tablets for the kiddies to swallow, filling big chain record stores and malls with self-absorbed twats who don’t know what real music is.

What a bloody shame.

If only someone brought them this blast from the past, where punk was more than a 30 minute segment on MTV 2. Amebix was political not just for their nihilistic lyrics and speed driven, gritty dynamics, they lived the life. They completely rejected the Thatcher-era capitalistic society around them and roamed the streets of England, squatting in condemned buildings, attending anti-nuclear rallies, scrapping for food and wallowing in abject poverty. They accepted the fate that the free market had sealed for them and clung to their political beliefs and attitudes, living from show to show because that was their only source of income. You can read their MySpace or Wikipedia page for more harrowing details.

Out of the intense squalor in which they lived, Amebix crafted a despairing, heavy and influential sound that would shape not only punk aesthetics (the crust sub genre) but also set the stage for early thrash and black metal bands. Their extreme lifestyle, blended with d-tuned guitars and pulsing double kick drums, made their sound terrifying and original, conveying the misery and dread felt in the abandoned circles of British society. Their music, especially on their masterpiece Arise, also expressed an existential horror over the prospects of nuclear destruction, coming at the peak of the cold war. While other anti-war musicians often take the folksy, protest route, Amebix wanted to capture the spirit of a future dystopia in their work, to send a spine-chilling shock to the system.

When I listen to Arise , the political and social commentaries ring loudly and with disturbing authenticity, rejecting hierarchical power structures and common complacency with the status quo. The textures within these 9 tracks are grimy, with echoing bass and down tuned, thrashing guitars pulsing with apocalyptic furor.

Its easy to see how this album has shaped underground music in its wake. Its bleak tones, hurricane drum beats and the deep empty spaces they occupy have been emulated by industrial acts like Godflesh and Big Black to stoner metal artists like Neurosis. While the more hidden cultural circles have recognized the sacrifice and honesty involved in creating dramatic poltical statements, the mainstream scenes have merely devoured anything resembling punk and regurgitated it into soft, harmless and tepid statements that move quickly to self-parody. For the real punks still out there though, take note of this album. It’s black spirit needs to come back, in all its urgency, because the world needs to look at itself in the mirror, now more than ever.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 9:51 am and is filed under Politics, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.