I don't know if you have noticed yet, it depends on how perceptive you are, but it would not be an overstatement to venture that, here, at Terminal Sound Nuisance's international headquarters, we could be described as being rather fond of records. Not just the music, but also the record, apprehended as a contextualised subcultural artifact telling its own story, while at the same time being part of many broader narratives related to a specific time and place.
I can vividly recollect how, when and where I got this particular piece of wax, the Toxic Waste/Stalag 17 split 12'' Ep, as it was a very lucky pick, one that, I now realize, had a lot to do with the locals's relative ignorance of anarchopunk. The happy event took place in 2013 at a punk festival in Paris where a few historical anarcho bands were playing (The Mob, The System or Hagar the Womb were on the bill). Being a good friend of the organizer, I was quickly told that Roy Wallace was present and that he had brought some 80's records he had found in a box in his attic. I was aware that beside being responsible for the very good punk documentaries
Amebix - Risen and of course
The Day the Country Died, the man had played in Toxic Waste so there was, after all, a small but credible chance that original copies of vintage Belfast anarchopunk would be floating around. I remember the record box to be rather small and there was a light emerging from it, as if it were cradling a godlike entity. I immediately spotted the grail, this old and worn out copy of the split (as if water-damaged or something) which I ruthlessly grabbed, my hands acting quicker than my brain, as if by reflex, at the speed of a crocodile surprise attack (that's what bewildered witnesses said in awe afterwards). I just could not believe how lucky I was. It was fate and miracles did happen after all. A near mint copy of the fantastic Toxik Ephex's
Nobby Porthole Lp also ended up in my welcoming lap causing me to hyperventilate a little and I know full well that a third pick of that order would have probably sent me to the nearest hospital, if not directly to the morgue. I would have died happy, mind you. And because they were offered by a noble punk who still believes in anarchopunk decency, the two records were sold at their original prices with no inflation or speculation whatsoever. For once, I did not pay more than the "pay no more" tag which felt like an exhilarating victory and like I was back in the 80's and not just an easy prey for speculating wankers. Ebay could fuck right off. It was a great day indeed.
Although Toxic Waste was never a "famous" punk band outside of Belfast, my mates and I listened to them a lot in the early 00's as I owned the split cd with Bleeding Rectum which I bought in 2003 at Out of Step Records, a brilliant record store in Leeds that I visited several times. I think I bought the cd because it had the Active Distribution logo and I really liked what they stood for, although I could not figure out why they would help distribute a band called Bleeding Rectum, a goregrind name for a non-grindcore band that puzzled me. Punk works in mysterious ways. But anyway, I took the cd home and everyone loved it, TW sounded better than DIRT and their radical lyrics about life and politics in Northern Ireland really appealed to us. We were already fond of Ulster bands like Stiff Little Fingers, The Outcasts or The Defects, but this was a Belfast anarchopunk band singing "Burn your fucking flags" in the 80's and that took courage and we admired them very much for that, even twenty years later. Although I don't remember us ever listening to the 21 (!) Bleeding Rectum songs at the time (we did giggle a bit when mentioning the name to be honest), we played the TW songs so often that we considered starting a band that sounded similar, dual vocals anarchopunk with grit and tunes. Alas, the year was now 2005 and we ended up playing rough metallic neocrust like everyone and their mother at the time. Hindsight sucks.
The early Belfast punk scene has been well documented and I strongly recommend the documentary
Made in Belfast and the book
It Makes you Want to Spit, and obviously
The Day the Country Died if you want to see what Toxic Waste and Stalag 17 have to say about their experience as young anarchopunks in the 80's. Context is everything and I suppose growing up in such a violent, polarised, sectarian environment, if not a warzone, made punk so much more than just a look or a genre, it was a liberation and sung in the Northern Irish context, many words took on a different, stronger, more radical meaning. I suggest you read the many testimonies from far more eloquent people than I with actual first-hand experiences of the events, and I am now going to proceed to
The Truth will be Heard's content. It was the second recording of TW, the first one being the
Unite to Resist demo tape, recorded in 1983 with the first lineup, a song off which, "Good morning", was included on Mortarhate's
We don't Want Your Fucking War compilation Lp. The band then moved from Newtownards to Belfast, with Roy from Wardance replacing Dane on male vocals. Following a UK tour with Conflict in 1984, the band was offered to record a split that would be released on Mortarhate. The three TW songs were recorded in a proper BBC studio in Newtownards and therefore the sound is unusually clear for an anarchopunk records. Whereas many anarcho recordings at the time had a rather raw and direct sound (which they both suffered and benefited from), TW's is - excessively? - clean and probably more suitable for a cheery pop-rock act than a juvenile pissed punk band. As a result, these three songs are quite unique in that they are objectively overproduced but still remain in the department of snotty straight-forward punk anthems, with the professional production highlighting rather than hiding the mandatory sloppy bits and the heartful amateurishness (the distorted bass sound is naively overwhelming for instance). That's the thing with a clean sound, you can hear everything with clarity, both the good and the, hum, not so good.
I absolutely love these songs though and how passionate, urgent and incendiary they sound in spite of the production. There was no shortage of reasons to feel angry and frusrated and you can easily tell that TW were outraged at the injustices, the state oppression, the narrow-mindedness, the brutality, the bloody polarisation that were part of the Northern Irish context, and this concentration of anger is reflected in the music's teenage urgency. Rephrasing TW's lyrics would not make much sense but they are certainly more clever than those of your average 80's British punk band (but then, I suppose one had to grow up fast in such a charged context). TW were not just a direct punk band though as they included many tuneful arrangements in the songs, from the melodic poppy introduction to "Traditionally yours", the torturous, slow-paced, stomping introduction to "Burn all flags", to the epic conclusion with spoken words to "Song for Britain", there are enough catchy hooks to remind you that 80's Ulster punk was essentially and memorably tuneful while not wandering too far from the classic formula. It's got both spikes and tunes. The dual male and female vocals work perfectly together as they achieve the right balance between snotty aggression and poignant hopefulness. I would personally argue that very few bands have done this type of trade-off anarcho vocals better than TW. Because of the mutual history between the two bands, the comparison with DIRT is very common and quite sensible. I would personally also send invites to Alternative, early Conflict and maybe The Partisans, but with an Ulster flair.
Following this split, TW recorded four songs for a split with Stalag 17 (again) and Asylum for the
We will be Free Lp released in 1986 on Warzone Records. This time with a proper, more balanced production, these new songs sounded even better. Absolutely wicked stuff. TW then gradually disintegrated, with Roy moving to London and recording songs with Deno from DIRT on vocals that would appear on the
Belfast Lp in 1987 that also included the TW songs from the two former splits and Marty forming the mighty Pink Turds In Space (the two would reunite in Bleeding Rectum, hence the cd reissue with the two bands). The band has reformed sporadically in the 90's and even in the mid 00's if memory serves (does it?).
Trigger warning: the lyrics are Miltonian long.
A part of me - the indecorous one - would love to tell you that the other side of the split is just not that good, that it borders on the average and is thus not worth a maniacal rant on my part, especially since it is sunday, after all, and I could rather take a long walk and try to catch the coronavirus in order to skip work instead of educating the unwashed masses about the greatness of mid-80's Belfast anarchopunk. But who am I fooling, really? You and I know full well that we are both in for an epic love letter to Stalag 17. Again, I strongly advise you peruse the chapter devoted to them in
The Day the Country Died in order to grasp the context from which they emerged. Like TW, S17 were very active in the Warzone collective and helped open Giro's, a self-run social centre in 1986 that played a crucial role in Belfast (full story
here) and in the collective punk memory, TW and S17 remain the two most iconic 80's anarchopunk bands from Belfast, who conveniently shared two records as well. So if you ever end up having to speak in public about anarchopunk in Northern Ireland, just sternly declaim the lyrics of "Burn your flags" and "Forgotten victims' and you should be alright.
Like TW, S17 (I am really doing my best not to think about East 17 whenever I type the abbreviation) had a song on a Mortarhate sampler, 1984's
We don't Want your Fucking War!, but I don't think I heard them until the release of the
Anti-Society compilation cd in 2006, and although it would be erroneous to hail the song "Doomsday machine" as an undying S17 anthem, it still showcased one element that immediately comes to mind when someone mentions the band: Petesy's vocals, and more particularly their particular tone and flow, neither really sung nor really spoken, and fast-paced. I must have downloaded whatever I could find afterwards and instantly fell head over heels when I got to listen to their side of
The Truth will be Heard. The opening number "Party talk" aptly demonstrated what the band could do. Starting with an extract from a political speech that has Thatcher spewing Tory propaganda about Ulster and denying the brutality of Britain's colonial rule, the listener is quickly aware that some serious political anger is going to be unleashed. The song itself is a rather raw (especially compared to TW's side!) and mid-paced anarchopunk song that ticks the correct boxes in terms of catchiness, intensity and moodiness, but it is the vocal style that turns a rather classic piece into something different. The singer almost never stops, delivering a politically-charged speech about the parties in power with that sort of vocal inbetweenness that characterised Petesy's work (although I would venture that it came naturally to him and he just had a lot to say in less than three minutes). It is indisputably a pulchritudinous anarchopunk song (right?) but the next one, the gloriously epic "Forgotten victims", really takes the cake.
Anarchopunk being after all, for the most part, punk-rock, the average length of an anarcho song is about three minutes. Of course, there are many exceptions and anarchopunk was fortunately not as generic and restrictive as the so-called UK82 school, but still, seven minutes long songs were not exactly the norm in 1985 for any punk band. And yet, S17 did exactly that with "Forgotten victims". Whereas Chumbawamba also tried to write longer songs by adding a more narrative aspect and by diversifying the song structures, S17 did not change its recipe at all. Again, I feel like they had too much to say in just a couple of minutes so they basically played the song twice in a row. And not only did it work, since the listener is never bored, but you could argue that the song's insistence and emphasis reflect the sum of emotions and hardships that living in wartorn sectarian Belfast generate in a teenager's heart. "Forgotten victims" is basically an alternation between a heavy and rather dark anarcho tribal beat and a faster, intense but tuneful moment with, once again, an unstoppable vocalist speaking out against oppression (there are no less than thirteen stanzas to the song). It must be one of my favourite anarchopunk tune of the era, despite its odd construction (the end is quite abrupt), and I cannot think of many contemporaries that were able to convey so vividly such a sense of outrage, hope and despair, in just one sloppy song. For all its flaws, it is a genuine anarchopunk anthem that gives me the goosebumps every time I play it. As I said, the vocals really set S17 apart and make the band instantly recognisable, although the music can be described as classically trained anarchopunk, reminiscent of Flux of Pink Indians, The System or Subhumans.
With a different lineup S17 went on to record a song for the
You are not Alone compilation Ep on Words of Warning in 1986 (that was reviewed
here four years ago almost to the day), two demos (
And all the Birdies Sang Fuck this for a Lark and
Erection 87) and contribute five punktastic gems to the
We will be Free split Lp with Asylum and Toxic Waste. The new lineup made S17 tighter, harder-hitting, but also more tuneful and diverse, maybe not unlike the nascent wave of melodic hardcore punk with bands like Depraved or Hex. The band dissolved in 1987 and Petesy formed the brilliant FUAL with Crispo from Crude & Snyde.
A poster? What poster???
It is high time TW and S17 get properly reissued since their materials are quite hard to find and above all preposterously expensive.
The Truth will be Heard was a cojoint release between Mortarhate and Warzone Records and my copy contained a political pamphlet entitled
Divided Conquered and Shit Upon... or Nearly edited by the Warzone collective, a very interesting read that epitomised what anarchopunk was about in Northern Ireland. It is more than just music so read it.
