SUBHUMANS
-
THE DAY THE COUNTRY DIED
For the Subhumans, an
important signifier as to where England was at was the inner city
riots of 1981, the subject of which they chose to name their début
LP after. Released on the Spiderleg Records label, The Day The
Country Died was a welcome return to former glory, picking up
from the point at which they had first exploded into existence with
their Demolition War EP.
Delivering sixteen songs
of churning, spinning, speeding Punk urgency, from beginning to end
the album simply bounced with excitement. The album's title came from
the song Black And White and though not explicitly mentioning the
riots of '81 by name, it was clear what it was that was being
referred to: "Enquiries - but no solutions, faceless - empty
illusions. Reasons - are always pushed aside, remember - the day the
country died."
On the album's cover, a
cartoon image of a spiky-haired Punk Rocker being shot through the
head - molotov cocktail in hand - is superimposed over images of
police, war, mobs, missiles and newspaper front pages boasting riot
news headlines. Without overstating it, the summer of '81 was
obviously of meaning to the Subhumans.
When listened to over the
length of a whole album it was apparent that the Subhumans were
continuing to perform the neat trick of avoiding being pinned down
and categorised, and it seemed to be all down to Dick Lucas's lyrics.
Whilst the music was a turbo-charged flurry of rushing, thrashing
guitar, bouncing bass and snapping drums; in amongst the words were
politics, wry observation, social comment, humour, and even poetry:
"There's a hole in the bottom of the world where the blood
pours out at the end of the day. When the usual amount of people have
died, sit back and watch the death and decay - it's a dying world."
Whilst being fully
immersed in the by now recognisable mores, activities and practises
of the Anarcho Punk scene and whilst being quite capable of
seriousness when it came to serious subjects, what differentiated the
Subhumans from the rest of the Anarcho Punk pack was Dick Lucas's
almost cartoon-like sense of humour. Liberally lacing his songs with
comic asides and noises, he could also pen whole songs that read like
madcap comedies: "Oh what a great experience my house is full
of deviants, my Dad is going mad downstairs, my brother has just dyed
his hair. We got Punks and drunks and thrills and pills and lots of
things to make your head go round. It's fun fun fun fun fun til the
pigs come round."
In one of the longest
songs on the album, entitled Mickey Mouse Is Dead, the irreverence in
his lyrics is highlighted when he turns the Crass peace chant of '1,
2, 3, 4 - we don't want your fucking war' into a more comically
stupid chant of "1, 2, 3, 4 - look what you done to Mickey
Mouse."
Though the subject matter
of many of the songs was quite morose, the saving grace was in the
way that Dick sounded as if he was thoroughly enjoying himself. In
the face of doom and gloom the Subhumans were having fun, no better
conveyed than in the track No More Gigs, in which Dick depicts a
depressing scenario for his band: "In a smoke-filled room,
'How's it going then?'. 'It's not going at all, we got no more
gigs'." But even here Dick turns depression on its head and
makes a celebration of it: "A bottle of gin, a packet of
cigs. Sing, brother, sing - we got no more gigs."
Despite being undeniably
supportive of Anarcho Punk ideas, right down to having the 'pay no
more' demand on their record sleeves, the Subhumans were far less
intense about it than most of their Punk peer group. And unlike most
of the other bands of the Anarcho persuasion, they only had one real
message to impart and a very simple one at that. A single word message as
written all over the inner sleeve of their album: 'Think.'
