Conflict - The Serenade Is Dead

CONFLICT - THE SERENADE IS DEAD

Having already released the Icons Of Filth demo tape on their Mortarhate label, Conflict's first venture into releasing vinyl was a 7” record from themselves entitled The Serenade Is Dead. Conflict had always been viewed as a good band and were always a ferocious proposition when playing live but nobody could have foreseen the sheer power of their début record on their own label.

Combining the best of The Clash, Stiff Little Fingers, Crass and themselves, The Serenade Is Dead was like a flower in full bloom. Underpinned by a rumbling bass line, its level of production gave it a thickness and weight that had often been missing from other Anarcho Punk releases, raising what was already a fully realised combination of the personal and the political into a freeform Punk ballad of epic proportions.

To the pounding of drums and a storm of guitars, Colin Jerwood went from describing love forlorn to contemplating god, the system, the threat of war, regret, and the need for unity; arriving at a summary of the state of the Anarcho Punk movement: “The system still stands strong as our movement starts to crumble, the pressure we once held has just turned to a rumble. They've got us where they want us and we all accept that, well don't you think it's time we started to HIT BACK? They ARE the enemy, they want a rope around your neck and if they will go that far then what the fuck is next?”

There are occasions in time when it is the perfectly right conditions and the perfectly right moment to take an action, ask a question or to make a statement; occasions when any of these things will have the most impact. For Conflict, such an occasion was at the start of 1984 when George Orwell's prophetic new year lay ahead and all the very real political problems and objectives of the day were clearly in view.

The forces of the conservative Right were on the march and it was they who were calling the shots. It was they who were on the attack and it was they who were out to quash all their ideological enemies. Something needed to be done to halt the drift towards their world view being fully realised and it was plain to see at that point that peaceful protest was insufficient.

For Conflict – one of the most prominent of Anarcho Punk bands – to ask whether it was “time we started to hit back” was exactly the right thing to do and the fact that their question was being delivered over one of the most powerful and accessible Anarcho Punk Rock compositions to date made it all the more effective and all the more potent.

The Serenade Is Dead was the signal that Anarcho Punk was about to turn more militant. Pacifism had been tried and tested but was now no longer going to be used as a convenient excuse for not moving things forward. From peaceful protest there would now be a lot more active resistance and Conflict would be the prime cheerleaders for it.

'Together we can turn the impossible dream into reality' they declared, and like Crass they sounded mightily convincing. Conflict were proletarian exponents of that impossible dream. Proletarian exponents of an alternative culture that up against the cruel hardness of Thatcherism and the predicted gloom of 1984 were offering much needed energy, enthusiasm, positivity – and hope.