With their new album 1312 Overture for the Working Class (if you know you know), anarcho-punks Reality Asylum are angry. No they are incandescent with rage. And they have every right to be. There is a lot to be furious about in this supposedly modern, forward thinking world…
2022 did I say? It is interesting that Reality Asylum channel the spirit of bands like Discharge and Crass (from who I assume they take their name…), and while their lyrics rail against 21st century issues, it feels like all these songs could have been written by those bands who lived through what I previously thought was a low in British politics, the Thatcher era. But no this is 2022, and we are travelling backwards at a rate of knots, having had a US president that tried his best to destroy America, and a an ongoing car crash of a Tory government led by a PM that is possibly even more despicable than Thatcher. Even his leaving does’t bode well for the future with one of his possible successors already citing Thatcherism as a template for his policies. I’ve probably switched off any of the greyzone punks already. The ones who want to leave politics at the door. The ones that close their eyes to reality.
Reality Asylum really aren’t the band for them anyway. The lyrics, jointly delivered by venomously delivered vocals from Kaz (Reality) and Mark (Asylum) covering topics from war to racism, climate change to political elitism, this is definitely not for faint hearted or aimed at those greyzone punks. Reality Asylum are incensed, they have something to say, they won’t be silenced and they aren’t going to miss their targets.
From the searing riffs at the start of the self titled opening song, Reality Asylum set out their stall, their intentions and targets clear from the outset, “Living in tents on a barbed wire fence, an affront to my humanity, I won’t relent” the vocal interchange between Kaz and Mark delivering their message with a rage and fury that reflects the last few words of that quoted lyric.
The band are out of the starting blocks and the energy doesn’t let up for one second. We’re Gonna Start a War feels like both an anti-war song and a call to arms for the sleeping generation, before the political elite comes under attack in House of Cards, more relevant than ever given events of the last few weeks. If only we were ALL this angry and had something to say.
Listening to this album reminds me of a Mark Thomas sketch from the 90s, when he advocated playing insipid supermarket music in police cars and anarcho-punk in supermarkets as a way to start the revolution. I think the way things are going it seems like a wise course of action. Head out to your local Aldi with a copy of the Reality Asylum album… As the lyrics to Church of War state, ”what you’re seeing, what you’re hearing, isn’t whats happening, why are you not listening” is a reflection of people sleepwalking through the slow destruction of society, believing everything that is force fed to them on social media, by the government and on the news.
The guitars in Drones are a perfect foil for the subject matter of the song, a constant crunching buzz permeating the song. Wishes is exactly as the title suggests, a wish list of things Reality Asylum, and any like-minded individuals, hope for – people equality, no minority….you get the picture. The to and fro between Mark and Kaz continuing to impress on this one.
Incendiary guitars and a throbbing bassline, all underpinned by the thunderous rumble of drums soundtrack the cataclysmic nature of Fire in the Garden of Eden before, lyrically, the most personal song on the album, Footsteps, brings the album to a satisfying close.
As I’ve said before, music needs to make you feel something, love, hope, or anger. Righteous anger. This album makes you feel. Makes you want to do something. To take affirmative action. Maybe we all need to take a lesson from that…
Head over to the bands facebook page and order yourself a CD.
