SOUNDS February 7, 1981
UK SUBS LIKE GROSS Halfwit in polite company or a Fawlty Towers script, the UK Subs never let you down. With 'Diminished Responsibility' Charlie and the chaps have now notched
up a slick studio hat trick of
explosive high energy goodies with the ease of Eric Bristow hitting a dartboard from three feet. And I can guarantee to punky aficionados everywhere that the bulk of
the material herein is high
standard populist punk in the
expected solid Subs style,
with the odd throwaway filler
balanced out by numbers that
border on the sheer bleedin' excellent.
My only real bind is that once again the production,
mostly courtesy Mike Leander, is lousy. It's still got that annoying muddy quality that marred the second album, which means Nicky's guitar's not given nearly enough prominence for my liking. This criminal cock-up costs them a star and got me digging out 'Another Kind Of
Blues' for a reminder of how
perfectamundo well produced
Subs can sound.
Still, even the mud can't stop most of the thirteen tracks scoring direct hits. 'Time And Matter's my
particular favourite, as catchy as pneumonia at an Eskimo Nudist camp it thunders along
in top gear with a great
hookline interwoven with a simple effective guitar phrase. Almost as good is 'Violent
City', a real stormer of a song based on a guickfire chordal riff and lyrics seeped in urban nihilism, "Boys and girls come out to play/What are we
gonna destroy today?/Thieve
a car, do a job/Get ten points
for hitting a cop".
Elsewhere fabby full frontals like 'Confrontation'
and 'Collision Cult 'pogo shoulder to shoulder with a
wide array of fiery formats from the catchy Subs-idised r'n'r of 'You Don't Belong'
through the Dollsy raunch of 'Fatal' to the wild, driving,
jeering, almost Crass-like
chant politics of 'So What' with its righteous stream of
propaganda in "Sexist Sexist, So what?/Bone Head, Bone Head, So what?/Beano Beane, So what?" vein. The only oddity is the inclusion of "Aussie Aussie" in the list of supposed insults when the term is plainly a compliment. Australia (aka Rolfland) is one
of the most cultured countries
in the world and, indeed, is second only to GB in the Oi-
The Country stakes.
A couple of other minor criticisms occur, like why does 'Face The Machine' nick the intro from 'Another Girl,
Another Planet ', and why has
Charlie stopped writing songs about schoolgirls (surely you
ain 't forgotten the Delights of
the Donald already, Chas) but
they're both overshadowed by the more pressing question
of why weren't 'Party in Paris', also included here and as fine a slice of yobbo-pop as you're ever likely to oi-oi to, a Dirty Thirty certy?
It really is time the cretins
who rule the air- waves got
torpedoed by Sub(s)marine fire, physically and musically. Cos y'see I ain't all that worried about bands getting
into a 'Status Quo situation ' if qualify remains top-notch (too many people change for change's sake and end up destroying themselves,
though the Subs have got
room to explore a lot more). What's more important is that the Subs and good Punk
bands in general don't get trapped into an underground cult scene. They deserve to be in the charts, on the telly, and on the tip of a million tongues.
To settle for anything less is to sell yourselves short. Not to
mention everyone who's
behind you.
GARRY BUSHELL
LES SUBS: a stirring portrait of true punk freedom fighters. (pic by Andy Hanson)
'Diminished Responsibility'
(Gem GEMLP 112)****