LP reviewed in Sounds, 1st May, 1982
Anti-Nowhere League ‘We Are . . . The League’ (WXYZ LMNOP 1)***** ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT. I give in. Let’s face it, this just ain’t the sort of music (?) to lend itself to sensitive in-depth philosophical probing.
A triumph of sustained depravity, the only way the album can be appreciated is to knock back half a litre of Jacks, head-butt the budgie and crank up the volume till you acquire a backing track of petrified screams from neighbours and innocent passers-by.
A lot, a helluva lot, depends on how seriously you take it all. If the first 4-Skins (RIP) had sung songs like ‘Roll On World War 3’ all hell would have broken loose (remember the stick their joke song ‘Evil’ got?).
With the League it’s different because it’s so difficult to take them at face value. Though they look the part on stage you get the feeling they’re actually about as menacing as the skinhead Weetabix men, and just as entertaining. Underneath the sneers they’re pure theatre and should be judged accordingly.
Anti-Nowhere League | We Are . . . . The League | (WXYZ) 1982
Obviously this generation’s Stranglers, the League’s biker-punk-skin hybrid is a genuine aesthetic experience — for any marauding mob of Mad Max Mohicans. Beyond this initial awesome folk-demon incarnation any shock comes from crudity of language and music, rather than any pretensions to subversion.
Live and on vinyl they proffer a bawdy bonanza of brute force basics. Rough-house rhythms are wed to stun-gun guitar and conjure up a sound as devastating as a rogue elephant in an Ealing comedy.
But however much they might claim to detest rock ‘n’ roll, that’s basically what they dish up, in big sewer level dollops with riffs looted willy-nilly with admirable disregard for publishing niceties.
Similarly the lyrics, growled by Animal like an enraged grizzly guzzling ignited diesel, don’t exactly place him in the Noel Coward bracket. He’s more like Judge Dread drunk on Mr Hyde potion.
And though there’s sadly nothing here to touch the AWOL ‘So What?’ in the gratuitously gross stakes there’s a few appetising near misses. Like the almost bouncy ‘Nowhere Man’ (“The only time he’s having fun is when he’s up his neighbour’s bum”) or a spirited rewrite of the Soul Sisters’ Tighten Up’ classic ‘Wreck A Buddy, rendered ‘Reck A Nowhere’ and revealing “I want a girl to lick it for me — and if she’s ugly I don’t mind”.
Initial impressions of sameness hide spicey thematic variations (violence, perversion, and general obnoxiousness) and lotsa strong no-frills-addictiveness.
Anti-Nowhere League | We Are . . . . The League | (WXYZ) 1982
Much of this rubbish is catchier than an iron hook in a bar-room brawl. Best is the Blitzian anthem ‘Let’s Break The Law’ (remix), though equally worthy of mention is social documentary ‘Woman’ which progresses through sweet-heart love and wedded bliss to blazing household rows that throw up acidic insights like “Your tits are big but your brains are small”. Germaine Greer, where are you now?
Such grimy cess-pit knees-ups account for twelve thoroughly nasty numbers and though you’re left wondering how long they’ll be able to sustain the joke, at the moment few teenage Rugby Song aficionados could ask for more. (Garry Bushell)
Anti-Nowhere League: ‘We Are . . . . The League’ (WXYZ Records LMNOP 1) By Winston Smith THE LEAGUE sing about buggery, licking “it”, being “up a neighbour’s burn’”, being a “living abortion”, being a Somewhere Person and being an all round not-particularly-nice sort of person.
They have set out to be as blatantly repugnant as they legally can They’ve done it to upset as many people as possible and many have fallen for it, hee hee.
But are we supposed to laugh? Is there really perhaps a seriousness behind all this nonsense, as the League claim there is? It’s not worth worrying over, not while they come up with such irresistibly great and touchingly primitive rumbling rock-anthems.
Not while they can still make such classic, crushing barbarian rock ‘n’ roll. Yes, I said classic. If the League didn’t look the way they do, if they didn’t sing such, er, unusual lyrics, then their music would be hailed as wondrous from East to West, and I’m being deadly serious now, believe me. + + + (Record Mirror, 22/05/82)
Anti-Nowhere League WE ARE . . . THE LEAGUE WXYZ LMNOP1 THERE’S only one League in my life. It’s not the Human League, for sure. It’s not the Ivy League either, or the League of Gentlemen. Gentlemen?! The Anti-Nowhere League: they are . . . the League!
Filth-rockers extraordinaire, they’ve done more for my sanity in the last six months than any other band I can think of; a riotous assembly of outrage and parody, spectacle and pulverising rock ‘n’ roll, they’ve broken every rule of decency that there is to break With a wicked relish, a thrilling bravado, that startles and stimulates and strikes with a vengeance.
Now . . . beware! Better reinforce your windows, stash all glass objects in the cupboard and lock your granny in the bog. For the League, in all their lewd, crude splendour, are about to invade the comfort of your home with their debut album.
It’s so far over the top it’s in orbit, uttering the unutterable at every opportunity, yelling a defiant “eff off” at everybody and everything. It’s so extreme, it’s impossible to take offence. Take the League seriously and the joke’s on you, mate.
There’s nothing specially original about the music, but it’s presented like nothing you’ve ever heard before. “We’re The League” opens the set with a brazen self-introduction and an up-yours, followed by the everything-goes “Animal” which, in the grand traditions of “So What” — the scourge of Scotland Yard — takes us into a pervert’s paradise of child molesters, blow-up dollies, vibrators, bestiality, peep hole knickers and God knows what else. Get that belligerent “buggery” roar!
And then a surprise. “Woman”. What’s this? A slow chug, Animal’s singing and what’s more, he’s singing a love song! When he gets to a recitation of the marriage ceremony, you know it can’t be real, and it’s not. On “till death do us part”, the pace lurches into a furious punk rattle and the suitor commences a manic tirade against the former object of his affections, vowing “you’re a fucking mess” and finally, “I hate you”.
Side two brings together the more familiar side of the League from their two singles: their unrepentant annihilation of “Streets Of London”, the current A-side “I Hate People” and a disappointing new version of its B-side “Let’s Break The Law”, which seems to have lost the fierce edge of the seven inch rendition.
There’s disappointment, too, on “Nowhere Man”, mainly for the backing vocals which sound bassy and calm when they should be snarling and ultimately detract from the attacking qualities of the number. Still, those are minor quibbles when you consider the wealth of depravity elsewhere. “You’re gonna burn with me . . . burn, burn, burn . . . “
Don’t forget. The Anti Nowhere League: they are League! — (Melody Maker, 08/05/82)
Anti-Nowhere League | We Are . . . . The League | (WXYZ) 1982
SLOBBERY WITH VIOLENCE
AND A more inhuman League you’re unlikely to encounter in a month of nightmares. The Anti-Nowheres, a collective mutant of heart-stopping hideousness, are a sort of conceptual bastard, spawned by some unholy marriage of The Ramones and The Damned, and taking on all the least appetising features of either parent. In short, a noisy joke.
A coarse, corny cacophony of brutalism rampant, the music of the Anti-Nowhere League takes the cartoon corruption of “punk” to its furthest and most laughable extreme. Rolling-thunder chords just crunch and crash on — remorseless and crude, defiantly dumb, twelve roaring anthems to Stupidity. And the stance never varies: the League’s philosophy, in all its subtlety and richness, could be entirely expressed with two upturned fingers.
The group could so easily be from Not The Nine O’Clock News, to Benny Hill, to The Muppets— the singer’s name is Animal—that any attempt to “expose” them as ridiculous would be a waste of words. Half the League’s appeal must lie exactly in this, the fact that they’re so transparently not the real thing. I’d worry seriously for the mentality of any young punk who took the whole scam at face value.
A raucous celebration of depravity, the album wallows in moral squalor with slobbish delight. To call it sexist would be an understatement; to call it obscene would probably be accurate. A few quotations might convey the flavour, but I think I’ll spare you. For the record, though, tracks include their murderous version of Ralph McTell’s ‘Streets Of London’, ‘Let’s Break The Law’ and the self-explanatory ‘I Hate . . . People’. Where lyrical invention fails, choruses resort to anguished chants of howled expletives.
Personally, I’m amused, although I think I should feel disgusted. (NME, 08/05/82)
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