LP reviewed in Sounds, 16th October, 1982
Blitz | Voice Of A Generation | (No Future) 1982 ***** | THIS REALLY is the big one, final proof if any were needed that the punk renewal of the last two years is more than just a second hand pose. To get right to the point, this is the best punk debut since the Cockney Rejects ‘Greatest Hits Vol 1’, although in terms of feel, suss and relevance it’s more on a par with the Clash‘s first album.
Pause there because that’s a big claim, but one that the 17 stadium-shaking numbers here bear out totally. Yeah, this is ‘The Clash’ five years on; the same pride and defiance, the same guttersnipe humanism, the same terrace-spawned chants and dirty r’n’r melodies, the same high quota of stirringly aggressive street anthems.
Voice of a generation? It could/should be. Certainly there’s millions of kids who’d echo the sentiments of “I don’t wanna be poor no more” roared by Carl Fisher on the beefed up new version of the title track.
But there’s no wallowing in self-pity here. With the atmospheric ‘Warriors’ the band recall last year’s summer of discontent (“There’s people getting angry in these darkest hours/There’s blood on the streets and the streets are ours”).
And there’s absolutely no doubt which side they’re on, as ‘Propaganda’ makes clear. Galloping verses give way to a bass ‘n’ drums only middle eight to emphasise the band’s lyrical attack on the Sun/Mail/Express school of reactionary ‘journalism’: “I can’t see any reds underneath my bed/But the fascists in my letter box are screwing up my head/You tell me I’ve got rights even though I’m poor/But you’re behind the police when they’re knocking down my door . . . “
Blitz | Voice Of A Generation | (No Future) 1982
‘Time Bomb’ is yet another moving manifesto; a ticking clock leads into the sturdy verses and a glorious growled hook line threatening “we’ll change the world with this time bomb”. The time bomb is punk and the radical sentiments are re-echoed later on the savage ‘Criminal Damage’, but I’d say don’t kid yerselves.
Punk could play a part in the transformation of society but only if youth anger aligns with more trad working class organisation.
Elsewhere the anthems fall over themselves to lacerate your brain. There’s ‘F**” You’ an angry epic of adolescent aggression, the chest-beating assertion of ‘We Are The Boys’, the rumbling menace of bootboy serenade ‘Bleed’, the surging Motor-punk of ‘I Don’t Need You’, the slow and heavy stomp of ‘Your Revolution’, the barbed wire rock and Attila-style sentiments of ‘Moscow’.
No doubt about it, this is a massively fine album as important today as ‘The Clash’ was back then. The real difference was then punk was relatively phoney but positive, now, when it’s realer than ever, there’s a real danger of it drowning in conservatism and disappearing up its own thrash-happy arsehole.
Artificial barriers of biz/media hostility and pig-ignorance have disrupted the flow of new punk’s development, and as the man said when the river flows it stays healthy, when it’s stagnant all the scum rises to the top. You only have to look at the London street scene now to see how far the scum have risen.
But Blitz represent the real challenge of punk and I want to use this opportunity to beg Mackie not to leave and the band not to split up on the verge of this vital national tour. The future of punk and Oil as worthwhile movements could very well depend on it. (Sounds, 16/10/82)
THE VOICE OF DEGENERATION
BLITZ | Voice of a Generation (No Future)
IT’S FIVE years on and still the anachronistic rantings of groups such as Blitz spew out to mollify the impotence of a generation.
Five years of education for your Test Tube Babies, your Chron-Gens, without one iota of development or inspiration lodging between thick ears. Is it merely the desperate longings of those who weren’t there to attempt to recapture an atmosphere or attitude long since evaporated? Whatever their reasons, the body of youth in need of this ‘voice’ shows no sign of diminishing, nor dampening the partisan adoration that shoves records like this into the national charts. As ever, success bestows a damning, hollow credibility — Blitz are now ‘album artists’.
Whether Blitz are ‘better’ than their contemporaries is irrelevant — any of the bunch, if prepared to flog the motorways with a modicum of organisation in the background, could probably emulate this ‘success’. Blitz simply conform to the requirements of a particular section of the record-buying market — they do it with sanitised aplomb, a calculated efficiency and a careerist mentality.
Their studied sound comes from a minute dissection of what startled and provoked five years ago. They wear their sense of history with a smug swagger, probably actually pleased that they can ‘play better than Strummer or Shelley’.
The Blitz LP is, at times, most reminiscent of the Clash’s debut minus Strummer’s howl and Jones’ knack for a tune. It’s a gratuitously unlovely noise that no amount of stereo trickery can tart up—the guitars are uniformly drone-like, the occasional Buzzcockian flourish only emphasising the date stamp. The bass is metallic and simplistic, the drums pure Terry Chimes. ‘Singer’ Carl Fisher, flipping through his ‘Punk’s Greatest Hits’ collection, opts for the Jake Burns early SLF throat crucifixion mode of delivery.
In between boorishly flouting the mob call-and-response mentality, the band effortlessly slips into boogie gear — producing a Ramonic racket akin to Motorhead or a cranked-up Quo. For such a touted high energy music, an album’s worth of Blitz has an increasingly soporific effect, dulling the senses in its relentless monotony. The single respite on the entire record is a brief, efficient reggae commencing ‘Nation On Fire’ — but, as if to sneer at us musical softies, they announce “Yeah, we can do that easy enough — now we’ll do this”, launching headlong into another fuzz barrage.
Perhaps Blitz’s rivals will learn from this chartbound sound — deducing that the harder metallicisms should be forsaken in favour of rewriting a few chestnuts from ’77; in which case, following this lead, the hit parade could soon be strewn with punky retreads.
The simplistic Blitz philosophy, when consumed at cult level, is a harmless, pitiable distraction raising only laughs — when it becomes big money fodder, however, it raises questions about youth, pop music, and the attitudes of a generation that aren’t so funny. (NME, 20/11/82)
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