Cress/Amass – What Are The Government Scared Of?
(Grow Your Own)
LP | CD | DL
Out Now
A double dose of anarcho-punk uses the suppression of gatherings at Stonehenge as a central theme to explore how we are controlled, and how lies keep us playing our part in maintaining the system. Nathan Brown writes.
I love it when a split album has a shared theme, and with this record Stonehenge, the right of people to travel, to visit ancient sites, to gather and festivalise is at the centre of that shared focus but it is really used as a prism through which to examine how the government and corporations coerce people into being a subservient cog in their machine (You know, The System). Both bands feature samples from news reports/documentaries about the “Battle of the Beanfield” (hardly a battle as cops in riot gear and batons attacked unarmed people and their homes) and the fold-out poster is resplendent with plenty of black (mainly) and red, barbed wire, knotwork, images of the stones and the circled A.
Why are they banging on about something that happened over 40 years ago? Well, it still resonates with a lot of people. Along with the Miners’ strike and the policing that provoked the Brixton riots, the attack on New Age Travellers trying to get to a free festival was a turning point. We all knew the Thatcher government was hell-bent on attacking anyone with alternative views through cuts to funding, and, since the 70s, it had been clear the police were a violent gang used to maintain the status quo. However, this marked a new militarised attack on society and clamping down on freedoms. No more would they tolerate people enjoying temporary autonomous zones outside the reach of the law and the state. This was to be crushed. This role has continued to this day with the outlawing of squatting, restrictions placed on protest and current attempts to define peaceful protestors as terrorists. No matter which party is in power, there is still an increasingly authoritarian state at play. So is it relevant to focus on the attacks on the Peace Convoy? You bet it is.
Cress have been doggedly plugging away their brand of anarcho-punk, with hints of space rock, to a Penny Rimbaud drum machine for decades and are well loved. The addition of extra vocals (including Marnie from Amass) on a couple of tracks is a slight change from business as usual but this is recognisably Cress.
After being told “You Can’t Park There” when visiting Stonehenge, the tongue-in-cheek lyric says “The army are coming and they can’t fucking drive”. I’ve never noticed before that Cress sometimes have a similar cadence to Sleaford Mods but Cress are loaded with militaristic snare rolls and a big guitar sound. Samples of Trump making an idiot of himself and a crow squawking, along with space rock twittering, herald the arrival of Eat Crow. This more dirgey song is a short, pithy modern-day parallel to Tom Paine’s Rights Of Man argument about the monarchy (and other powermongers): “Born of a woman, no god, just a man”.
A sample of The Artist Formerly Known As Prince Andrew’s famous laughable declaration of his inability to sweat segues into Control. The pace picks up to a Crass-style drumbeat and heavy damped guitars. The song documents how things are getting worse for normal people, but not the elite, and tensions are rising. Populists pit us against each other, as ever. Cress ask the rhetorical question that has resonated down the ages, “What are we fighting each other for? We should be fighting the government”.
A split second after Control finishes, they launch into a new recording of the song Monuments from their debut album. It totally fits with the concept of this record, being about how stopping people from accessing Stonehenge at the summer solstice became a show of strength by the powers that be and illustrated that the freedom we think we hold is often an illusion. Exit returns to a similar theme to Eat Crow to finish the Cress side of the album in mournful fashion. “All of us are made from the same dirt. Cut from the same cloth”.
As I said in my review of their previous album, Amass are reminiscent of a few top drawer anarcho-punk bands of the past, but with a punchy modern twist. Twiddly lead parts on the guitar are very much in the vein of the Alternative in their album phase (no surprise given that most of the band back up Rodney Relax in the most recent incarnation of Alternative). The combination of the bouncy bass, vocal delivery and upbeat pace does remind me an awful lot of the wondrous Belfast sounds of Toxic Waste and F.U.A.L. The dual vocals provide for a combination of melody and angry attack. Amass execute everything really well and get the balance just right.
From South America To South Hetton analyses systematic state abuse of people through the lens of what happened and is happening to mining communities in the North of England over the last 40 years in the wake of the 1984 Miners’ Strike: “From the black stuff to the white stuff, from coal to crack cocaine”. Killer strikes out at profiteering capitalists who are destroying the planet in pursuit of greed. This pairs with Consume More Shit, a take-down of excessive consumerism and the lies to make you “buy their product which you’ll never need” is not po-faced. Amass use humour and swearing as they address a deadly serious subject. E.g. “It gives you wings apparently, I still can’t fucking fly”.
What Is The Government Scared Of? uses the prism of the attacks on the Peace Convoy and suppression of New Age Travellers to remind us all that the state will not tolerate people trying to live outside the system. To answer the question “What Are The Government Scared Of?”, as the fold-out knotwork-adorned poster cover declares, so the song replies “They’re scared of you and me”.
This is a great collaboration and is flying out, so get onto Grow Your Own sharpish if you don’t want to miss out.
~
Words by Nathan Brown. You can read more from Nathan on his Louder Than War archive over here.
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK! Cress/Amass: What Are The Government Scared Of? – Review – Louder Than War
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