Strike Anywhere: Nightmares Of The West

- In 2001, American punk band Strike Anywhere released their debut album and announced their intentions with the classic line “We live in defiance of empty times”. It was a lyric that reflected radical politics in that pre-War On Terror world - where the aim was to highlight the spiritual emptiness and the social and environmental costs of the American consumerist dream.

Two decades on; and though many adjectives are used to describe the times we are living in, “empty” is rarely one of them. The mental bombardment of social media, the rise of right-wing populism, a global economy that never really recovered from the crash of 2008, the threat of climate breakdown and now a global pandemic have changed the terms on which we talk about social change.

“The dreams of the West are a ghost ship now” sing Strike Anywhere now. The band are still here, and Nightmares Of The West is their first new music since 2009 - 7 songs and 20 minutes of joyous political melodic hardcore. The band never really broke up - life just went on as it does, raising kids and pursuing other paths. And thankfully, Nightmares Of The West doesn’t sound like a nostalgia trip.

The record in fact seems prescient in its line “no one remembers it all until monuments fall” on The Bells, their song about dealing with the conflicted history of their hometown of Richmond, Virginia. Then again, singer Thomas Barnett was writing about police violence against people of colour decades ago, so maybe it’s less a crystal ball and more a case of the more things change the more they stay the same. As men in their 40s now, Strike Anywhere are trying to motivate themselves and their audience to dig deep and find those ideals and energy of youth in a world that is still as unjust - “I know you’d like to forget, But I need you now to remember There’s more to life than vote and react”

At the heart of Strike Anywhere’s politics is still the quest for individual meaning and freedom. It’s not simple political slogans the band are offering, nor the self-satisfaction of being woke on social media. Barnett refuses the easy answers of “A peace we live in the heart of the fight”. “Do we tie ourselves to this game of fear or our false idea of power?” He asks on Imperium Of Waste.

On Dress The Wounds, a glorious three minute epic of multiple musical parts and political theses, he asks “When I wake up From politics That we made Will they make us slaves? Test animals for Killing systems?” The song pinpoints the nexus of capitalist oppression, “between the gunpoint border and the spiritual violence of our identity”.

Though it seems oddly out of place musically and thematically, the cover of London punks Blocko’s track Opener is still pertinent then with its opening line “You brought things out of me that I didn't know I had in me” - the way it very literally sings of the power of human relationships to transform our lives from the internal chaos we are often left with as the residue of growing up in a messed up world. The fact that the song was recorded as a tribute to Blocko drummer Marc Maitland who killed himself makes it quite a touching moment. For Strike Anywhere, the personal is always political; the quest for individual wholeness and social justice inextricably linked.

That has always been Strike Anywhere’s lyrical vision, as testified to by that debut album defying empty times. So in a way in 20 years they haven’t changed very much at all. In fact, this album seems to stand oddly out of time, like it could have come from the heyday of political skatepunk and yet is still the best punk release I’ve heard this year. The fact the band reference other eras of resistance with lyrical allusions to Dylan Thomas and Paolo Friere only adds to this.

It’s just rare to hear music like this these days. As you get older and more jaded it’s hard to maintain the thrill of radical politics and punk music - both of which are so often the domain of young people. But Strike Anywhere have made an extraordinary record of fierce melodic punk and truly intelligent lyrics. They were always true believers in the spirit of punk, and this record is made to be something you can believe in. Musical and social trends change, but the power of passionate political punk rock, like the struggle for freedom and justice, is eternal.

- Andy Paine.
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