Rudimentary Peni: Great War | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- In a subculture not noted for its longevity, Nick Blinko of '80’s anarcho-punk legends Rudimentary Peni is an unlikely survivor. Blinko’s uneven mental state has seen him in and out of psychiatric facilities and severe depression has debilitated his musical and visual artistic output. But in somewhat of a surprise, Blinko and his band are back with Great War – a new album coming more than a decade after their last release and thirty-eight years since their iconic debut Death Church.

Blinko’s intricate and often grotesque ink drawings have continued to gain an audience in that time and on this evidence Rudimentary Peni still have plenty to offer too. Great War alternates between slow dirges and fast punk, with Blinko’s signature anguished growl and that gloriously harsh classic anarcho-punk guitar tone. The lyrics for the album all come from the words of Wilfred Owen - the English poet who died aged twenty-five on the Western Front, but not before writing some of the most honest and harrowing depictions of the first world war.

Anarcho-punk is a bit of an unlikely survivor too. Despite all the apocalyptic imagery of the genre, the planet and the human race made it through the nuclear arms race of the '80s. The atonal and bleak style of music was never designed for mass popularity, and the extreme anarchist and pacifist politics the bands generally adhered to are not always traditionally kept as one gets older. But quite a few of the original bands are still going in some form, and new bands keep being inspired; making anarcho-punk a niche but well-established musical subgenre.

Even as someone who loves the style and who has put substantial time and effort into anti-war activism, I have to admit there is at times something a bit silly about new anarcho-punk acts copying the obsession with nuclear apocalypse that gave the style its other common epithet “peace punk”. With the end of the Cold War the hands of the atomic doomsday clock were wound back, and the tactics of warfare have changed significantly. Even the pressing existential crisis facing humanity has moved on since then, climate change replacing the bomb as our imminent threat. War certainly hasn’t disappeared; but to stay relevant the politics of these bands could do with some updating, some theoretical input beyond a Crass lyrics sheet.

Great War would seem to be a case in point. Despite decades of British involvement in the War on Terror, the lyrics here all come from a hundred years ago when the weapons were bayonets and mustard gas rather than drone bombers and mass surveillance. And yet, coming out as it did in the week of ANZAC Day, as investigations continue over war crimes committed by special forces troops in Afghanistan, as the Morrison government announced seven-hundred-and-fifty million in extra funding for joint Australian-US military facilities; those old poems set to a bleak soundtrack have an uncomfortable pertinence.

In contrast to the hagiography of ANZAC commemoration, the words of Wilfred Owen are a stark reminder of what the “Great War” was really like: the album opens with the lines “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? / Only the monstrous anger of the guns.” On the album closer, Wilfred Owen and Nick Blinko point an accusatory finger at those seek to glorify war, those who “tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”

The Latin phrase, etched on the walls of Owen’s training academy and echoed to each generation since, is a quote from Horace that translates as “how sweet and right it is to die for one’s country”. The propaganda of war has survived the century since then, but thankfully so has the rebel spirit that inspires radical art from Wilfred Owen to Rudimentary Peni and beyond.

- Andy Paine.
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