- Australian War Crimes is the third release in a year from Melbourne band cutters. With six songs crammed into ten minutes and one 7" record; it is a frenetic blast of garage punk.
cutters certainly seem a band ripe for the time. The blend of pub and punk rock is everywhere thanks to popular bands like The Chats and Skeggs, even the harder edged mix has been taken from the sticky carpeted pubs of Collingwood to the world by fellow Melbournians Amyl & The Sniffers. The Cosmic Psychos’ popularity endures as godfathers of the scene, while Sydney’s C.O.F.F.I.N., and Melbourne’s Stiff Richards amongst others have also gained wide acclaim. cutters’ record is mastered, like seemingly every record that comes out of Melbourne, by Mikey Young – who helped kickstart this revival of sorts with his band Eddy Current Suppression Ring.
Even the bastion of middle class Englishness The Guardian wrote an article in praise of this scene, which it called “Oz Thug Rock”. The hard drinking, hard rocking Aussie bogan pub rock bands are finally ready to take over the world.
In a legal courtroom in Sydney though, a different investigation is going on into Aussie thugs. As cutters release Australian War Crimes, this nation’s longest ever defamation case is going on. It focuses on the actions in Afghanistan of Ben Roberts-Smith – Australia’s most decorated living soldier. Roberts-Smith is in some ways an iconic image of the Aussie bloke – tall, broad-shouldered and deep-voiced. An officer in Australia’s elite Special Air Service, he won a Victoria Cross medal for his bravery in Afghanistan drawing fire to himself to help his comrades escape.
But the lawsuit concerns the fact that newspapers reported other actions done by Roberts-Smith. That he handcuffed an Afghani man and then kicked him off a cliff. That he machine-gunned a man with a prosthetic leg then took the leg home as a trophy to drink beer out of it. That he committed six murders of people already captured. That he bashed his girlfriend, burned evidence that could have been used against him in court, and sent threatening messages to other SAS soldiers who would potentially be witnesses.
These incidents were part of what was reported, almost a decade after they happened, in last year’s Brereton Report into war crimes committed by the SAS in Afghanistan. That report inspired the title track of Australian War Crimes, in which cutters ask “Whose wages do you pay? Whose lives do they take?”
It certainly is an interesting juxtaposition - the boozy aggressive music of Aussie pub rock, and the boozy aggressive darkside of Australian masculinity. cutters seem to be aware of it too. In I’d Rather Die Than Live In Rye, they don’t just point the finger at soldiers in a far off land, but at the anger that drives so much violence in our society. “Like a thorn in the paw, it ain't right to live this way...” they sing, “Not everything can be a fight / Turning a fresh page, letting go of my rage.”
cutters’ music recalls another era: of sweaty working-class pubs, hard drinking, hard fighting and hard rocking. But there was a hidden underbelly to that era of masculine rock’n’roll somewhat like the grubby underside of the gallant soldier myth. Australian War Crimes is the rough and ugly pub rock we know and love, but with a striking self-awareness. “This is the opposite of nostalgia…” they sing, “a sick distaste for the fatherland”.
- Andy Paine.