The Rebel Riot: One Day | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- The Rebel Riot play street punk - loud and fast with a love of the occasional metallic riff. Their new album One Day features songs about war, corrupt cops, religious hypocrisy, sexism, environmental destruction and exploitative capitalism. All of this sounds predictable enough, but there’s something that sets these punks apart from their mohawk and studded jacket wearing peers.

The Rebel Riot are from Myanmar. One Day is released as their country struggles to deal with the overthrow of their democratically elected government by a military dictatorship earlier this year. “There was a slight delay for album cover print and lyrics poster..” the band say apologetically, “since printing shops are frightened to be affiliated with political issues during this time.”

None of this is new to The Rebel Riot. The band formed in 2007 after the so-called Saffron Revolution was brutally crushed by the military regime. They lived through the short-lived transition to democracy, but were on the ground to see the social problems still existing. Opening track Genocide is about the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya people in the country’s west. Punks Against Sweatshops takes on the exploitative working conditions around them; while Food Not Bombs is also about poverty, and a tribute to the global anarchist street kitchen of which members of the band run the Yangon chapter.

There is no shortage of punk bands singing about these kinds of themes. But sometimes the punk singer hollering about slavery and destruction for a small crowd of true believers just feels like cliche. But The Rebel Riot - dressed up in full street punk getup, screaming these songs in the face of the military regime - are a reminder punk can still be a threat.

The strength of the subculture as a community comes out here as well. Immediately after the coup earlier this year, there was an international punk compilation album released, its profits helping The Rebel Riot and friends to keep running the Yangon Food Not Bombs. International punks helped to make sure this album got out too.

On closing track The Night Will Not Be Silenced, The Rebel Riot aim their microphone straight at their rulers.  “There is blood on your hands...” they sing, “Can you hear the pots and pans?”. There was something very punk about those cacophonous nightly protests of Myanmar citizens bashing their kitchenware to show their opposition to the coup. The Rebel Riot were there too, their technique well versed from all those years making a racket. But punk for them has always meant a belief in freedom and community, and not just a musical or fashion style.

They go on to sing “Drive out the evil / This is the sound of anger and dissent / Make them understand / How freedom tasted and what it meant.” People have been saying punk is dying since it first began, but The Rebel Riot are proof punk’s not dead yet, and it will take more than a military coup to kill it off too.

- Andy Paine.
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