Album Reviews: Subhumans Reissues

Someone's gotta write 3,200 words about these punks. Yeah, they were that good.

Subhumans might be the most sorely - or nauseatingly, if you’re fixated on the above image - overlooked of all the original U.K. punk bands.

The Sex Pistols threw temper tantrums. The Stranglers got their groove on. Generation X, at the end of the day, wanted to be a pop band. And the Buzzcocks were more concerned with getting laid than getting to the root of the world’s problems.

But Subhumans, like snipers trained on a target, were strictly focused on shooting down traditional institutions and reconstructing them from the bottom up. And perhaps because of that unrepentant approach, they didn’t get their just desserts, especially not when they were in their prime.

While many of their peers were hard to take seriously, these anarchists held a pure-blood loathing: for government, for religion and for every other social construct/ailment.

Subhumans demanded an end to poverty and racism. They decried the Big Brother police state and warned of nuclear extinction. They were prescient and apocalyptic - and inseparably so.

Today, thirty years after Subhumans wrote their earliest material, there’s an air of hope across the globe, thanks in large part to what happened last November. But with undocumented loose nukes littered across Eastern Europe, dictatorial regimes still prevailing in Africa and pollution a greater global concern than ever, has the world really corrected itself?

Subhumans delivered stark social critiques at a critical time in their British homeland’s history: Margaret Thatcher’s ultra-conservative government was coming into power just as the band formed. Now, Gordon Brown’s Labor Party is on the ropes - and many of us here in the U.S. have been lulled into a false sense of “security” following the Obama victory.

While the times have changed, or at least supposedly, now might actually be the perfect opportunity to revisit Subhumans and give them the appreciation they’ve been forever due.

And thanks to new poster-packed digipak reissues of the band’s first six LPs, we have a convenient reason to do so. Subhumans’ own Bluurg Records (distributed by Southern) released the half-dozen titles - The Day the Country Died (1983), From the Cradle to the Grave (also ‘83), Worlds Apart (1985), EP-LP (’85 too), 29:29 Split Vision (’86) and Time Flies + Rats (’90) - from May through this past July.

Subhumans have also been on the tips on tongues in recent years thanks to Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and the band’s booted bassist Nick Oliveri. Before Oliveri’s exit in 2004, QOTSA continuously called out Subhumans in interviews and gave them props as one of the bands that most influenced said individuals. They also regularly covered the Grave song “Wake Up Screaming” and frequently played it live.

[By the way, Subhumans are not extinct. After cashing out in 1985, they did reassemble in the late '90s and have stuck together ever since. But because we've had no luck getting in touch with their camp, we're gonna give them the benefit of the doubt and adhere to their earlier material.]

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There was only one way Subhumans could open their first album: with the sound of a bomb drop. The flourish not only speaks to the band’s explosive, face-shattering style but also brings to mind thoughts of global annihilation - imagery that kinda sums up the group in a nutshell.

The anarchists - whose logo was a skull screaming into a mic - were more morbid and serious-minded than their U.K. comrades. While not as horror-obsessed as the Damned, Subhumans were nonetheless hooked on the horrors of the world. Incessantly railing against the powers that be, they began laying out their bleak vision with The Day the Country Died, which was written from 1979-’82, recorded that final year and issued in ‘83.

With more songs than any of their other releases, the 16-track LP finds Subhumans at their speediest and most urgent: Yeah, the album was written over the course of several years, but by the time it finally came out, it was as if the band’s collective gasket was about to blow.

The debut featured founding singer Dick Lucas, guitarist Bruce Treasure, bassist Grant Jackson and drummer Trotsky. (Another bassist, only referred to as “Andy,” provided the bass lines for “Zyklon-B-Movie” and “No More Gigs.”) But their scope was much bigger than just their homeland: It was global.

Subhumans were insecure about domestic security, there’s no questioning that. But what they ultimately were most alarmist about was the state of the world. On one of the album’s hallmarks, the ominous “Dying World,” the miscreant Lucas sneers:

“When you’re living in a dying world/ Panicing [sic] becomes an everyday thing/ Buy up the food the power and the guns/ Get used to the threat of the final fling.”

Beyond political institutions, Subhumans also targeted religion on their debut, which had some shades of the Stooges but ultimately sounded like the record the Sex Pistols never made. On “No,” Dick got personal, spitting bullets at churches:

“No, I don’t believe in Jesus Christ/ My mother died of cancer when I was five/ No, I don’t believe in religion/ I was forced to go to church/ And I wasn’t told why.”

Critical of people’s spiritual practices, Dick also tore into smokers for their personal habits: “Your lungs have got a dirty stain. Every one fag is less one hour of your life,” he railed on “Ashtray Dirt.”

They even found room to lambast Mickey Mouse and fans of David Bowie. So, in other words, especially early on, it wasn’t only government and religion that were under fire from Subhumans; nothing - and no one - was safe.

And partially because of that, it’s easy to claim Subhumans had a “hopeless” outlook on Britain and beyond. Their overall view on life might have been best summed up by the first lyrics to “All Gone Dead”: “Its [sic] always dark/ There is no light.”

But if Subhumans were really hopeless, why did they bother writing songs about warfare, poverty and police states - and why did they bother trying to rouse people to rise up and go after the Man? Because through all the fury and cynicism, they must have had some hope that the world would change.

Right?

Perhaps there’s some solace in the fact that “Think/Think/Think/Think/Think” is repeated all over the album artwork. Except for at the very end of the credits, where a different directive - one clearly meant to mobilize - is repeated. It says, “Act/Act/Act/Act/Act.”

Bookending the Subhumans debut is EP-LP, which corrals two short-lengths recorded before the former release and two recorded after. So even though it’s in the middle of the pack in terms of release history, it’s the next chapter in the band’s recording chronology.

To be expected, the Demolition EP - recorded in August ‘81 and released four months later - is even speedier than much of The Day the Country Died. But it’s also sloppier, so much so that any sensible producer would’ve had them re-record ”Who’s Gonna Fight in the Third World War?” It finally cools off with the EP-closing “Human Error,” where Bruce even flaunts some of his nifty guitar work. 

The Pistols are ever-present throughout the EP - Dick’s song-ending belch on “Drugs of Youth” sounds a lot like Johnny Rotten warbling, “desss-troy,” at the close of “Anarchy in the U.K.” But on “Human Error,” for the first time, the band’s sound seems to have something in common with a different kindred spirit: Gang of Four, the U.K. band that had formed a few years before Subhumans.

Like on Country, the government is squarely in Dick’s sights throughout the effort, as well as on the Reason for Existence follow-up the band released in spring ‘82. He touches on the conflicts in Cambodia and Belfast, and nuclear war. And nuclear war.

Not letting his mates off the hook either, he also rips cocaine and heroin users for poisoning their brains - the same way societies are polluting the earth. And again, he scolds cigarette smokers for giving themselves cancer.

While those two early EPs are best left to the purists, Subhumans began to expand their sound with the other pair, 1982’s Religious Wars and the following year’s Evolution. Finally, on “Religious Wars,” we witness Bruce pull off a guitar solo - even if it is basically just one note (that must’ve made Johnny Ramone proud). He gets craftier on “Love Is” and “So Much Money” though, even noodling around a little - taboo though it was.

The bass - now coming courtesy a guy named Phil - is more pronounced and the sound is sharpened a bit too. On “Germ,” it even resembles the Knack’s “My Sharona” (which came out in ‘79).

And thanks to the bass and Trotsky’s drumming, Subhumans started mixing up their song structure, integrating time-signature changes on songs like “It’s Gonna Get Worse” and the collection-closing “Not Me” (final lyrics: “Who’s gonna fight the system? You? Me? Or fucking no-one?”

Another sign of Subhumans diversifying themselves is a telling piece of ephemera in the artwork: a concert poster featuring the name “Napalm Death.” Yes, that Napalm Death - the extreme-metal squad. True, they didn’t release their first album until 1987’s Scum, but the Birmingham-ers were around earlier in the decade, and Subhumans must’ve been among their earliest comrades.

Speaking of Birmingham bands, it would seem at first blush that Subhumans turned to Black Sabbath bassist/lyricist Geezer Butler and his “Children of the Grave” for inspiration for From the Cradle to the Grave, which was recorded in October ‘83. But while the Sabbath song is a clarion call for kids to revolt and quell the threat of nuclear war, the title track to the second Subs album is actually one of the few of their songs that didn’t address the A-bomb. Instead, it’s about institutionalized racism, classism and military indoctrination.

“Your government will rule your mind/ And your mind will rule your heart,” Dick spewed.

That stock lyric is what you might have expected to hear on the other full-length and four short ones Subhumans had released up to that point. But From the Cradle to the Grave is where the band decided to broaden its sound beyond the confines of punk. The album is a snapshot of a punk band turning into something else entirely.

At its heart a punk song, “Wake Up Screaming” begins with a 2:45-long slow dirge before bursting open - like a bomb’s slow descent to Earth before its eventual eruption. It’s a death wish of a song. Contrast that with the toned-down, splashy “Adversity” - one of the first Subhumans songs that didn’t really sound like a punk song at all.

In step with this exploration, many tracks - including “Waste of Breath,” on which he played the guitar scale - found Bruce blossoming into an all-out rock axeman. On “Reality Is Waiting for a Bus,” one song that comes to mind is the Who’s “Magic Bus” - Bruce’s playing sounds like Pete Townshend windmilling.

Diversity was the key word, with Subhumans dipping their toes into Buzzcocks’ poppier waters on “Where’s the Freedom?” And “Rain” furthered their knack for time changes, making the band’s sound much more unpredictable. Just like the future they were terrified about.

And that brings us back to the title track, a 16-minute tune. Yep, you’re reading that right. If music had a statistician of baseball guru Bill James’ caliber, we’d consult him to see if a punk band had made a song this long up until this point. Our guess is no.

Actually, “From the Cradle to the Grave” really deserved to have been broken into different “movements” - again, the Who, with their multi-part operas, come to mind. And even though we dare speak their name within the confines of a post about a band as rad as Subhumans, “Cradle” seems like the long-lost father of Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia,” another long “punk” song about a kid who is coerced into enlisting in the military.

The song - the Subhumans one, not the Green Day one - is an experimental-punk epic. And it’s the perfect closer for From the Cradle to the Grave, after which the punks would even further shed their “punk” tag.

But before we get to the band’s next studio album, let’s pause and check out Time Flies + Rats. The compilation pulls together two EPs, Time Flies … but Aeroplanes Crash, recorded in May and October ‘83; and Rats, which was tracked in July ‘84. Time Flies also has three live recordings, which sound remarkably good considering the era and punk genre.

These records found Dick probably at his wordiest. With his anger piqued, he hadn’t become jaded yet, as he would seem to be on 29:29 Split Vision. He hadn’t lost faith yet in protests, and on “Rats,” he lashed out against the police for breaking up a rally directed against the collusion of the banks and British government.

Barely sung - almost a spoken-word piece - “Susan” is one of the more intriguing songs in the Subhumans oeuvre. With Dick at piano, he tells a “Jeremy”-like story on “Susan”: It’s about a woman who goes through school, fails at trying to become a secretary, gets hitched at the insistence of her parents, becomes a reluctant mother and dies. “Nineteen years of hollow cliches/ Now she wants to end it all/ Bored to death from doing nothing/ Family drives her up the wall/ Swinging Susan hanged herself.”

Dick is just as verbose on “Work • Rest • Play • Die.” Unlike “Susan,” in which he illustrates a single character, this song is about the plight of every worker getting beaten down by the system. Rats also has more generalized views, save “Labels.” On that track, Dick finally uses the first person and talks about a grievance that specifically has to do himself: being called a “punk” because of how he dresses, being called a “hippie” because he believes in love and peace.

“You can call me what you like I’m all and none of these.”

Musically, “When the Bomb Drops” is the most striking track - hardly a punk song at all, it has the band tinkering a little with reggae - a sound they’d later fully embrace on one 29:29 Split Vision song. It explores some of the same caverns as “Wake Up Screaming” did, and, like that track, has a slow build that crescendoes into bombast.

Worlds Apart, recorded in April ‘85, begins - and ends, actually - with an instrumental called “33322.” Especially after the experimenting they did on their last album, you might expect Worlds Apart to be a concept album, but it really isn’t. For the most part, the same things are still stuck in Dick’s craw: the “racist” British police, politicians the threat of nuclear war, drug abuse and “A system where achievement is based on deceit/ Of the masses by someone in whom they believe” (”Straightline Thinking”).

This time around, though, he also makes room for another regular offender: capitalists. Just like he felt cheated by “the system” on “Straightline Thinking,” he’s equally untrustworthy of “Businessmen”:

“He takes your money, you take his word … He disappears for a month or two/ He ripped you off and you don’t know what to do.”

Dick’s paranoia creeps in again on “Someone Is Lying,” and he slams capitalists again on “Get to Work on Time”; also notable is “Pigman,” in which he tackles another topic entirely: food production. “Farming is a living killing is a crime/ Where do the meatmen draw the line?”

With scathing commentaries like these, you’d be led to wonder, who are the real Subhumans here? Are they not us - with the bandmembers the informed teachers who are trying to enlighten the masses?

If not enlightening us, the hooligans were at least challenging their audience. The sprawling, 15-song Worlds Apart makes From the Cradle to the Grave look a bit conventional in comparison, aside from its title track.

The drawback? For the first time, Subhumans also start sounding tired. For all Bruce’s finger-lickin’-good handicraft, “Apathy” and “Pigman” are poorly written and don’t go anywhere; “Can’t Hear the Words” has some pickup but lacks a center. On that song and elsewhere, it seems the band is trying to edge toward anthemic choruses. If the Subs had succeeded with them, they could maybe have salvaged the album. But instead, the effort falls somewhat flat, leaving you to wonder if the Subhumans had started to slump.

Whichever the case, one thing was true: Subhumans, originally a straight-up punk band, were indeed worlds apart from where they began.

That brings us to the last bullet in the barrel, 29:29 Split Vision. Eight months after recording Worlds Apart, the band quickly tracked a quick successor, in December ‘85 (it wouldn’t see the light of day till the second half of ‘86, though). Without knowing that ahead of time, you’d swear Subhumans had taken a couple of years to collect themselves, to take the much-needed breath of air they sounded desperate for during their somewhat limp last effort.

Instead, “Sometimes Mother” kicks off 29:29 Split Vision with a bang, sparked by one of the most infectious beats the band had written up to that point. Dick is more focused on singing than shouting, reaching his highest pitch yet on “Think for Yourself.” But, meanwhile, his lyrics became not only more generalized but also drained of the galvanizing power of his early material. As he says on “Walls of Silence,” he’s basically thrown in the towel in terms of fighting the establishment - it’s an exercise in futility:

“The system stinks and we all know it/ But the mass protesters get nowhere/ A wall of arms against a wall of silence/ They just pretend that we’re not there/ And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

But finally, there are melodies. Hooky, emotional, succulent melodies that give the gang a much-needed second wind. If Subhumans ever had a chance of making it onto radio - another construct they loathed - it would be with this album. The first half of the album features tautly constructed songs that almost suit a pop format.

That all changes come the seven-minute “Worlds Apart,” though. With reggae guitars and a dub beat, Subhumans come across like a poor man’s Clash - if that’s not an oxymoron.

Scratching your heads over that penultimate sentence? Then you’ve been paying attention. The song “Worlds Apart” actually didn’t appear on the album of the same name but on its successor, 29:29 Split Vision. Tuck that one away for your next round of punk trivia.

The album concludes with the haunting “New Boy,” a loud/quiet song that has some feedback scratch marks too. Practically devoid of beat, it loops Subhumans back around to their From the Cradle to the Grave experiments. “Time Flies” - the title track of the band’s next album, which, like “Worlds Apart” doesn’t appear on the record of the same name - picks up the beat a little and weaves in some guitar ditties that actually sound a little like early Iron Maiden (also from England, the metal gods were in between Powerslave and Somewhere in Time). After that, the album finishes with a brief instrumental sketch - as if they were trying to extend the release to 29 minutes and 29 seconds, so they could use the title.

And with that, Subhumans split late in ‘85, leaving behind a white dwarf’s worth of full-tilt, three-shits-to-the-wind songs, some of which fit snugly into the punk column, and others that decidedly did not. Burning out instead of fading away, their career - though criminally overlooked - really was the stuff of punk legend.

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We usually don’t grade releases, but we know some of you have ADD, so we’ll do you the courtesy:

The Day the Country Died: A-
From the Cradle to the Grave: A
Worlds Apart: B-
EP-LP: B+
29:29 Split Vision: A-
Time Flies + Rats: B