GBH - Punk Junkies UK 1997

An Uncle Roddus Album Review

1) Intro
2) Junkies
3) Impounded
4) Harmony
5) Tokyo After Dark
6) Shakin Hands With The Machine
7) Don't Drag Me Back
8) Break The Chains
9) Kangaroo Court
10) Stormchaser
11) Hole
12) Damn Good Time
13) Cryin' (On The Hard Shoulder)
14) Civilized
15) Lowering The Standard
16) Enzo
17) Outro

Back in the days of the early 80s I had missed the first wave of British Punk, being just a bit young and living on the opposite side of the world. But as I entered secondary school, the second wave of  British punk was hitting our shores with the likes of The Exploited, Chron Gen, Infra Riot, Abrasive Wheels and of course the mighty GBH. The music was fast and very heavy but still had plenty of great hooks and melody and I was really into it big time. I didn't go for the image so much(not too much studded leather or mohawks for me) but the music thrilled me to bits and informed my early politics. I came across GBH through the Punk and Disorderly Compilations and they were one of the fastest and most  heaviest of the new punks, a wall of brilliant heavy guitar and great tunes blurring the line between punk and hardcore and metal. Their "Race Against Time" was one of the best slabs of adrenalin fueled punk ever recorded.

 It was another surprise to recently find out these guys are still playing, having released a new CD last year and much to my chargin, played here recently and I found out too late to go. As I have mentioned before, my surprise at these guys still playing this music is that I thought that it had a very limited shelf life and although I still love their early music today I didn't think it was the kind of music to make such a long career out of.

Punk junkies was released a good 15 years after my initial finding of their early music and I wasn't expecting much from it. I think this was another of my Emusic downloads from several years back and I hadn't had the chance to give it a listen. 

 The music of GBH hasn't really changed too much from what I knew. It is still Hardcore punk in the British style I am familiar with  but nowadays I believe they refer to this as Punk Metal which is a good description as this music certainly informs the more heavy and darker forms of the modern metal scene. Although I don't mind a good Metal album, no matter what branch of the family it belongs to, I do find most of them very repetitive and formulaic and essentially boring. Not so with this very good wall of noise. Although it does not fire me as their early music did, GBH have put out another very enjoyable brace of full on punk, just as they did in my youth. A quality head banging menagerie of blistering tunes with the brilliant "Junkies" sending me into the stratosphere. The rest do not quire reach this lofty height but neither do they disappoint. My rating 4/5.

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