Conflict — Statements Of Intent 1982-1987
The five-CD set comes in a thick flip side box, which features a black, white and red colour scheme. Each CD comes in its own card slip sleeve that recreates the original vinyl artwork. Also featured is a twenty-page inlay booklet- this features a new eleven-page write-up about the band & the featured albums by anarcho-punk expert James Sherry, a good selection of single art/ propaganda, and a band picture photo collage.
Conflict were formed in Eltham in South London in the year 1982- with an original line-up of Colin Jerwood- vocals, Francisco 'Paco' Carreno - drums, Big John - bass guitar, Steve - guitars, Pauline -vocals, and Paul a.k.a. 'Nihilistic Nobody' –visuals. Along with Crass, the band are thought of as the most important of the anarcho-punk movement. Between 1982 & 2003 the band released eight studio albums, and eight live albums- with a good selection of EP’s & compilations.
First, up on disc one, we have the band's debut album It's Time to See Who's Who, this originally appeared in March 1983 on Corpus Christi Records. The fourteen track album switches between the pounding & tuneful boisterous street punk of “Young Parasites”, onto building riff malevolence and empowered vocals of “Meat Means Murder”. Through to throbbing & darting bass meets reeling guitar tones of “Bullshit Broadcast”, onto the churning speed 'n' fuck-you’s of “Crazy Governments”- all making for a good and relatively varied debut album that rolled in at just shy of thirty-four and a half minutes. The CD features an extra fourteen bonus tracks from the bands two early Ep’s 1982’s The House That Man Built and 1983’s To a Nation of Animal Lovers, pushing it’s runtime up to fifty-nine minutes.
Moving onto disc two, and we have the Conflicts second album 1984’s Increase the Pressure, which appeared on the bands' own label Mortarhate Records. This was an eighteen track affair, with the first side been studio recordings and the second side been live recordings. On the whole, this was a lot more grimly raging-to-largely rapid record, which really highlighted the bands focused anger with it’s layered shouty vocals, feed-back forking-to-speeding guitar work, brutally crashing drum work, and tight bounding bass work. We go from the galloping 'n' moodily baying riff craft of “From Protest To Resistance”, onto manically crashing drums & speedingly blunt guitars sear of “Cruise” which finishes with a chant of ‘what are we going to do now it’s 1984' and the sound of an atomic bomb going off. On the live side we go from clattering & chugging mayhem of “Berkshire Cunt”, moving onto the intense marching snare-meets baying & bounding “One Nation Under A Bomb”, with its great nuclear base break down rant.The CD is topped off with the 1984 EP The Serenade Is Dead.
Disc three features the live album Only Stupid Bastards Help EMI, this twenty-two track and forty-nine minute album originally appeared in 1986 on New Army Records. It takes in a show from the summer of 1984, when the band played in LA at the Nagaskia Nightmare festival. The recording is both powerful, ranging shambolic, and largely unrelenting- with a few nicely angered track intro, and a good selection of tracks from the band catalogue. As one would expect with a live punk record, the instruments blend/ blur into each other, but the vocals remain powerfully raging & often rapidly spat
Disc four features the bands' third album The Ungovernable Force- this appeared in 1986, and is seen as Conflicts masterpiece, and one of the great anarchist punk records of all time. It also features the bands most iconic artwork which is a photo of a British policeman dressed in riot gear & pointing a tear gas gun. The fifteen track album saw the band focusing their sound into a more layered,and at points slight more experimental/epic setting. The album also saw Crass’s Steve Ignorant joining the group too. It moves from the powerfully moody “The Ungovenable Farce” which features boundingly moody bass break downs and overlaid spoken word empowerment. Onto the speeding baying of “Mental Mainia”, through to boiling bass throb & scrubbing guitar punk-tronics of “The Day Before”, which at one point drops into a few moments of lopsided dub reggae. With the album been led out by the dramatic & moody “To Be Continued” with it’s darkly grand if slightly wonky blend of piano,tolling guitar, female vocals and male spoken word. The CD is topped off with four bonus tracks from two 1985’s 7inc’s This is Not Enough, Stand Up and Fucking Fight, and The Battle Continues, which both nicely share the powerful & searingly layered feeling of the album tracks.
Finally, on disc five we have Turning Rebellion Into Money, a thirty two-track live album, which was originally released in 1987 as a double vinyl album featuring a recording of a Brixton Academy show of the same year. The CD takes in seventy-seven minutes of music, and it saw Steve Ignorant joining the band for a one-off performance- that blended together both Conflict and classic Crass tracks. As you’d imagine with a large venue like Brixton Academy the live recording is much more balanced & even, and it’s certainly interesting to hear Conflict's more rapid ‘n’ punchy version of Crass songs. On the whole, it’s a good enough live punk record, though it does feel too long for its own good- with the near eighty minutes rather lessen the angry & punch of the bands sound.
It’s certainly great to see Mortarhate via Cherry Red Records reissuing Conflict’s back catalogue- and this boxset is well put together, with a good selection of bonus material. I guess personally I lean more towards the studio material here, but there is no doubt the live stuff is damn powerful & grittily honest in its presentation. So a boxset for both those who are fans of the band, and those who want to check out this most important & influential punk band.