Crass — Penis Envy
This is the third in series of reissues of the bands sonically and musically political important records. And as with the other reissues in the set it sees: a fully remastered album, a 64 page booklet featuring essays by key members, artwork and lyrics, and a reproduction of the albums original and controversial artwork(the front cover featured a picture a sex doll and it’s back cover a slaughter house)- all packed inside a card slip case.
Keeping in tone with the albums more feminist and female punk themes the original main lead singer Steve Ignorant steps away from the mic on “Penis Envy”, and instead the album features just the vocals of two female members of the Crass collective Eve Libertine and Joy De Vivre. The songs themes move from female sexual repression, onto anti marriage rants, through to anti-war bleakness, onto contrived love and relationships assassinations. The tracks lyrics here are often more complex and lengthy in there feel compared with bands prior work, with the female voice used to great effect as it shifted from angered and spiteful, through to apocalyptic and sneering, to falsely sweet and melodic.
Musical the album saw the collective managing to sound more tuneful and memorable, yet also complex and clever in the mixing of muilti genre traits- we have elements of african rhythms and guitar textures appearing here at the start of “Berkertex Bride”. Churning noise and female operatic over doom punk metallic’s on “What The Fuck”, which predated Celtic Frost attempts to mix doom female operatic and extreme guitar music by seven years. The album aptly darts from pump-up anger, into more doomy and apocalyptic dwells, through to roughed female pop punk and beyond. For me it’s the most consistent and wholly rewarding of all the five official Crass albums.
The album is made even better by the bonus tracks here firstly we have “Yorkie talk” which is a malevolent and swirling mixe of religious choral voices, sinister avant jazz stabs and female spoken word- the track was built from archive material in 2009. And lastly we “The Unelected President” from 2003 which finds Eve Libertine in great ranting form over a mixture of chugging punk metal, violin saws, choral samples and speech samples- the track appeared on the southern records anti war compilation peace not war.
So really this is a perfect reissue of what in my eyes is the most consistent, wholly rewarding and powerful record the Crass collective ever released. So if you’re a newbie to the Crass cause this is the best staring point into this great and highly influential bands discography- total unmissble really!