Sounds From The Junkshop #67 - King Prawn

 

"Caught on the back step, I find myself trippin'" - King Prawn - Someone To Hate

Ska punk is one of those genres that seems to undergo a resurrection on an almost yearly basis. Sometimes it's good when you get a group of fired up young agitators equally influenced by reggae and punk ready to unleash a vitriolic state of the world address (see the likes of Sonic Boom Six, the Skints and Millie Manders and the Shut-Up in recent years) and sometimes it's basically a bunch of fat lads in Hawaiian shirts doing comedy skanking cover versions and being less about smashing the system than flushing the cistern. And, let's be honest, the whole late '90s/early '00s era had a lot of the latter and not many of the former (names withheld but if you were there I'm sure you've got your own memories of it).

Happily though, in amongst the dross we did have the odd genuinely good band and King Prawn were one such example. Similar to Pitchshifter, who we covered on SFTJ last week, they were angry, political and all about shouting from the rooftops for people to wake up and challenge the society around them. I think it was an interview in Kerrang! some time in 2000 or so that brought them to my attention. They came across as a very erudite band, taking a verbal sledgehammer to Fred Durst and Rupert Murdoch with equal venom plus the fact that they looked cool as well (three guys in mafia style suits 'n' shades and a crazy looking bald guy with a beard who was wearing just a pair of black shorts and a chain around his neck (the group's notoriously unhinged bassist Babar Luck I would later learn). After hearing the then-single Someone To Hate, I quickly went out and bought the parent album (the group's third) Surrender To The Blender.

The group had formed in the early '90s and after several years of releasing stuff on punk minor labels like Golf, Someone To Hate had seen them land on (comparatively large) metal label Spitfire and pick up a bit of momentum from the likes of Green Day and the Offspring being in the upper reaches of the charts. But they were a much fiercer proposition than either of the above and the likes of Your Own Worst Enemy and Day In Day Out proved that they had a genuine confrontational attitude that was sadly lacking in a lot of their peers although the frenetic likes of Postman Song showed that there was a sly sense of humour lurking in there as well. I enjoyed Surrender To The Blender so much in fact that I picked up a cheap copy of its predecessor Fried In London which was equally blistering with the likes of Not Your Punk and Racist Copper packing a punch to them.

Unfortunately, as with a lot of the heavier groups I got into in this era (see also One Minute Silence and the aforementioned Pitchshifter), my becoming a fan would signal the beginning of the end for the group - they would release one further album Got The Thirst in 2003 which saw them taking a more refined angle and actually worked well in terms of progressing their sound but unfortunately it fared no better than either of its predecessors did and the group would have split up by the end of the year. Lead singer Al would go on to join the excellent Asian Dub Foundation (a pretty logical progression really) while the next time I saw Babar, he was doing an acoustic set at the Wasted Festival in Morecambe (which would later become Rebellion).

Hold the back page though because this one does have a happy ending. Al would reform King Prawn as the noughties ended (sadly minus Babar) and the group remain active and gigging today. They even managed a comeback album in the form of 2019's The Fabulous New Sounds Of King Prawn which was a much better effort than it really had any right to be and made it on to my end of year best of list for that year. So yeah, they may not have had the commercial success that they were briefly being tipped for around time of Someone To Hate but all four King Prawn albums (including their spiky debut First Offence) are well worth a look if a bit of righteously angry ska-punk is your thing. One of the more under-rated bands on the punk scene, they definitely deserve your attention if you've not heard of them before.