Album Review: The Roughneck Riot - "Burn It To The Ground"

 

Warrington's Roughneck Riot were a band who genuinely looked like ones to keep your eye on in the early years of the last decade. Emerging in the late noughties around the same time as the not entirely dissimilar Ferocious Dog, they put out two storming albums in the form of 2014's This Is Our Day and 2016's Out Of Anger before abruptly going on hiatus soon after the latter. However, the last 12 months has seen them resume activity with their long-awaited third album now seeing the light of day.

The first thing you notice about Burn It To The Ground is that this is a much more feral and raw Roughneck Riot than disappeared off our radar half a decade or so ago as evidenced by the snarling opener We're Still Here - it's certainly a world apart from the more sedate and gentle likes of Skinny Lister especially with lyrics like "It's gone too far, we can't ignore now fascism is at the door" on Stay Awake. This group are less about Ferocious Dog style tales of historical injustice and more about anger in the here and now.

There's a real righteous anger to this album with the likes of A New Day Is Dawning, The Reckoning and No Cure For Us desperately exhorting the sleepwalking population of this septic isle to wake up and do something about the hell in a handcart we're being sent to before it's too late. The desolate lament of We've Already Lost shows that they can vary the tempo up to good effect too. It's a good reminder of what made the Roughneck Riot stand out from the crowd a decade or so ago and it's just as depressingly relevant now as it was then. If not even more so.

Packed full of righteous anger, ferociously tight music and an increasing desperation at the state of this country, Burn It To The Ground is one of the best albums I've heard in the opening weeks of this year. Welcome back guys, we've missed you.

Bandcamp Link (Stream & LP purchase only)

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