Album Review: Bob Vylan - "The Price Of Life"

 

One of the most eagerly anticipated albums of the year here at Nite Songs, when Bob Vylan unleashed their debut mini-album We Live Here in 2020, it was one of the most brutally vicious punk albums for many years but took the genre and gave it a 21st century facelift to devastating effect with its tales of minorities living on the breadline in the face of Daily Mail style Little Englander racism.

It's clear right from opener Wicked And Bad with its line of "Let's go dig up Maggie's grave and ask her where that milk went" that the duo certainly haven't mellowed in the last two years. Take That amps the venom up even further with lines like "Give Churchill's statue the rope and see if it floats" and "Fuck Britannia, burn the queen". In an age where it seems like the self-appointed arbiters of taste from the Mail to the Guardian are telling us what ordinary people can and can't do at the behest of their political mates, be that Johnson or Starmer (both as evil, crooked, racist and dishonest as each other and I make no apologies for saying that) and both neo-cons and neo-libs just lie and smear those who don't have the channels to answer back be that racial minorities, women, the LGBT (especially the trans) communities then instantly cry off that they're being bullied the instant anyone calls them out on it, it's a blessed relief to hear something like this, unafraid of speaking how it is (and by that I don't mean in the way right wing neo-Nazi gobshites like Hopkins, Littlejohn, Morgan et al claim they do)

Elsewhere, He Sold Guns takes righteous aim at the sickness of the arms business and Must Be More is a furious attack on bottom-rung-of-the-employment-ladder employment. It's not all full-on venom though - former single Health Is Wealth is a compassionate call for working class people to look after themselves and not destroy their health with junk food while Pretty Songs builds from a gentle acoustic intro to a truly incendiary attack on both racism and the anodyne nature of a lot of what passes for radio music these days (with the following track Turn Off The Radio (Radio Single) well and truly hammering the point home.

GDP features Gallows guitarist Lags as Vylan screams out lyrics about the way the BBC simply brushes news stories which might challenge the comfortable view of Middle England under the carpet while the working class suffers through poverty and violence before Bait The Bear's Sabbath style riff brings back memories of Body Count's Bloodlust album from a few years ago as does Phone Tap (Alexa) which confronts the surveillance state that's been gently imposed on us the last couple of decades. Drug War is almost Discharge level heavy hardcore punk before Whatchugonnado? ends the album with a no-compromise call of "Whatchugonnado, it's either them or you!" as it makes it clear that the only way we'll get out of this mess we're in is with a revolution...if the working class of this country can ever be bothered that is.

Essentially, Bob Vylan are the sound of those who came before them such as Credit To The Nation, Sonic Boom Six and the Skints (the latter of whom feature on this album) being taken to its ultra-furious conclusion with a dose of Public Enemy/Body Count style insurrection to come up with a cry to arms for these desperate times we live in. This is pretty much essential listening if you need something to at least reassure you that you're not the only one who can see just how utterly fucking absurd this country has become in the last few decades. Quite simply, an absolutely vital album. 

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NITE SONGS RATING: 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑 (9/10)