80-86 Box Set

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2023-07-28

Label: Pirates Press Records

Second pressing in neon green vinyl, limited to 1000 copies

This box set encompasses some of Subhumans' most formative years: 1980-1986. The box set contains a 52-page booklet with Dick's original diary entries from the recording sessions, unseen photos, and original lyrics sheets. The booklet was laid out and designed by Daryl of Cock Sparrer. All of the records include custom, embossed, black inner sleeves and features a BONUS 10" titled "Unfinished Business!"

In addition to being packaged as a box set, each record will be available for individual purchase in special colors.

Also included in the box set is a slip mat with the Subhumans skull logo, and a poster titled Wessex 2000 detailing the history of bands of the region and their members.

INCLUDED IN THE BOX SET:
* The Day The Country Died
* From The Cradle To The Grave
* Worlds Apart
* 29:29 Split
* EP-LP
* Time Flies + Rats
* Unfinished Business
* 12" Slipmat
* 52-page booklet

THE DAY THE COUNTRY DIED
The astounding debut album that established the Subhumans as a genuine force to be reckoned with, ‘The Day The Country Died’ captured both the band’s serious anarcho punk ideology and their irreverent sense of humour. Recorded over just four days during the heady summer of 1982, and released six months later in January 1983, when it quickly climbed to No. 3 in the UK’s Independent Charts, this exhilarating collection of songs has endured for four decades, the band still regularly kicking their live set off with the opening track, ‘All Gone Dead’.

FROM THE CRADLE TO THE GRAVE
With their eclectic influences and scintillating musicianship, Subhumans were never going to be content to trot out anarcho punk by numbers, but no-one was really prepared for the progressive brilliance of their sophomore album, ‘From The Cradle To The Grave’. Whilst the A-side contains nine short sharp bursts of energised punk, gleefully embracing all points of the spikey spectrum, from the breakneck thrash of ‘Reality Is Waiting For A Bus’ to the ominous dirge of ‘Wake Up Screaming’, it is the ambitious title track that really captures the imagination, its sprawling sixteen-plus-minute running time telling the sorry tale of the human life cycle across a myriad of dynamic acts.

WORLDS APART
Arguably the highlight of their Eighties output, the third Subhumans album was recorded at Woodlands Studio, Castleford, during Spring 1985, and released early the following year, a few months after the band had split. Opening with the slightly incongruous instrumental, ‘33322’, what it lacks in rampant speed, it more than compensates for with some truly sublime compositions, assured arrangements and dizzying time changes. With a front cover illustration inked by vocalist Dick, ‘Worlds Apart’ saw the band find a veritable sweet spot in their song-writing, spawning many of their best-loved tracks, such as ‘Apathy’, ‘Businessmen’ and ‘Can’t Hear The Words’, but every single track on the album remains an understated masterpiece.

TIME FLIES + RATS
As the title suggests, this 1986 album compiled the eight-track ‘Time Flies… But Aeroplanes Crash’ 12”, originally recorded and released in 1983, and the four-track EP, ‘Rats’, that had been recorded during the summer of 1984 and released in early ’85. ‘Rats’ might just be the band’s most powerful and compelling release, the title track inspired by the Stop The City protests of ’84 that sought to highlight the undeniable links between first world capitalism and third world poverty. Whilst it’s something of a mish-mash, with several rowdy live tracks and a few, very enjoyable re-recordings of old Stupid Humans songs (Stupid Humans being guitarist Bruce’s pre-Subhumans band…), it contains two of the Subhumans’ best-loved tracks, ‘Work Rest Play Die’ and ‘Susan’, the latter something of an oddity as it’s a stirring piano piece, with lyrics written by Steve Hamilton, an old friend of the band.

EP-LP
The EP-LP was originally released in early 1986, after the band had split in November 1985, and collected for convenience the first four Subhumans EPs onto one disc. This includes the fiery six-track debut, ‘Demolition War’, that was first unleashed at the end of 1981, the powerful and provocative ‘Reason For Existence’ and the perennial ‘Religious Wars’, both from 1982, and the intensely angry ‘Evolution’, from May 1983, whose title track rages so effectively against the senseless tragedy that is vivisection.

29:29 SPLIT VISION
So named because the CD version originally clocked in time-wise at 29 minutes and 29 seconds, ‘29:29 Split Vision’ was recorded in December 1985, just after the band had split up, and they wanted to bring some closure to that period by recording the new songs they were working on at the time, alongside some of their older material that hadn’t yet been properly recorded. Whilst the B-side hints at the underlying reasons the band split up – the inevitable ‘musical differences’, with the three newest songs on the release literally worlds apart (excuse the pun) from their classic material - the five songs on the A-side are veritable belters, and ‘Split Vision’ remains a frustratingly fascinating offering from this most unconventional of punk bands.