New albums are nothing new, and neither are bands taking new directions; Slaves might offer both, but you’d have to be crazy to take them at their word.
‘Take Control’ is, if it’s possible, angrier than ‘Are You Satisfied?’. You have to admire their balls – it’s not the usual approach to success and greater exposure, but it makes for a much better record. Slaves are pushing themselves and it turns out they’re a lot more versatile than expected. It’s still punk, just not as you know it (at least not all the time).
‘Spit It Out’ brings the expected vitriol, then un-bottles it and pours it all over your head, while ‘Hypnotised’ is all Throbbing Gristle and throbbing bass lines before ‘Consume Or Be Consumed’ (with producer, Beastie Boys’ Mike D) gives us some odd rap-rock combo. Now, the idea of Laurie Vincent rapping might terrify, but it’s an unexpected piece of magic and delivers Mike D slumming it back to his punk roots. It also has something reminiscent of Mike D’s Unkle ‘Drums Of Death’ collaboration from way back with its heavy timbre and delivery.
‘Take Control’ keeps the punk train chugging along. Its unswerving momentum makes it sound like an extremely aggressive version of The Inspiral Carpets and Mark E Smith’s ‘I Want You’, ‘Rich Man’, by the standards of the rest, almost easy listening, more pop-orientated and more radio-friendly. It manages to skirt very close to the line like many of Jamie T’s best moments whilst always managing to remain edible.
‘Play Dead’, with its almost bluesy guitar and Bo Diddley-esque rhythm, works amazingly well within their style, but then the blues was designed to be reactionary and has always suited the disenfranchised and angry better than anyone else. ‘Lies’ delivers a Stonesy romp through the Slaves’ style. AND, it’s a song, an actual song – you know with singing and everything. And what’s more, it’s good. No-one saw that coming.
This pattern of power, anger and style side-steps continues to pound. ‘The People That You Meet’, with its limerick/nursery rhyme stomp, means it should be awful, but somehow is irresistible, ‘Steer Clear’, with Ian Dury’s son Baxter, gives us our second ‘song’ of the album. It has the Ian Dury influence you’d expect, but mostly sounds like a trip-hop tribute to The Rakes.
And the frantic changes in tone continue on ‘STD’s/PHD’s’, where Slaves do Clinic. It has the bubbling menace of ‘Come Into Our Room’ and power of ‘Walking With Thee’ but is never anything less that completely Slaves. And that’s what makes them the band they are – it’s true at every stage throughout. From the closer ‘Same Again’, which is most like ‘Are You Satisfied?’, to all the experiments mentioned above, they never sound like anything other than themselves; in taking all these risks they never sacrifice or compromise their sound.
Anger at the mundanity of life might not be new either, nor is trying to express this through music, but the sheer honesty and reality of Slaves in how they approach these vignettes of misery paint some of the best snapshots of modern life you could imagine.
And now, with their enlarged musical pallet, it’s impossible not to be amazed by just how exciting this record is.