Public Serpents – When Pigs Lie

Public Serpents are a band who’s lyrics are 100% as heavy and heart felt as Crass themselves, written with the same conviction and life history built in, this comes as no surprise as their debut album ‘Feeding Of The Fortune 5000’ quite obviously hints to the influence.  Musically you might think from the outset, that comparisons with said anarchy punks are pretty thin on the ground, but where else would you hear such diversity in the use of the music to tell the story within, the style might not be the same, but the impact most certainly is.

The Bully Puppet is their first release via SBÄM Records and comes a full 15 years since the initial offering, but by no means have they lost their hate for the system or the modern day shit show that is the capitalism.  Just take the heart of the band Skwert, he has lived through some of the hardest times that we could possibly imagine and not ever truly understand, including incarceration, homelessness and the loss of a marriage this in itself makes the birth of the album truly incredible, and yes you do feel this within the soul of the tracks.

This is a raw 13 tracks that take in Ska/Punk/Grunge/Hardcore and just about anything else that fits what they want the songs need.  ‘When Pigs Lie’ kicks us off, it covers almost all of the styles that this whole album crams in, you wonder if its just going to be just another Ska/Punk offering, but within the first 30 seconds, you can hear Minor Threat banging around in the background and some pop/punk riffs popping up, lyrically the vocal is not too easily picked out, but something about being locked up by lying law enforcement will do for me, it definitely feels like real anger at the system.  

So when we say that this album never sits still, what we mean is like ‘Burning My Eyes’ is devoid of Ska, its rolls more like Slipknot and this crashes straight into ‘Why Can’t I Tell’ that although starts out similar, throughs some fucking right outta hell Bass lines and ear worm melodies, we then dive straight in to some interesting Grunge, ‘Farewell’ is a car crash of a song that leaves your head spinning with “what the hell was that”, so much going on in there you actually forget what he is singing about, but still come out knowing its gotta be well worth finding out.

Just over half way through and your then dropped straight back into a rock-steady gig, ‘Snitches Stitches’ does this with some wonderful dub and electro moments to boot, ‘Irreverence’ almost carries this mood on, yet it also drives some nails into the heart of your thirst for rock guitar hits.

As you may have noticed, throughout this review and you most likely feel the same way, this album is a labour of love lyrically, I would never want to break the circle of perfection this album strives for by offering ridiculous reports on what is actually been said, but its powerful enough in what I myself did pick out.  ‘We’re All Screwed’ speaks for itself, ‘Sorry’ you can feel the hurt that’s in there, and ‘Bully Puppet’ which feels very Gogol Bordello in sections, and is as Crass as this albums can get, pure theatre, I did pray to myself for ears half way through this song too. 

We reached the end!  All I can say, what ever you do, do not take this album at face value, its worth ten times that!

Any album that can end with a save the planet or save the idiots that live here song, like ‘Plastic Spastic’ which dubs its way to the end like a ship sailing into the sunset, gets my vote every day of the Punk week.

Punk on Crack or is that Ska on Weed, who cares, it’s somewhere out there.

Check out the band on FACEBOOK the album arrives on March 24th via SBÄM Records