ALBUM REVIEW: The Three Chords Of The Apocalypse – Spam Javelin

Over four decades since the likes of BLACK FLAG, BAD BRAINS and co. were terrifying Reagan’s America with the genre’s earliest primal iterations, hardcore has come to take on many different forms. Indeed, at this point there’s no end of ‘hardcore’ you could play to infuriate the genre purists of the 80s. Not SPAM JAVELIN though. The trio’s second full-length, The Three Chords Of The Apocalypse, wouldn’t sound out of place among some of the genre’s pioneering records. Like The Crack Whores Of Betws Garmon before it, it’s scathing, snarling, raw and dirty. It draws particular comparisons to the likes of CIRCLE JERKS, DEAD KENNEDYS and D.O.A., but there’s also a profoundly British feel which evokes all-time legends like THE CLASH and THE SEX PISTOLS.

The album opens with the driving bass and toms of Shit You Don’t Need. On top of them, frontman Neil Crud adds East Bay Ray-esque surf rock guitars as his sarcastic vocals rail against consumer culture and materialism. This socio-political commentary is something which runs throughout the record. Shit You Don’t Need itself gets two similarly anti-materialistic sequels. It also really comes to the fore on second track Herd Impunity – an early highlight. This one reads as a biting critique of UK politics in recent years, opening with the vicious line: “Banging pots for the service you helped to destroy.” If that left any uncertainty as to where the band stand, lines like “This is a country filled with hate” and “We are a xenophobic state” soon clear things up.

As well as the more general socio-political commentary, The Three Chords… features several tracks where SPAM JAVELIN take aim at some very specific individuals. As you might expect, they don’t pull their punches at all. UK-based listeners will have few doubts who the band are talking about on fifth track We’ve Made Plans For Nigel. This is even clearer from the songs nursery-rhyme-like chorus of “When I read your shit in the press, no wonder this country’s a mess. You’ve caused all this pain for personal gain, there’s a swastika on your chest.” Later, ninth track Super Twat takes vitriolic aim at Gordon Anglesea, a former police chief convicted of child sexual abuse in 2016. Again, the band go straight for the jugular, with lines like “He’s a dirty fucking paedo, he’s the head of the police.”

Obviously, SPAM JAVELIN are pretty furious about a lot of things, but The Three Chords… also reveals a certain sense of humour at times. Often this is highly sarcastic, but it does mean listeners can have some fun even amid the misery and anger. One of the most obvious examples is the sheer deranged insanity of the record’s fourth track Children Of The Shoe. Another is the simplistic yet glorious defiance of the album’s seventh track, a cover of Fuck You by Canada’s SUBHUMANS.

The Three Chords… stays in pretty much the same gear throughout its half-hour runtime. SPAM JAVELIN definitely don’t seem interested in overcomplicating matters. Instead, they opt for simple, to-the-point and raging hardcore that serves as an ideal vehicle for their uncompromising opinions. This is something bands have been doing for decades now, but that doesn’t blunt SPAM JAVELIN’s message. Some of the tracks may be less memorable than others, but The Three Chords… never runs short on ferocity, and, given the state of the world in 2021, it seems unlikely the band will anytime soon either.

Rating: 7/10

The Three Chords Of The Apocalypse is out now via Link2Wales Records.

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