Customer Reviews

No Sanctuary: Spiderleg Recordings

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Classic example of experimentation that occurred in the punk / post-punk scene in England in the late 70s / early 80s. This compilation has been over a decade in the making as this material has been ultra-rare for years.

Amebix's music was as equally influenced by Motorhead and Discharge as it was by Warsaw, Joy Divison, and Killing Joke. Classic gloom and doom post-punk stuff here - loads of tribal drums and brutal metallic riffage. They were the band who created the sound that was later known as "crust punk" (or whatever you wanna call it).

This CD collects their "No Sanctuary" 12in, "Winter" 7in, and "Who's the Enemy" 7in - all of which were released in the early 80s on the Spiderleg label (associated with Flux of Pink Indians and known for releasing vinyl by the Subhumans UK, Amebix, Antisect, and Flux of Pink Indians themselves).

Bands like Nausea, Tragedy, Kylesa, Neurosis, His Hero Is Gone, Disfear, and lots of other would not exist without these guys. They have been playing some highly-touted reunion gigs around the states...THIS CD IS ESSENTIAL FOR PUNK, POST-PUNK, METAL, DOOM, GLOOM, CRUST, HARDCORE, METAL FANS.

Jello - good job!

luddites, squatters and anarchists in a sense that transcended fashion, this band embodied the cliche of living their music. the pre-arise material collected here is crude and historically fascinating, and foreshadows _every_ "crust," sludgecore and even post-rock band nowadays, but remains emotionally engaging and brutally sincere on its own terms. you can tell these songs were supposed to have that fat, fuzzy guitar tone that now defines crust punk, and it's a bit thinner and more, well, spidery than it should be because that's just how punk rock was produced back then, but that only slightly dates the band's moody, metallic attack.

as a side note, in contrast with the accessorized punk fatalism trendy at the time, amebix were existentialists and their songs never lost a basic humanistic undertone that suggested hope and joy--even though the song "battery humans" has some of the most disgusting lyrics ever written, outranking in base, abject vulgarity all the "goregrind" bands today wherein being gross is the point!

the best band on earth, more important than the beatles. when we put our lives into their hands, we put our hands into their chains.

Everyone into Metal and Punk should own this. Essential listening. Glad Amebix is back!! Looking forward to new material. Hail Amebix!