Customer Reviews

Strive to Survive/Neu Smell

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Perhaps not a record to play with your first cup of tea of the day, Flux's first album is nevertheless a tour de force of the first wave of punk - one of the glorious last gasps of the period.

Having said that, be warned that Flux were purists who, if anything, made a giant leap for the punk genre into hardcore. The disarming yet captivating feature of their music is in the combination of catchy & clever songwriting with a merciless onslaught of drowning guitars that will either leave you floored or force you to exit the room.

In a way, this album can be compared to Husker Du's "New Day Rising," where a distinct melodic sensibility is matched with a mudslide of distortion, where two seemingly incompatible approaches collide to create a truly new experience. The style is a statement in itself, never mind the fact that Flux engage topics such as the nuclear energy in their own uncompromising ways (which may be blunt but never banal). Add to this a backdrop of anarchist working class attitudes and we have one of the few genuinely revolutionary albums of Punk that doesn't lose credibility with the passing of years.

Anybody in search of artistic position over pose, both in form and content, should see this as one of the spikiest thorns in the crown of Punk.

Punk is for punx...basically, in those words, Flux of Pink Indians make their statement loud. With such problems such as nuclear waste, and many more, addressed in their grainy, yet beautifully put together sound, FOPI plays it to the max! I recommend this album to all punk/oi!/harcore or open minded music fans worldwide!

Hi - I'm being pedantic here but wanted to inform people that this Flux of Pink Indians cd compilation has an incorrect track listing on the sleeve.
CDDB database (if you try to copy songs onto your iPod and use this online song reference) is also wrong.
The last five tracks are: Sick Butchers, Background of Malfunction, Neu Smell, Tube Disaster, and Poem [not Neu Smell, Tube Disaster, Poem:Sick Butchers, and Background of Malfunction].
I'm surprised One Little Indian Records could have got this wrong, considering Derek Birkett, the record label founder and brother of Flux's singer Colin, played guitar in the band.
Beyond that it's a great listen of a politically astute band at their prime, before they decided to substitute music for noise and lyrics for propaganda (the follow-up album).

This is one of the greatest,rawest,in your face anarcho-political albums of all times.It combines Crass-like
topics-in a little less emphatical way -with corrosive hardcore punk,
full of guitar feedback and shouting ,characteristic of this style.There are,nonetheless,some twisted melodic lines
along,which gives this band their unique and peculiar sound.I really can't reccomend this highly enough,and if you
can put up with some less than perfect sound,¨Live Statement¨features all of these songs at a live performance in Nottingham,versions being even rawer,especially the singing.Bear in mind,though,Strive...has a rather uneven tonal quality to it,so an equalizer is mandatory to unleash the astonishingly authoritative drumming delivered by the
drummer,it does'nt get better than this,mind you.