Album Review: Discharge - Why / Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Captain Oi!’s mission to reissue classic punk albums continues apace and moves into the sphere of combining two records from each band, as begun with their treatment of the Cockney Rejects’ debut full lengths. It’s almost like it’s someone’s birthday with three (count ‘em) meaty collection all being released on the same day. Elsewhere you’ll find the Angelic Upstarts and 999, but for this review, let’s see what’s going on with the highly influential hardcore punk legends, Discharge.
Emerging from the English Potteries, Discharge formed I 1977 and became one of the (un)holy trinity of Hardcore Punk bands, alongside The Exploited and Charged G.B.H. (both of which have collections from the Captain due out soon) and who went on to define the genre.
Disc one of this collection is Discharge’s 1981 extended player, the ten-track blitzkrieg that is Why. The original disc ran a little under fifteen minutes and is a fine example of the styles and approach the band maintain to this day. Visions of War starts things in the most raw and unruly manner, Dave Ellesmere and Roy Wainwright’s rhythm section creating a stomping platform upon which Tony Roberts’ cutting guitar can weave its magic.
Sharp and slicing, the guitars are in perfect harmony with Cal Morris’ vocals, which are spit with the indignant bile of the fledgling punk scene. Does the System Work? is fatter and carries with it the message that would inform the Hardcore Punk movement from this moment on; A Look at Tomorrow has something of a Ramones feel, while the title-track and its climactic reprise are of blitzkrieg proportions.
Mania for Conquest, Massacre of the Innocents (Air Attack) and Maimed and Slaughtered continue the band’s preoccupation with conflict, while Ain’t No Feeble Bastard still lives in the live set to this day and is built around one of the swinging-est hooks Discharge ever conjured.
The bonus features here are the three other EPs released by the band throughout 1980. Beginning with the four-track Realities of War, which plays like more of an aggy-Oi! disc than the Discharge we know and love; there are traces of the sound that would come to the fore later, and even traces of the sounds that would inform their later Eighties output. They Deserve It, But After the Gig and Society’s Victims all carry that anarchic, anti-establishment feel.
Fight Back finds Discharge having moved closer to their trademark sound and laying down those uncompromising riffs and filthy bass with which we’re most familiar. War’s No Fairytale, You Take Part in Creating this System and Religion Instigates sees the band taking aim at the tenants of control, while Always Restrictions sets its sights on censorship.
The three-tack Decontrol EP was the final release of 1980 and cemented the band’s trade-mark use of the D-Beat, the grinding, distorted sound that would go on to influence a whole-host of bands in the Punk and Metal genres. Decontrol, It’s No TV Sketch, and Tomorrow Belongs to Us had Discharge getting their ducks in a row before the release of Why; and the world wouldn’t really be the same again.
It would take until May 1982 before Discharge would issue with debut full length, the genre defining – and still astounding – Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing. Thirty minutes of pure, unadulterated rage that would go one to inspire bands as diverse as Celtic Frost, Prong and Sunn O))).
Every one of the thirteen songs of the original – Cries for Help is a spoken word interlude, in the vein of Hawkwind’s Sonic Attack – is a stone-cold D-Beat classic. From the one-two-three of the title track, The Nightmare Continues and The Final Bloodbath, through to the Metallica-covered Free Speech for the Dumb and The End, there is not a single ounce of fat on this album, and it sounds as fresh and angry as it did the first time it was heard.
That you’ll still also find The Blood Runs Red, Protest and Survive and Drunk with Power in the live sets to this day are testament to the quality and enduring nature of this record.
As with Why, the Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing disc features three other releases from this time. Never Again is a three track EP where the D-Beat title track and the Two Monstrous Nuclear Stockpiles bookend the metallic chugs and howling guitars of Death Dealers; and the 7” single, State Violence / State Control, backed with Doomsday also seems to be heading down a more metal-oriented route.
Completing disc two are the four songs from 1983’s fantastically titled EP, Warning: Her Majesty’s Government Can Seriously Damage Your Health. If ever a band wanted to set out its anarchistic intent, then Discharge managed it here, in spades.
Again, the music was moving away from the D-Beat punk and into a more structured sound; the old aesthetic was still there but was more evidently being subsumed by other influences. Heck, Where There Is a Will There Is a Way even has an LA Strip vibe going on.
It may come as no surprise that Discharge would find themselves moving closer to the Heavy Metal Genre with their next three album releases: those glam influences would appear again on 1986’s Grave New World. Five years later and Massacre Divine would be a straight-up Metal record, and Shootin’ Up the World would try its hand at Thrash in 1993. All three albums are of interest, but I want Discharge to be pissed-off hardcore punks, which we got back in 2002 on the self-titled.
It was eight years between Desensitise and 2016’s The End of Days, yet the band are as active on the live circuit as ever, bridging the gap between Punk and Metal, though curiously, without visiting their three outright metal records.
It’s always a treat to hear Discharge and Captain Oi! has done a great job with this package.
