Album Review: Anti-Nowhere League - We Are …The League
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
Cherry Red Records is set to reissue the debut album from the Tunbridge Wells punk icons that is the Anti-Nowhere League on a spiffy new vinyl with a gatefold sleeve and an inner bag filled with reproductions of clippings and articles through the band’s early history.
We Are... The League is one of Punk’s most important platters, up there with the likes of The Exploited’s Punk’s Not Dead, Discharge’s Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing, and G.B.H.’s City Baby Attacked by Rats as a defining moment of when punk got belligerently aggressive.
Originally released in 1982, We Are… The League is still the mainstay for a ANL show, with the band unable not to play a good two-thirds of the original dozen tracks. The title tune is the band’s calling card and begins the album with the simple introduction. Quite an upbeat tempo belies the anarchy behind the lyrics, telling of a wasted generation through a simple riff.
A predatory Animal, and slinky Woman slither by next, Can’t Stop Rock N’ Roll has that youthful disregard for anything but hedonism. But it’s the dire warning of (We Will Not) Remember You’s rapid-fire vocal and painful truth that suggests ANL have something more to say than potty-mouthed diatribes. The driving attack of Snowman warns against the use of drugs to alleviate the senseless boredom of the seemingly emotional bankrupt early-Eighties.
The first bonus track comes at the end of side one in the form of Rocker, originally the B-side of the single release of Woman, it’s another simple tune, telling of the role played by members of bands, the reference to “kicks from a plastic bag” – I’m presuming – is about sniffing glue, something that was prevalent back in the day.
Released by ANL as a single, the cover of Ralph McTell’s Streets of London is one of those times a cover comes to be owned by the covering band and their punkified version of this folk classic is treated with a definite sense of reverence in its delivery. The descending power-chords of the I Hate People intro is about as familiar an opening as Pretty Vacant or Blitzkrieg Bop, and the chorus has seen many a crowd agreeing with the misanthropic espousal of Animal and co. A deeper reading of the lyrics suggests an inability to understand the conventions of the then—modern world and – to be honest – the older I get the more I relate to the sentiment of the song.
Reck-a-Nowhere and Nowhere Man both show a softer side to ANL, World War III’s opening could be lifted from The Clash and fits the UK82 preoccupation with war and annihilation; and if you weren’t around at the time, watch the film Threads to see what kind of threat hung over the period. A remixed version of Let’s Break the Law and the bonus tune of So What! brings side two to a close, in what was for the time, a shocking tirade of profanity and filth.
We Are… The League was the endeavour of four lads from Kent who were about a diverse a group of people you could think to unite, came together to capture lightning in a bottle – or a record if you want to be pedantic.
It would be another five years before the sophomore album The Perfect Crime was issued but found the band’s punk sound heavily diluted by the Anti-Nowhere League forging a more rock-orientated path, recruiting second guitarist Gilly in the process. The weren’t the only UK82 survivors to commit such a sin, as Discharge had already released Grave New World, their heavy metal/ glam album.
As said earlier, We Are… The League still sounds as abrasive and pissed off in 2025 as it did in 1982; many of the same irritating factors still exist and will continue to do so, meaning the way to deal with it on a personal level pretty much remains the same as it did back then. Hard, heavy and pissed off music is what the doctor ordered.
