Ah fuck man, it’s good to hear some actual punk rock rather than some gleaming product, polished into anodyne conformity by a producer with a plug-in fetish.
Tracked live in single takes at Leicester’s Quad Studios. Free Chopper Rides is the 3rd album recorded as a trio by Leicester-based noiseniks Tri Subversion, and it finds the band building on the terrain established on You Are The Carbon with impressive skill. Packaged, as we have come to expect, in suitably DIY artwork and given just enough depth (and absolutely no sheen) by Stuart Robinson, the album takes the listener on a wild ride over the course of seventeen varied tracks.
It opens on a highlight. Somewhat surprisingly, given the antagonistic title, Eat Shit and Die proves to cleave closer to post-punk than punk thanks to a wiry bassline and Pete Murphy vocal – hell, close your eyes and you can picture the 80s TV studio lighting and stick mics when you listen. When the guitars do arrive it’s a different story, of course, and Tri Subversion whip up quite a storm on the chorus, but it’s in the sense of space that the band stand apart from their peers.
In contrast, the tremolo-washed Popcorn proves to be frantic punk with a catchy chorus and little in the way of restraint. It’s followed by two heavily fuzzed up rock ‘n roll numbers, both treading the gnarly line between Iggy Pop and Motorhead. The first of these, Motherland, is a frenetic blast of pure energy that sees all the needles in the red. The second, Die To Win, is based around a stabbing riff so dirty and low slung, you’ll need to take a shower after listening.
Four Days nods to collapsing supply chains and the irrationality of rampant consumerism. As we’ve come to expect from Tri Subversion, it’s sharply sketched, giving real bite to the vocals, which are ground out through gritted teeth as the riffs pile up. Somewhat unexpectedly, Dopamine has a lighter touch, the scratchy vocal and throbbing bass drawing the band back to the echo-laden post punk of the opening track. It’s moments like this that really add depth to Free Chopper Rides, providing a little light to the full-throttle punk shade that would, on a lesser album, overwhelm.
The surprises are not done, either, for right at the heart of the album the band offer two of the finest punk songs I’ve heard all year. First up, the evil-sounding 20 30 hauls itself from a mire of bass-heavy feedback, emerging as a mix of early Cure, the Clash, and even a touch of Fugazi circa End Hits. You’d think that, with so many tracks on the album, Tri Subversion would find themselves running short of ideas and yet the searing indictment of Did Nothing finds new ways to challenge the listener, washing the drums in dub reverb and waving cheerily to New Model Army as it ambles past.
As if aware they may have stepped too far from their gritty punk core, the band come back hard with the visceral groove of Terrorized By Law. Similarly, The Great Reset is the sound of a band cutting loose in the studio, channelling their rage into a sub-three-minute blast of primal punk, even if it does lift its riff from Nirvana’s Tourette’s.
The band take another sidestep on Free Chopper Rides, which offers an uncomfortable nod back to the days of extraordinary rendition. As befitting such a politically charged subject, it steals a lick or two from the surf-infused mayhem of agit-punks The Dead Kennedys, right down to the heavily tremolo-washed guitar that rides roughshod over the mix after the first chorus. It’s followed by the stuttering Bully Boy which offers huge swathes of melody, punishing, palm-muted riffs, and one of the album’s most sneering vocals, the latter delivered with a vitriol that recalls the strained quality Johnny Rotten had developed by the time the Pistols hit the stage at Winterland in ’78.
With the album entering its final quarter, Tri Subversion slow the pace with NGO War, which offers an absolutely damning indictment of the vested interests that have resulted in the current geopolitical tensions sweeping the world. With its Pistols’ aping chorus (“Frigging in the rigging, because you’ve got fuck all else to do”), it summons unbidden an image of Blaire at the time of his recent, breathtakingly self-serving intervention in UK politics. In contrast, Under The Radar is more meat ‘n’ potatoes punk, somewhat reminiscent of Fang. It’s a decent enough song but, given just how far the band have stretched the tether of punk, it comes as a surprise that something so traditional made the cut.
Similarly old school but with a hook that could land a whale, Common Purpose is raw-throated rock ‘n’ roll, delivered with impressive vigour, while Real Eyes whips past in a blaze of white-hot riffs and gang chant choruses. It leaves For Our Children to wrap things up. One last frantic blast, it once again showcases the band’s innate ability to pen the sort of chorus that sticks in the brain long after the record has done and it’s exactly the sort of emotionally charged finale this diverse album deserves.
If you dig punk rock delivered with heart and attitude, Free Chopper Rides is the real deal. A diverse, frequently brilliant album it is arguably a track or two above its fighting weight (although which tracks you’d dismiss is a harder call to make), but it sounds fantastic, capturing the raw spirit of the band despite the fact that it was recorded on a shoe-string. That Tri Subversion happen to come from my hometown of Leicester is merely the icing on the cake, and the album comes as a welcome reminder that, if you cut away the media chatter, you rarely have to look far to find a brilliant band just waiting in the wings to blow you away. 9/10
