ALBUM REVIEW: Ferocious Dog – Kleptocracy (Graphite Records)
Kleptocracy is the sixth studio album by Warsop, Nottinghamshire, folk punks Ferocious Dog and the follow-up to their 2021 breakthrough The Hope.
After spending years building a fanbase with their thought provoking and politically charged music and incendiary live shows, they seem to be actually going places.
The Hope reached No 31 in the UK Album Charts, and you wouldn’t bet against Kleptocracy continuing that trajectory, despite the band having an almost complete change of personnel.
Frontman Ken Bonsall remains present and correct, but it’s FD’s first album without his fellow founder member, fiddler Dan Booth, but his replacement Jamie Burney is so good you can’t tell the difference.
The rest of the band has also turned over since The Hope, with Nick Wragg (bass) and Luke Grainger (drums) joining in 2022, along with returning guitarist Kyle Peters. The multi-talented Sam Wood, who contributes half a dozen different instruments, completes the line-up.
Kleptocracy delves into familiar FD themes of societal injustice, dipping a toe into all sorts of genres along the way, from folk to hardcore punk, via Celtic folk, blues and even a bit of country.
It kicks off with the fast-paced Witch Hunt, which recalls no less a legendary band as The Pogues, and carries a message which could just as easily be about modern-day treatment of immigrants as medieval persecution.
Lead single SUS Laws is another song which nails its colour to the anti-racism mast, calling for “more blacks, more Irish, more dogs” and insisting “in this land of hope and glory, they should be welcomed by us all.”
Tory corruption and greed is the theme of title track Kleptocracy, and you can’t help but agree when Ken sings “it’s time to take the power back and make the bastards pay”.
Listening to a Ferocious Dog album is akin to a history lesson at times, and that’s the case with Iron Mike Malloy, a homeless Irishman from County Donegal who was murdered in the 1930s so a group of acquaintances could claim his life insurance. After trying unsuccessfully to get him to drink himself to death, and several failed poisoning attempts, they finally gas him. So much for a happy ending, but it’s a fascinating tale, set to a lively Celtic jig.
There’s another history lesson in the shape of Merthyr Rising, a frantic slice of folk-punk about the coal miners in a Welsh town who rose up in protest at lowering of wages and general unemployment in 1831, raising the red flag as a symbol of defiance for the first time in the UK. It’s another engrossing tale, but as for a happy ending…
Blood Soaked Shores, the second single from Kleptocracy, is a surprisingly jaunty number about the folly of war, while Darker Side Of Town is a harmonica-soaked rocker which shows a different side to this most versatile of bands.
There’s a real change of pace for A Place We Call Home, the third single from the album. Featuring a poignant duet between Ken and folk-rock singer Lizzey Joy Ross, it’s about poverty and homelessness, but offers a ray of joy as a couple find love “with holes in our clothes but our hearts filled with hope“.
FD are no strangers to presenting their own take on traditional songs. In the past they’ve covered the likes of Freeborn John, Raggle Taggle Gypsy and Paddy On The Railway, and here they turn their attention to Matty Groves, an English folk song about an adulterous tryst between a young man and a noblewoman. Guess how the ending goes …?
Running With The Hounds Again sounds very much like a tribute to the band’s most fanatical fans, the Hell Hounds, while Moby Dick, which has a suitably seafaring feel, is about the titular white whale in Herman Melville’s classic 1851 novel.
Things are rounded off with the belligerent call to arms that is Anger On the Streets, an out-and-out punk rock rager, which shows yet another string to Ferocious Dog’s bow. The deluxe CD contains four extra tracks, but even the standard 12-song version is an album you’ll want to play again and again. 8.5/10.
- Kleptocracy is available on standard CD, deluxe CD (with 4 bonus tracks), transparent red vinyl (exclusively from the band’s website HERE), clear vinyl, black vinyl and all digital platforms.
