ALBUM REVIEW: Grail Guard – Still No Future (TNSRecords)
Grail Guard are a four-piece hardcore punk band from the West Midlands who’ve been together since 2022 and this is their debut album.
They have a couple of EPs and a couple of digital singles under their belt, but the 10 tracks here distill their rage and their message in a very cogent way.
You expect punk music to be angry, but there’s a special kind of anger emanating from frontman and lyricist Riaz, who grew up as a British Indian Muslim in a working-class town.
He has been part of DIY punk, socialist, anti-fascist and anti-racism movements since the late 90, and regularly faced calls from racists to ‘go back to your own country’.
Now he’s seeing his three daughters face the same prejudice thanks to the continued rise of Britain First, Reform and wide reaching anti-immigration sentiments. No wonder he’s angry.
Still No Future kicks off with breakneck lead single People Just Like You, which takes aim at politicians who’ve forgotten their own roots as they pursue right-wing agendas. Riaz is positively seething as he sings: “If your parents came here now, you’d try and deport them too.”
Our Streets, a previous single, is even angrier, but splendid in its defiance as he rages: “They don’t want me in their streets/They marched for it, and they met defeat.”
Cruel Britannia and The Rotten date back to Grail Guard’s first single in mid-2022, but have lost none of their bite as they deliver verdicts on Britain’s colonial past and the establishment elite responsible for Brexit, Windrush, Grenfell, and more.
Still Fucked Up is another jab at the right wing, while Anxieties is possibly the angriest song in an album packed full of them. “Fuck you, you fascist scum!” indeed.
The presence of right-wing elements in the punk scene is the subject of Safe Space, while Alan reminds us that refugees who die crossing the Channel in small boats are people with lives and families too.
Rats, which closes out the album, compares politicians to vermin, and reminds us that they always rise again. Did I call this album angry? Forget that; it’s absolutely fucking furious, and it’s magnificent. 9/10.
