ALBUM REVIEW: All Out Attack – Step Up! … And Unreleased Demos (Steel Bonnet Justice Recs)
Northumbrian street-punk band All Out Attack are back with a new single and digital album of unreleased tracks.
The band have been doing the rounds for about a decade now, and have a handful of EPs to their name, and one proper album, 2014’s Dystopia.
Last year they contributed a new track, Ghost Protocol, to the excellent Spirit of DIY Vol. 3 CD released by Punkboot Promotions (reviewed here): and now they’ve delved into their vaults to give us more unreleased material.
Sadly, the ongoing pandemic means the band are unlikely to be able to get into a studio to polish up the songs any time soon, so they’ve decided to go ahead and release them as they are.
That gives them a really raw, live sound, with Daz’s swaggering guitar, Kev’s insistent basslines and a drummer, Dan, who’s all over his kit like a rash – not to mention Adz’s gritty vocals.
A few of the 12 songs will be familiar to anyone who’s seen All Out Attack live. The excellent Holiday In Beijing, about the scandalous closure of Teesside’s steelworks, is the standout track here for me.
Running it a close second is another setlist staple, The 15th Battalion, a tribute to the international brigade who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
Step Up!, the fast-paced anti-hunting track which opens the collection and gives it its name, is full of vim and vigour, and a worthy follow-up to their last single, 2019’s A Tale Of Three Rivers EP.
Never Grow Old is their heartfelt tribute to the punk scene which brought All Out Attack together in the first place, and it’s good to hear a nod in the lyrics to Blitz, whose debut EP gave them their name.
The angriest song here is NHS In Distress, with its urgent guitar sound and prominent bassline, and sadly it’s more relevant than ever in these troubled times.
Elsewhere, The Black Dog Skank, about those struggling to cope with depression, is made more pertinent given the mental health timebomb which was ticking even before lockdown.
Comparisons with the likes of the Angelic Upstarts and Leatherface are inevitable, and the only shame is that this release is digital-only (though there’s no gigs to sell physical copies at anyhow). 8/10.
You can find Step Up! … And Unreleased Demos by searching for All Out Attack on the usual digital platforms, or by following this link.
