Crisis
Holocaust Hymns!

I have a high regard for punk, more from a conceptual than a practical standpoint, to be honest. Because while I can't claim to appreciate the individual bands and their respective offerings all that much, I can't help but acknowledge the genre's fundamental breaking value (stylistically more than culturally) at a certain phase of modern popular music.

I'm certainly not here to celebrate the two chords that swept away the baroque excesses of Yes (and who knows why everyone has it in for Yes!), but it would be unfair to claim that music would have been the same without the advent of punk and the seed it planted, even if only at the level of contamination.

The unnecessary preamble is to emphasize my difficulty in recognizing the intrinsic value (because the historical value, as we know, isn't there) of a band that's only remembered because it featured Douglas Pearce and Tony Wakeford: yes, Crisis is the first band of the founders of Death in June, two individuals who will, on their own, not only give birth to, but also confer at least 60% of the meaning to an entire genre, apocalyptic folk (Pearce with Death in June, Wakeford with his Sol Invictus).

But that's another story. Instead, let's take a leap back and crash into '77: on the wave of a movement about to spread, probably a bit late in forming, Crisis are devoted to a canonical British punk as can be. The adventure will last short, not even four years. In '80 Crisis will be ashes, and their Guildford concert on May 10, 1980 (recently resurrected and released under the name "Ends!") is their last appearance on this earth.

Although Crisis is not indispensable, they don't make bad music (I admit I still have difficulty distinguishing who mattered in those years): Crisis doesn't invent anything, but they craft genuine and pleasant listening punk.

Another big news: Crisis were far-left, adhering to the Anti-Nazi League (an organization of the Socialist Workers Party, of which Wakeford himself was a member) and intended to represent the violent face of Revolutionary Socialism! Strange, considering Death in June will later be accused of right-wing tendencies.^*

"Holocaust Hymns", released in 2005 by the very will of Douglas Pearce (more to cash in than from a real affection for the project), collects everything Crisis did in their brief history: a single CD (a little over seventy minutes) to retrace the struggling birth and early expiration of a reality destined to die without leaving a mark. Three singles, a mini-LP, and a '77 demo, that’s what Crisis left us, a rear-guard punk band destined to burn out in the time of a season due to the artistic contradiction they embodied: taking a firm anti-system stance while simultaneously embodying a no longer revolutionary form of protest. And unsurprisingly, after closing the Crisis chapter, Pearce and Wakeford will decide to coherently embark on more daring paths for their crusade against the world.

But this, as we said, is another story. Let’s focus instead on these twenty-three sound shards (the collection also includes alternate versions and live recordings), which really, but truly, don't even remotely recall the art that will be Death in June, despite all the pieces (save one) being from the Pearce/Wakeford duo.

Nothing at all, everything is exquisitely old-school punk, unless one is in the mood for behind-the-scenes stories and wants to find in the slowing rhythms and alienating choruses of the later compositions (those of the mini-LP "Hymns of Faith", from 1980), the obsessions that will later characterize the first Death in June albums. But it is really hard to grasp, amidst the grooves of a robust and boisterous punk, the signs of what is to come.

Also, because Pearce and Wakeford limit themselves to doing what a good guitarist and a good bassist would do in any other punk band of amateurs, while the voices of Phrazer and Dexter (the two singers who alternated over the years) unceremoniously recall the unpolished pipes of any Johnny Rotten.

The first fifteen pieces (those of the singles and the mini-LP) still have a decent production, flow pleasantly, short enough not to bore, anthemic enough to warm spirits, make one tap a foot, and invite some accompanying vocalizations. Noteworthy is the compelling opener "Holocaust" (probably the best and most well-known track), boasting a catchy guitar riff and lyrics that vaguely anticipate themes later better explicated within Death in June.

Titles like "Red Brigades," "Kanada Commando," and "Back in the USSR" certainly need no introduction and are the most vivid examples of the band's ideological stance. The two guitars (besides Pearce, don't forget Crisis's other axeman, Lester Jones) effectively blend, with a driving rhythm and imaginative solo. Behind the drums, first The Cleaner, then Luke Rendall, manhandle competently, providing the right energy and dynamism (with various stop-and-go moments) to tracks that still shine with noteworthy melodic variety (especially the alien "Frustration", the most composite track).

Unfortunately, the sound quality deteriorates from the sixteenth track onward, as the remote past of the band is dusted off (consider the demo pieces) and their live exploits are sampled, which are overall decent on stage.

And thus we return to the initial question of whether Crisis has intrinsic value or should only be seen as the curious origins of an artistic entity that, positioning itself even antithetically to them, would lead to the genesis of a new and important current in the post-punk landscape.

The truth is that Crisis is, in the end, not a fundamental but an honest band, justly forgotten but not to be blamed or criticized; and this "Holocaust Hymns" might delight anyone who loves the most direct and belligerent punk without expecting too much.

Stay far away, instead, are the apocalyptic folk aficionados!

_{* Needless postscript: the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that considering Death in June right-wing is wrong, or at least reductive. The other night I watched Visconti's "The Damned", and another piece in understanding the complex psyche of Douglas P. became evident: it was no coincidence that during the scene depicting the Night of the Long Knives massacre (an event the band is named after) the SA, young homosexuals caught in joyful and carnal revelry, indeed intone a military chant present on the emblematic album "Brown Book." Watching a film like this (a morbid film, centered on the decay of things, against Nazism, but at the same time not depriving it of the romanticism and heroism that cover the petty bourgeois component the phenomenon actually embodied), a film shot by a homosexual and filled with homosexual aesthetics, undoubtedly clarifies many aspects of Death in June's music, beyond the easy judgments we might make in words. Seeing is believing.}