Conflict - Increase the Pressure

Belvedere Jehosophat - Sunday, 31 July 2005 - Print Version

Not to suggest that Conflict's debut, It's Time to See Who's Who, wasn't a good album — it is, in fact, one of punk's finest debuts — but their following record, Increase the Pressure, showed such a gigantic stride forward that it's difficult to imagine that the same band was responsible.

In the almost two years that separated both records Conflict slowed down slightly, became better musicians and learned how to write songs that were catchy and easily discernable from one another yet still contained the raw anger and energy of good punk music.
Every song on this album (which blasts through ten songs in 20-odd minutes) is memorable and powerful and serves as a healthy riposte to detractors who accuse punk of being for the tin-eared.

Conflict were an anarcho-punk band and their lyrics (again, a marked improvement to the debut) easily reflected both their politics and their contempt for the world they saw around them. And everything — nuclear weapons, war, the police, the government, animal cruelty, record labels, etc — absolutely everything of concern is addressed.
Lyrically, Conflict seemed to be taking some of their cues from Crass, which is understandable given Crass' role in the "scene" — a word of which I'm sure both bands would disapprove.

The only real concern with Increase the Pressure is that the track listing is completely bollocks'd:
The two songs, "Tough Shit Mickey" and "Punk Inn'it" are sequenced together as one track despite the separate track listing on the back of the CD case. This automatically throws off the rest of the listing... well, at least only up to the very next song, because after that the last four songs, "Cruise," "The Serenade is Dead," "The Positive Junk" and "The System Maintains" are listed only as "Cruise," and are sequenced as one giant ten-minute song.
This, however, is easily glossed over, especially now as I've just given you the missing song titles.

Finally — possibly as a reward for having purchased such a short album, but most probably because that's what a lot of bands were doing back then — Increase the Pressure comes with a bonus live concert tacked onto the end of the CD. Recorded on the 8th October, 1983 at The Brixton Ace, it covers a few songs from Increase the Pressure with the rest taken from the debut.
Frankly, had the concert been just a little bit longer it probably would have warranted its own release so it's inclusion is happily welcomed.

You should be able to buy Increase the Pressure (and the debut) from Mortarhate, the band-run label.

they are the enemy; they want a rope around your neck
and if they will go that far, then what the fuck is next?

Belvedere Jehosophat