Album Stories is an ongoing series, in which I wax nostalgic about an album and how it fits into my life.
I remain a firm believer in the long play album as the perfect medium. I love a #1 hit single as much as anyone, but it seems to me that you have to grind it out to achieve perfection in an album: enough good songs, the correct track order, flow, vibe, artwork, etc. There isn't an album story for every album I own, but there are certainly enough for a recurring segment.
Previously on Album Stories:
Today’s album: 2004’s Armed Love the fourth album by The (International) Noise Conspiracy, a Swedish band with a revolutionary message
2004, Lancashire: I discovered The (International) Noise Conspiracy by seeing their name on a flyer for a Rocket From The Crypt show1 and thinking it was a cool band name. As they were playing a series of shows with RFTC, I figured I should probably check them out because there’s no way John Reis allows a mediocre band join his tour. This being 2004, that was all the impetus I needed. We were right at the cusp of Web2.0, so there’s no streaming it first, no researching the band, I would just head out to the store and buy the CD.
That lack of researching was pretty typical for me, in those days. It was a simpler process. I probably need to get back to it, to be honest. As a result, I had no idea that I wasn’t just getting an album but also a message. And it was a message that I wasn’t ready for, back in 2004.
To crib from their AllMusic bio:
fascinated by singer/songwriter Phil Ochs' assertion that "the perfect rock outfit would be a combination of Elvis and Che Guevara”…Lars Strömberg and…Dennis Lyxzén decided to start a group that would make a reality of that statement….the quintet set out to use its music as an attack against capitalist culture at large by taking the universal idea of popular culture and molding the basis of its phenomenon into statements of resistance.
That message is more urgent, more necessary and more resonant in 2021 than it’s ever been. I just wish I’d been open-minded enough to receive it at the time.
That message (which we’ll come back to) is wrapped in quite the packaging, however.
The music here deserves its time in the sun because its really quite something: as an artistic statement, as a delivery mechanism for its radical message and as a significant departure from the earlier works of this band2, which leaned more heavily into their background in hardcore and punk.
This is the type of record that any long-time hipster fan3 of a band will kind of dread:
it has an A-List Producer (Rick Rubin4) who conjures up a big, shiny, welcoming sound
it has the catchiest songs the band have ever written
it has sax solos straight out of the E Street Band, and
it is a very danceable record
It’s very much a party-rock record, which somehow acts as a disguise for it also being a protest-rock record. Has anyone ever crossed those streams together before? It’s such a smart idea. It’s how I was able to love this record while summarily ignoring its message for so long. Which, interestingly, AllMusic also notes in their review of this album as an option for the unenlightened listener:
…of course you could just let the words wash over you and dig the hip-shaking pop-punk with soul sound they crank out.
The only record I can think of that comes close to hitting that same intersection of message and party rock is perhaps Goat’s World Music (interestingly, they are also from Sweden) but while I think that record has a message, in truth, I mostly don’t know what the fuck is going on with it, other than it makes me want to dance. (Also, they put on one of the most insane - in every sense - live shows I’ve ever seen)
And boy, does Armed Love make me want to dance. I challenge you to listen to The Way I Feel About You at a mid-to-high volume and remain unmoved in any part of your body. It’s impossible. The keyboard (or is it an organ?) adds a layer of the most classic rocknroll elements (and even pre-rocknroll) to everything. Gyrate your hips like Elvis (crossed with Che Guevara) while you listen.
I think it’s also a heartbreak-rock album5, as well. To isolate one song, Let’s Make History, we have the following statements:
There’s a million things worth fighting for / Like making you stay
When I think about the Revolution / You’re still in my dreams / Because every time / I look in the mirror / I just wanna scream / How are we gonna make history / If you’re not here with me?
And, you know what, that makes perfect sense. To quote my wife on the recent occasion of our 10th anniversary as a couple: Partnership is radical.
You cannot bring about the Revolution by yourself. It takes a collective. You need someone (really, you need many people) to have your back, a Black Mask in one hand and their hand in your other.
And I think that speaks to this record as well. This band made three decent-to-good albums6 before this, but by partnering up with Rick Rubin, they went above and beyond anything they had ever done before and made a classic album that I’ve been listening to very consistently for 17 years (and counting).
It’s an outstanding piece of art purely on its own musical merits, and when I consider the change in the way its political message has resonated with me over time, it may be one of the most transformative works of art I’ve ever encountered.
2021, California: 17 years later, I’m ready to talk about anti-capitalism LOUD AND PROUD7.
I was dismissive of this record’s message as “commie crap” for so long, because I’d been suckling at the teat of American Exceptionalism, another blind fool being led by the one eyed man. And then, well, maybe I was paying more attention or maybe the con artist was just worse at hiding the con, but I saw past the smoke and mirrors.
I challenge anyone that’s lived through the last 17 years - but especially the last 5 here in the USA - to take the blinkers off and realize how stacked the deck is, even for those of us lucky to bask in many privileges, let alone those who don’t. Or, as the Noise Conspiracy ask us: tell me something about living right now / cause I can't believe / this is what we want to be.
So, what does an anti-capitalist worldview mean to me? It means a fuck-load of things, more than I even know yet, because there’s still so much to learn. But here’s what I know for sure:
Most of all, it means being pro-humanity and pro-collective. It means being in this together, for better or worse. I’m a huge misanthrope, so this is not a step I take easily8.
It means tearing down everything and rebuilding from the ground up.
It means being for the dissolution of corporations and for the building of co-operatives.
It means defunding billionaires. Literally taking Jeff Bezos’ money and spending it on public education, free healthcare, settling refugees or any number of more worthwhile uses.
Here’s one I just learned about this week: more votes like to Berlin to expropriate landlords.
It means people before profits, always. Can we make profit? Sure. But not by exploiting labor, not by destroying the land, the sea, the air, or any other part of the world. And you better believe we’re taxing the shit out of that profit.
It means death to speculation and the bubbles it always creates, whether that’s stocks, currencies, both real and fake (looking at you, crypto9), commodities we need to live, fuckin tulips, all of it.
I’m a little conflicted on the idea of “a free market”. While open to abuse, I think it still has value. I think we learned from the Soviet Union that closed markets don’t really work. Open markets do seem to allow for innovation and creativity, which in turn is how the best products are created. And we still need new products. No, not iPhones, but like the next vaccine or healthcare breakthrough. Best I can tell, the best versions of the Covid vaccines were created in open markets. BUT, I am very open to being corrected on this one.
Speaking of the Soviet Union, it does not mean whatever name we now give to that system. That system failed because of the people operating it, which is an indictment of all people, not those people. People will always be corruptible and prone to failure. If I’ve learned anything from my job, no matter how great the process you design is, when the people operating it don’t/won’t follow it, it’s doomed to failure. So you take those processes, see where and why they fail, and look for improvement opportunities. So, like I said up top: tearing down and rebuilding. And we do a better job this time, taking inputs from the things that work in any system and excluding the things that don’t.
In summation, it means, just like The (International) Noise Conspiracy taught me, that we have to be together like a landslide and that we’ve got to move like a movement, if we want freedom on this side of heaven10.
Album Rating, Armed Love: A+
Life Rating, Capitalism: D-
Almost certainly, I know people that were at this show. Some of them are probably reading this, in fact.
This departure is apparent to me now, as the narrator with hindsight - obviously I had no idea about this when I first got this album, as it was my first entry to their oeuvre.
That would be me, in many situations.
I love that Rubin works with whatever is tickling his fancy at any given moment. He’s down for anything. Pretty cool.
It is called Armed Love, after all.
Three previous albums as this band. And of course, the Refused back catalog is fairly legendary. And that’s only one of the other bands these folks have been in
If you read the Negative Progression ‘zine you might have noticed some political messages buried in the page footers, which were my “boldest” public political statements to date. If you didn’t and you want one, I have a couple copies left and will mail ya one. (No charge!)
No one has less patience for the general public than me, a person who spent a lifetime learning not to trust his fellow man, both separately and cumulatively, as: a picked-on child, a once-poor person, a bartender (you wanna see the worst of people? Work in a bar!) and a person who just wants other people to do the basic shit needed to put this pandemic to an end.
Shout out to China for making crypto trading illegal! Even if that is just two corrupt spidermen pointing at each other…
Read: this side of death, as this remains a non-religious blog.
Great read, brother! Lovvvvve them. Saw that show from that poster. (International) Noise Conspiracy came back to Chicago a few months later and weren't quite as well received in the headlining spot. Radical politics and meatheads in Chicago don't mix. Like oil and piss
Thanks for this one. I have never heard this record. I was blown away that Rick Rubin produced them. Because of the show you mentioned, I got Survival Sickness which I liked a lot. It was a bit of a let down after the live show which was pretty awesome. I did also get the 2001 record as well and enjoyed and these of course were my gateway into Refused. I see Armed Love is not on Spottyfy so I will have to find a CD copy somewheres.