Politics and Punk Rock. A cocktail of ideas which has been rubbing parents, governments and mainstream musicians up the wrong way for the best part of thirty years, and doesn’t look set to be waning any time soon. Total Chaos have been there throughout most of it, and stand proud as one of the best-selling acts in their genre and are here with ’17 Years of Total Chaos‘ to summarise their career in a single-disc piece of anti-establishment art.
Opening with the sound of a nuclear warning siren, accompanied by the sound of the panicking public works well as an introduction to this album. Getting straight to the point of the matter, there’s no escaping the fact that this band are here to stand up against the government they fight against. The next 27 songs vary greatly in quality. ‘Riot city‘ starts us off on a positive note, and allows Rob Chaos to introduce us to his grimy vocals as well as the trademark guitar driven-sound to the entire record. Following it, ‘Army Story’ and ‘Kill the Nazis’ both stand up well, utilising gang-vocal choruses what this band are here to sing about. Elsewhere, standout tracks come in the form of ‘What you gonna do’ and ‘In God We Kill’. The former starts with a mile-a-minute guitar solo and soon descends into a power-chord driven punk rock masterpiece, while the latter shows us just how angry this band can sound, and Chaos’ vocals pack an extra punch.
Unfortunately, there are some tracks here not worth their two-and-a-half minutes, and they’re scattered throughout the album’s duration. ‘DUI’ is ruined by its diabolical acoustic introduction, while ‘Babylon’ and ‘UVP’ both serve little purpose, but the recycle riffs and ideas used elsewhere in the record.verall, there’s nothing too special, nothing too original and nothing too daring about this record. It’s been done before, with much more success that Total Chaos have encountered and there’s a part of me that wants the whole political-punk movement to quietly brush itself under the carpet, if only in fear of it becoming a joke of itself. However, while others before and after them have done this sort of thing for other reasons, you can just feel that this band truly believe in their words and their causes, which stands them apart from the rest of the so-called punks. For that, I applaud them.
Andy R