Active Minds – Things That Cannot Be Unseen

As the title suggests, the latest album from Active Minds lays bare some of the unpalatable truths that have been revealed in the last few years. They use a range of melodic hardcore, d-beat and outright thrash alongside moody and folk influenced songs to speak truth to power. Powerful words and powerful tunes says Nathan Brown.

When it comes to DIY punk, the credentials of Active Minds are hard to beat. They established their own label, Loony Tunes, back in the 1980s, releasing their own music and plenty of other bands. The Dixon brothers have distributed huge amounts of DIY punk records from across the globe since that time, furnishing people with many gems. They’ve toured Europe countless times. Their dogged commitment to animal liberation, environmental awareness and alternative economics, politics, and anti-capitalism have always been at the forefront of their music.

In this album, like all Active Minds’ releases, the booklet takes each song as a starting point and embellishes the central argument with additional facts or context. The message really is the driver for what Active Minds do. The song titles leave very little to the imagination. Active Minds don’t leave you to “interpret” mysterious coded messages. They tell it like it is.

The theme with this record, as set out by the title, is the depths of inhumanity. The image on the front is a statue of a man called Freddie Gilroy who liberated the Belsen death camp. As the notes of the booklet say “His face seems to be full of the sadness and despair from having seen man’s inhumanity to his fellow man first hand—a horror that he could never unsee.” The difference between what is going on in the world now and what happened back then is that we can’t even claim we don’t know these things are happening in an age where genocide and the actions of extremists are live-streamed. The fact that we are seeing so much evil is a theme throughout the record.

The opening track “1st of October, 2017” starts with a heavy approach, but when the first chorus kicks in, the mood lifts as they combine a melodic approach with the thrashy guitar and manic drums that I always think of as the “typical” Active Minds sound. Truth be told, there is no such thing as typical with Active Minds, as they have experimented with many styles over the years. The date in the title is when there was a mass shooting in Las Vegas. They question the insanity of the 2nd Amendment in the United States and the actions of the powerful gun lobby NRA.

“Terrorvision” explores the sharing of graphic violence and views online, and gives us the album title in the line: “The horrors that appear on the screen are things that cannot be unseen.” It starts with a searing picked guitar line and a tune that runs at perfect head-nodding speed. In the melodic sing-song delivery, I’m hearing the influence of a traditional folk style, alongside gruff tunesters like Leatherface. The way the song ends reminds me of the close of Stiff Little Fingers’ “Tin Soldiers,” which is a bonus. Whether it is a special nod or coincidence, I like it!

Continuing with the melodic approach, “The Price of Sporting Excellence” looks at how children are abused by coaches and others in positions of power over a future sporting career. The music deploys more picked strings, and the choruses are really reminiscent of ’80s bands like HDQ, who were given the “melodic hardcore” tag. This is something that all three of the first songs hold in common.

Reminding us of the band’s propensity to switch styles, “Titanic” is a fast thrasher using the famous “unsinkable” ship that sank to the depths of the Atlantic as a metaphor for capitalism and an unsustainable economy. A proper little rager with a cheeky false ending. Hard to the core.

The haunting keyboards at the start of “The Man Who Fell to Earth” set a suitably solemn mood. This epic six-minute song reminds us of the horrors and desperation that asylum seekers flee, only to be faced by a small but violent hostile crowd when they seek sanctuary. Active Minds point the finger clearly at the media, continually whipping people into an anti-immigrant frenzy. In the UK, we are witnessing this, and while counter-protestors outnumber the anti-immigrant mob, the mood is foul. The sombre mood is maintained even when the guitar and drums kick in. Bobs’s vocals are sung rather than shouted and, alongside the melancholy keyboards, really evoke emotion and humanity. This song certainly affected me. It’s all too easy to lose the humanity when we are angry at the perpetrators of hate and racism. The pain in the face of the Freddie Gilroy statue tells us how this story could end if we just watch it unfold.

“Some Fucker on a Horse” starts with keyboards and a clean guitar sound that has a folky jaunt to it, especially when the drums first kick in. The trademark chainsaw guitar soon joins the fray to power things along. The song builds up intensity as it progresses but still retains a cheeky, jaunty folky melody. It’s quite a happy-sounding song considering it is about the statues celebrating imperialism that litter cities around the world.

The difference in sound is stark as “Fear of a Secular Planet” delivers an attack on religion with a heavy d-beat approach and strained vocals. Full speed ahead and with a dead-stop ending.

The all-out thrash attack continues with the speedy “We Need to Talk About Saudi Arabia.” The way that human rights abuses and the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi at the behest of the Saudi royal family are ignored or tolerated is explained: “Money talks and petrodollars speak loudest it seems.”

More searing guitar and thrashing drums provide a soundtrack for “Beware the Fuckwitted, Egotistical Tycoons.” There’s a cheeky folky-sounding lead guitar melody hiding in among the chainsaw. In the notes they explain that they’d written this song before Trump was a candidate for re-election and Musk backed him, and, to quote the band, “We then watched the whole shitshow unfold.” The power these narcissistic goons wield truly scares me, and we seem to be hurtling towards a dystopian future at an alarming rate.

“Not My Reality” delivers more chainsaw thrash d-beat attack, taking aim at “reality TV,” or as they put it, “dumbed-down content for a society with short attention spans who find inter-personal conflict entertaining.”

If the A-side showcases Active Minds’ ability to play melodic hardcore, side B is dominated by d-beat and thrash, not without melody.

“Shamima” slows the pace again to close the album with another long song that clocks in at nearly six minutes. As the song plays out, the guitar takes off on another melodic ramble. In this song, they question the treatment of Shamima Begum, who was only a child, was groomed online, became the victim of trafficking, joined ISIS, and was then stripped of her citizenship when she realised the error of her ways and wanted to return. In the write-up, they provide details of how Shamima and two other girls were trafficked with the assistance of a smuggler with links to Canadian security services. They’re not excusing Shamima of her actions but questioning why a UK-born person was stripped of their citizenship and left to live in a refugee camp. Active Minds ask in the song: “What did you do when you were 15? Were you easily led and excessively keen?” They point out that other people get the chance for redemption. The internet that enabled her to be groomed and radicalised was also used to fuel the reaction to her desire to return. It doesn’t take much to realise that the colour of her skin and her parents’ Bangladeshi background were at play here. As writers like Akala have pointed out, British citizens who are not white are frequently treated as if they don’t belong by a thinly veiled white supremacist society.

The subject matter across the album is not a bunch of disparate, disconnected issues. There is a common theme, and it is power and control. Specifically, it’s how society is owned and structured, how the rich and powerful control the media and internet platforms which are distorting and normalising extreme behaviours and attitudes. We are seeing more and more horrors that cannot be unseen.

Yet again Active Minds combine their punk rock attack with intelligent discourse. The variety across the songs keeps the record fresh yet maintains the band’s voice. They are giving us messages that cannot, should not, be unheard; if only we fully listen.