This is a long overdue four cd box set of some of Test Dept's earliest recordings that includes the first ever re-issue of the band's debut cassette Strength Of Metal in Motion, the long overdue re-issue of Ecstasy Under Duress and the Atonal & Hamburg live album along with a fourth disc of Peel sessions and unreleased studio recordings. The London based band revolve around the two original founding members Paul Jamrozy and Gray Cunnington, everything has been remastered by Paul Lavigne at Kontrast Mastering. They created their own instruments using industrial detritus scavenged from the London Docklands just as Thatcher was starting to disembowel them and create her utopia of yuppie regeneration.
These recordings were made while the band were deeply involved in the battles against Thatcherism and were playing fundraising gigs on behalf of the striking miners. These shows were played to all age's audiences including pensioners and teenagers. While also fighting the prevailing censorship of the early 80's that included raids on gay book shops and the seizing of records by Crass and the Anti Nowhere League et al. To help me review this box-set I have re-read Test Depts interview with Red Robbo in Abstract Magazine issue 5. A simple review of this box set is made by quoting the bands own manifesto as printed in The Angels Are Coming fanzine in 1983. "A Simple Power-a new rhythm-forged from the immediate world-cut back to basics-no decorations-no distraction-no fear-voices-arms-hands-tools-linked components-An Engineered Movement-uncoiling springlike-moving forward out of the chaotic present-seeds of change-we will be fire and give strength to the new."
Strength Of Metal In Motion by Test Dept
Strength Of Metal in Motion opens with five songs recorded at the Albany Empire in Deptford in 1982, Last Rites a slightly askew brass led version of the classical piece that sounds like it was recorded in a far more cavernous space, before The intense industrial percussive energy of Shockwork/Workshock decimates your mind, trumpets are still there but all the metal bashing and anvil dropping has got going with shrieked and shouted vocals making plain how much they hate work.
Prokofiev's Dream is turned into a nightmare of clanging metal presses set against the classical music, brass to the forefront and vocal narration almost totally buried beneath, this is still a shocking re-imagining of a much-loved piece of music, that in this case ends with what sounds like a lathe being mistreated.
Drum And Body has a propulsive ear shattering beat, to scream and shout for them to be freed from deliberation over, this gets super intense. Death Of God is an ambient dirge with angelic voices screaming in the darkness, pots and pans rattle against walls and the dark church organ slowly plays on. Dawn of Humanity is almost sampled ambient noise and distressing sounds rattling round our brains.
Blood And Sweat (Stakhanovite) punishes the brain with factory grade industrial percussion and choral backing with screamed intense vocals this is disconcerting and compelling in equal measure. WWBC opens with a quiet pulse for the radio announcer to make statements over, the brass impinges and distended bass whale noises intrude.
Kindergarten features sampled children crying and a scary man making other worldly noises, calling them as pumps hiss and elephants roar, this gets scarier and scarier while they go on about sterilization.
Interlude is a minute or so of an announcement about a strong military leadership, brass and radio interference helping you question the message being delivered. Disneyland opens with a sample about cultural freedom, horses' hooves galloping percussive edge and yelped interjections, against dustbin lid cymbal percussion, almost mirroring Rema Rema's self-titled song momentarily, before all the madness consumes it, they do not claim it's a small world after all.
Feeling It All has buzzing guitar and brass squalls with intense brutal drumming making sure you are Feeling It All deep within you when played at bowel shaking volumes this music is intended to be heard at. When they howl Your So Beautiful it is wonderfully at odds with the ugly cacophony behind them that it becomes a magical juxtaposition.
The first cd closes with On Pain that opens with a request for a chainsaw, this rips through the speakers, yelps of On Pain get subsumed by walls of sheet metal percussion and super intense underlying keyboard riff before it closes with them telling us to have a pleasant evening.
John Peel Sessions & Studio Recordings
The second Cd opens with The Goldsmiths demos recorded in 1982. Blood & Sweat that gnaws away at your mind with an insistent drumbeat and clanging sounds, with brutally beaten metal being joined by the near buried vocal yelps and howls. Shockwork has a full-on military drum and bass repetitive beat for the vocal yelps to echo across, underlying guitar strains to be heard before the gamelan percussion takes over totally.
Gdansk opens with the ships blasting out warning horns, with slow clanging and strings allowing the vocals to be more clearly heard in this tribute to the Gdansk shipyard uprising against the communist regime. The rumbling intensity of the version of Efficiency recorded for Touch Meridians in 1983 has the sound of echoing cavernous factories juxtaposed with hunting horns and a propulsive single drum solo.
Shockwork the first of the three songs on the band's first peel session from 1983 benefits from better production and clarity, trombone and vocals coming through the clattering percussive edges.
State Of Affairs has a sample that states "There is more than one way to burn a book" that is surrounded by an organ sound and various levels of odd out of place percussion and other interjections.
Hunger has a solid drum riff that has low tonalities humming beneath it, slowly evolving like some lost This Heat experiment. Operation Prayer Power is the first of two songs from the bands 1985 John Peel session and has what sounds like Tuvan throat singing with a siren in the background, percussive energy builds towards some new nirvana of enlightenment.
Massive Kamikaze Attack starts quiet with slow ambient noise being joined by the drums of war and the semi-detached emotionless narrator speaks of the Massive Kamikaze Attack like it is a normal everyday event. Shockwork The Trident studios version has more echo and clear delineation of the percussive elements driving it on. The vocals sound double tracked on the chorus and are clearer than on previous versions.
The second cd closes with Gdansk and Gdansk Dub recorded at Ealing studios for Red Herrings, the string quartet approach supplemented by the clanging industrial percussion gives this a very different feel to the earlier versions, vocals clearly tell us to trust in steel. The dub version is probably the closest they come to playing pretty music, the horns and strings classical edge set against whooshing walls of factory noise.
Ecstasy Under Duress
The third cd opens with Hunger recorded at Britannia Row in Islington this has a strong propulsive edge for them to Feed The Hunger and all the band's desires with bedrock industrial dance beats and metal on metal ringing brutality, focussed and fighting against the odd announcements playing in the background.
Compulsion live at Heaven in 1983 is a fusillade of cacophonous percussion and vocals screamed into the darkness, the void opening up before the chasms of sound and intensity rip through the barrel shaped room. In Uniform from Retford Porterhouse in 83 has audience chattering over the intro sample of In Motion before the noise overwhelms, hunting horn leading the charge into the madness of men In Uniforms.
Slow Hunger from Henry Wood Hall in Glasgow in 83 has deep echoes dissipating resonating with screeds of noises and distress, slow hunger having just enough food to keep you alive, but not enough to allow you to function properly, this is the dark pained grief at famines and forced starvations true pain, a stark investigation prior to Live Aids far glossier attempts to end famines. The almost Chinese gong like ending is wonderfully forceful.
Spring Into Action from the Retford Porterhouse in 83 has a real cymbals type sound, versus intense metallic drumming and extruded vocals calling us to arms, to fight against the powers that be, to create a better world that doesn't just worship wealth.
Gdansk is taken from The Batcave in 82 the dark cello plays the central tune for the beating and despairing vocals to work off, in contrast to the string's beauty, they represent the ugly obverse side of the battle to allow the shipyards workforces freedom in the battles against the polish soviet authorities. Shockwork from Heaven in 1983 is a full-on manic blast of shocking nasty noise that just doesn't give up, intense chainsaw and drills going off.
Efficiency is from Arch 69 in Waterloo with the horns signalling it is time to ramp up efforts to become totally efficient in the battle against the authorities, the cataclysms of clanging and synths going wobbly leading to screeds of motors misfiring destroyed by the brutality of the times. This leads into the cd closer from the same concert Beating Retreat that takes this military classic and plays it like they have a huge drum core on hand for some Soviet style massive parade, where everyone needs to hear the retreat being beaten from about 5 miles away, so that after the full 9 minutes of this have passed peace may return, freeing what sounds like samples of Vera Lynn from the cacophony they are buried under.
Atonal & Hamburg
The cd opens with 4 songs from the Atonal Festival in Berlin in February 1985, the clanging metal beaten intro to Fall From Light with funereal dirge like vocals carefully intoning about societies inevitable suicide, harp like flourishes the pain is explored.
Total State Machine with hunting horn squalling intro, pummelled state of mind sheetwork drumming, that now seems more prescient than talking about the state of the world in the 80's, when the total State Machine was still in its infancy, asking who owns and controls the means of production, may also control your life and will.
The final version of Shockwork on the boxset has the clearest production and vocals, with the percussive rhythms sounding more like a blueprint for the hardest end of the techno dancefloor making clear why this is the song that has most versions in the box set.
Gdansk with clearer vocals makes the lyrics more important, the liars and betrayers of the hard-working men and women of Gdansk, with the clanging repetition of the machines riveting and building, needing fairer treatment, anything to stop them cracking and falling apart, finding strength in numbers. Bowel shaking bass drum leading the protests.
The last four songs on the box set are from the Markthalle in Hamburg in October 1985 opens with Kick To Kill with a Burundi style drum break machine gunning its way into your brain, dark distain they feel for anyone who thinks its ever okay to kick anyone or any animal to death is signalled through the repeating mantras and slow last post style horn.
Fist could easily have been the theme song to legendarily infamous london night club Fist, with it's almost radiophonic workshop synth intro to the madness within, screeched vocals and a maelstrom of rhythmic madness.
Corridor Of Cells feels like a calm respite at first ambient samples leading toward the chanted dual vocals, leading the lovers to the terrors of the blood-spattered battlefields, booming gun reports denied by history, cursed for ever, crucified and justified they march toward inevitable annihilation, how can we stop this march allowing the dispossessed to triumph.
The box set closes with 51st State Of America with an underlying drone, moodily suggestive percussion breaks investigating what might become the 51st State Of America, salvoes of brass leading the aspirations to progress, defeating the conspiracy of silence, while they chant 51st State Of America so we can all drone like dream of being subsumed by the monster, while trying to find ways of resisting the clutches, never dreaming the candidates could one day be Venezuala or Greenland.
Find out more at https://testdept.bandcamp.com/album/industrial-overture https://www.facebook.com/TestDept.HQ https://testdept.org.uk/
