Anger feeds change. Anger shows passion. Angry’s even better when it’s aimed the right way towards a reason that’s easily justified…

England, UK, a snapshot right now: The divides between the southern hubs of higher wealth and wages, ever improving infrastructure, extended longevity, financial centres and (mostly, if not almost exclusively) the home of those who are soon to choose our next prime minister… and the North, where little or none of that’s true, are stark and are easy to see.

Why haven’t I heard this before? Why haven’t I heard this all spat out and vented to crunchslung guitars with a ‘tude that says ‘what the fuck’s this and stuff you’?

Enter Feral Family, as savage as you’d want (and as some might expect) from the mid northern city of Sheffield. Hurled mid finger riffs over barbarised drums, each mean word propelled like kicked teeth out of snarled up and spittle dripped lips. We take it, the squeal of the grunge. We hear it, the clatter and chew. Soak it all up, it’s a protest. Suck it all in, just like punk.

The confident swagger that swings through this track, safe in the knowledge they’re right to be pissed, jumps from section to section through rough grind and rubble. We jumpstart and break between verses and chorus, we doubletime lurch and get dragged through the dirt. We scratch up the necks and crash metals to the end where there’s almost a ‘screw this’ last sigh.          

The anger’s right here and it’s heady. It’s scattered for sure but this ain’t the place for a thesis or power point on socioeconomics. In the noise and the embers of what they want to burn, we rail against every authority.

We take aim at teachers, The teachers are marching / Yet they tell you what to do / But they’re all hypocrites / They haven’t even got a fucking clue“. We move to take aim at what’s taught, “Grade A To C / Do you think that’s what we need / “You’ll make more money with GCSE’s”“. We rail against broadcasters, BBC, Channel 4; “These people feed you lies/ Keep you feeling dehumanized/ Now you’ve been hypnotised”.

We might agree with above to degrees or might not. But we know that a GCSE’s not enough – you need a degree and a masters or a parent with clout if you want to break out and move up, we know a GCSE’s just a something to aim for. And we know (while I sidestep a media bias debate) that when you’re under represented to the point of uncared for that it’s easy to frame and shoot messengers.  

In the blizzard of fists that flies through this track, all that anger’s right there, unrefined. The call that The North is “ready for a new power” and “crying for a change of heart”, should be, and I hope, is true.

A redistribution of choice, chance and care, a reallocation of resource… Feral Family know this has long since been needed, and they’re proof that it’s moved way past itching. It cuts and it curses and causes stagnation, ‘The North’ is a raw call to fix it.

Feral Family’s ‘The North’ is out now. Find video, music and tour dates right here.

Find this track and others from reviewed and featured artists all here on Rats on Run Radio.  
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