‘Prisons are popping up, Schools are falling down, Corporate profits are through the roof, While millions get locked down’ (The 21^st Reason to Kill Pete Wilson)

Clinton’s America, like Blair’s Britain, was built on a sly conceit, one that justified its acceptance of the neoliberal settlement by arguing that theirs was a ‘Third Way’ that transcended traditional notions of left and right, and by reframing issues of social justice as purely technical policy considerations.  Esperanza (Hope) confronted this subservient complicity with a fury that still feels bracing today.

The band were based around Los Angeles and toured the West coast extensively during their three-year lifespan.  The tautly clean guitars call back to mid-1980s’ DC hardcore and are played with an unbridled speed that falls just shy of sloppy, propelled by an equally fiercely frenetic rhythm section.  Meanwhile, the harshly nasal vocals seethe with a clear-eyed indignation at the brazen injustices shaping the society around them from the bigotry of Prop 187, to suffocating consumerism, and a failure to confront the genocide on which America was built.

This discography brings together each of the band’s eleven tracks, the five on side one being drawn from compilation contributions (plus one previously unreleased), and the six on the flip side being the band’s self-titled 2000 demo.  The former are excellent, but it is the latter that grab you by the throat and simply won’t let go.  From the visceral climatic denunciation of The 21^st Reason To Kill Pete Wilson to the unhinged breakdown of Thriving Off Our Misery, and the hypnotically layered spoken word of Today’s Lesson Plan, it still serves as an exhilarating slap to the face.

The album is accompanied by a thoughtfully put together twenty-page booklet that provides a photographic history of the band as well as a series of short written pieces that contextualise their musical and lyrical outlook.