‘Surrender to technology, Abandon the burden of thought, Endless content to lull you, To sleep a dreamless sleep, That’s what they call progress’ (Unholy Creation)

There is still something distinctively powerful in how the dynamics and aesthetics of 1980s’ UK anarcho-punk continue to speak to our current social condition.  Perhaps, a reflection of how so many of the seeds of destruction were rooted in the neoliberal rationalities that insidiously embedded themselves during that era.

The self-titled debut album from Richmond Virginia’s Dream World takes these inspirations and reignites them with a fury very much of this time and this place.  Urgent, semi-shouted vocals and pounding martial rhythms lock into a rat-a-tat synchronicity amid the surging riffage.  The themes of entrenched economic inequality, worker exploitation, and surveillance capitalism can be traced back with a sobering singularity to the warnings first exhorted some forty years ago.

Dream World’s stirring reimagining is delivered with a precise economy and a deftly understated flair that also calls back to the experimental energies that fuelled those initial pioneers.  Unholy Creation and New Hell fulminate with a classic anarcho-punk velocity.  Then, the searing Submission lets the riffage rip, while Yes Man erupts with a more frenzied immediacy.  Before, haunting melodies and solemn spoken word see the band poignantly rework Sara Teasdale’s 1918 anti-war poem, Soft Rains.