‘Take a look all around you, tell me what you really see, does the system really care about you, is this the way it’s meant to be?’ (One)

Cress hail from Lancashire and have been active, with varying levels on intensity, since the early 1990s.  This is a remastered reissue of their 1997 debut full-length, Monuments, which vividly captures the band’s rendering of doom infused, anarcho-crust punk.  Dual shouting vocalists, one raw and guttural, the other cleaner and more sneering, complement and challenge one another, while partnered with menacing, down tuned guitars, rumbling bass, and the infamous Hal 2000 drum machine.  This seething anger is interspersed with off-kilter turns courtesy of otherworldly passages of spaced-out synthesisers and flourishes of blues-tinged guitar.

Politically conscious lyrics are shaped by the band’s anarchist framing as themes of environmental catastrophe (Earth, Progress), economic exploitation (Machines), social control (One, DIY, Safe), and police oppression (Prisons, Sirens) are explored in straightforward, yet not simplistic, terms.  The title track, meanwhile, harks backs to the battle for access that erupted around Stonehenge in the 1980s and 1990s.  The result is an album that musically possesses a certain timeless quality as well as retaining a set of lyrical concerns that remain frighteningly contemporary.