The Subhumans, not the Canadian band, though, were only around for a few years and their legacy is predicated, really, on only a single long playing album. There were a few other release. And we’ll get to them. Just wait.
Issued in 1983, seemingly too late to mater, The Day the Country Died sounds like little else being released at the time. Crass is, obviously, a touchstone. And while this group retained a political bent over its career, the music never became subservient to the message. On this first full length, the Subhumans talk in about the way people relate to information they’ve been given, how not being listened to is a tremendous bummer and how the bomb stinks. What’s drastically different about these folks and Crass, or Zounds, or whoever else, is the fact that singer, Dick Lucas, talks about losing his mother to cancer. The story, true or not, wasn’t dashed with a load of tears. Instead, the Subhumans use the idea to refute religion. ‘Cause really, what God would let a kids mom die from cancer before he was ten. Whatever the answer is – if it’s not that he doesn’t exist – it probably has something to do with being horrible.
With that first album being such a solid slab of cerebral song writing and genuine emotion, the release of EP LP, collecting the band’s earlier singles, was a sensible move. And again, there’s not really a sour patch in the lot, perhaps a bit less consistent in terms of aurally quality, but it was cobbled together from various recordings.
The bummer is that the group’s final album from its first phase – they broke up during ’85 – kinda stinks. From the Cradle to the Grave isn’t a complete departure from what came before it, but on songs like “Waste of Breath” there’s an bit of over production and a feeling that hard rock was insinuating itself into the group’s sound. Whatever the case, everything that came before it is not just worth exploring, but owning. For serious.