POP WILL EAT ITSELF: “Dos Dedos Mis Amigos” (Infectious)

Pop Will Eat Itself have found themselves in the same boat as Carter USM, and there are no oars. The Poppies are still blasting out their industrial vitriol to anyone who’ll listen, but their audience is dwindling. Unfortunately their ongoing left-wing diatribes are more than a little jaded at this stage. However, they can still pen a good tune when the mood takes them.

The opening ‘Ich Bin Ein Auslander’ deals with the rise of the Nazi Right in Europe, and it is genuinely scary. The thunderous guitar and strange sampling simply oozes violence and the threat of fascism. Similarly, the machine gun guitar on the start of ‘Everything’s Cool’ is frightening to contemplate. Everything most certainly isn’t cool: this is a place where the future holds “chaos and riots/the screech of machines/no right and no wrong/and no in-betweens.”

‘Familus Horribilus’ is a sharp, funky polemic about everyone’s favourite royal family: “Charlie’s lost his marlies, he used to be a pillar/Before he got busted, and lusted for Camilla?” The concerns are very British. ‘Home’ is all trancey beats as the Poppies suffer through the mundanities of urban decay, where even football hurts: “Good to be back home/At the Lane for a regulation game/As the boys get caned/Once again.”

One of the album’s highlights is ‘Menofearthereaper’, where the objective seems to be hypnotise the listener into a trance-like state by tribal beats, as industrial samples jerk and click, while the mantra-like title is repeated intermittently over its six and a half minute duration.

Unfortunately, not all of Dos Dedos Mis Amigos is as good as this. ‘Kick To Kill’ and ‘Fatman’ see the Poppies playing bile-by-numbers, formulaic agit-pop by one of the genre’s self-styled linchpins. ‘Underbelly’ is a dark soundscape with even gloomier lyrics as the nuclear family is ripped apart, and PWEI “join the losers and the sinners in the underbelly.” On ‘RSVP’ our unlovable heroes embrace the punk ethic: but lively and all as it is, it’s ultimately uninspiring.

Without doubt there’s still a need for bands like PWEI, but that cannot be used as an excuse for releasing sub-standard music. Unfortunately, too much of this album is simply a regurgitation of past glories, and the Poppies still sound like the most miserable bunch of fuckers you could ever meet.

• John Walshe