Hail, hail rot and roll

The term “punk rock” is a much used and abused one. These days it seems to refer to every bunch of upstarts with a sneering, shouty vocalist, manic guitarist, low slung bassist and four-to-the-floor drummer.

But there was a time when punk was as much an ideology and a lifestyle, as it was a fashion statement and a rock and roll sound. Few outfits embodied the spirit of the summer of hate more than Paranoid Visions who formed in the fiery, dreary Dublin post-punk period of the early ‘80s. Long dormant, the unrepentant six-piece have recently re-grouped releasing Forty Shades Of Gangreen, their first album in 15 years.
“We stopped functioning in ‘92 but we never officially split up,” says the band’s guitarist Peter Jones. “We just put it on the back burner for a while, then we got together for the Pistols reunion tour. This time around Toxic [Promotions] said they wanted to put the back catalogue out so we got a set together to do a few gigs. We thought if we could get some new material together we’d do an EP but we ended up with an album.”
Happy to report that time has not withered their anger: songs like the scathing title track and ‘Braindance’ heap no little venom on the state of modern Ireland.
“It’s definitely a reaction to the Celtic Tiger,” states vocalist Deko Dachau. “Ireland has changed but not for the better. We feel that things are actually much worse than they were when we started out even though there was a lot of unemployment and poverty. That’s been replaced by greed and arrogance in Ireland which is worse."
Another song on Forty Shades – ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution’ – has a go at the new breed of latter-day so called “punk” bands. Who specifically might they be referring to?
“We’re not really talking about Green Day as some people thought, we’re talking about the bastard sons of Green Day and the like,” Jones says. “They call it pop punk or something. It’s more like new wave with a bit more energy. Crass wrote the original of that song when the first wave of punk died, we took some of their lyrics and added our own.”
Despite their adherence to the punk ideology and the spirit of the time the band has warmly embraced the digital age – they have a busy MySpace page and use their website to spread the word.
“It was never about staying in the stone age for us,” asserts Dachau. “A lot of punk bands still won’t use technology. In fact we find that a lot of anarchist bands are basically technophobes. What we were really lacking the first time around was exposure – it was hard to become known outside your own backyard but now 25 years later we’re getting offered gigs everywhere through the net.”
“It’s true,” agrees Jones. “One of the big revelations is awaking to the fact that we’re a much bigger band than we ever were. I mean, imagine, a 17-year-old girl from Norway saying we’re her favourite band – it’s peculiar! And we get hits on the website from Hawaii – how can someone from fucking Hawaii be into us? But they are!”