Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Punk was never meant to be seen as a gesture which would be looked back upon as a friendly wave of nostalgia, it was meant to terrify, to shake the rotten and self-centred to their core, and to signal a change in how we see the world, to open our eyes to the future and allow a sense of True Motion to begin.
The trouble with the quickly lit match is that it can be impossible to keep it going, inertia sets in and decay is almost inevitable and yet Punk is also about individuality, a mind-set that will not conform. However, whilst there is that originality, the desire to see the world back in a balance of fair play, whilst there is corruption to destroy, then the True Motion of Punk can be observed; explosive, vigorous and willing to get in a fight to which others will only allude to.
London-based Real Authority not only see the fight as winnable, they come armed and have a back-up vehicle around the corner from the confrontation which carries a certain hope, the knowledge that they don’t start the fire with a single match, they instead use human dynamite, a lesson that is was underscored by the music agility in the likes of Slipknot and the imagery painted many of the heavier end of music’s spectrum.
Punk is individual, it revels in the self-motivation and grabs the lethargic by the scruff of the neck; it is perhaps in this permanent state of drive that in some it can soon fizzle out, once the enemy has been vanquished there is normally little point in being anything other than a spent force which has been drowned out by the foam of time. The five songs though which make up the True Motion E.P., The Energy, Can’t Face It, Depression Issues, Back It Up and Party Mansion wield an influence that cannot be dismissed, a sense of unremitting drive that does not ask for permission to be played, instead steadfastly insist and stipulate that John James Davies, Johann Saul, Jamie Sharp, Merek Wilson and Ben Cullimore will face down the nation’s growing inertia and if they have to continue to wonderfully scream into the faces of others, then that is the gift they were born to use.
A gritty and exacting E.P., True Motion is an anger worth watching burn.
Real Authority release True Motion on 26th July via Chapter One Records.
Ian D. Hall