Idles - Great

If there's a music genre that is inherently politic, it is punk rock. Since its beginnings, punk has been in the frontline of the activist battles, as war hymns to soundtrack the fight to overthrow "the system". Whether it was pointing out how outdated and medieval is monarchy as a political system, or questioning the impacts that a nuclear war might have, being a "punk" was a synonym of being a "rebel".

While sadly on the 00's mainstream "punk" bands degenerated into something as contradictory as happy-punk that led to emo (it will always be the unwanted child that punk don't want to recognize), there were many bands keeping the underground scene very alive and vital and rebellious as it should be. The Distillers, Against Me! and at some extent even Yeah Yeah Yeahs kept being a rock in the shoe for the status quo. In times of a new arise of social and political conservatism, it was more than logical that quite a few new punk bands were starting to make waves.

If the US gave birth to Protomartyr, London, the epicenter of punk, couldn't stay behind and it is Idles the band leading the way in a musical punk resistance. With a new album that deals with toxic masculinity, mental health, and grieving in a world that is very fucked up, making music so unpolished and aggressive, with fast and dirty riffs to energize and release the accumulated tension, is rather an act of joy than one of anger, and achieving that is a stronger and more meaningful act of resistance.

In Great, their track that deals with Brexit, they go questioning the motives for people that voted to get out of the European Union, people with a "fifty-inch screen in a cul-de-sac" and an eagerness to find somebody to throw the responsibilities of their poverty (immigrants of course come handy as repositories of their frustration) and that claim that want Britain to be Great again. Joe Talbot doesn't miss a chance to mock at them and their surprise when the economy started collapsing after the infamous voting, and to ridicule the privileged politicians that dare to say that "we are all in this together". When he spells G-R-E-A-T, it is a middle finger to those closed minded bigots who voted to exit the EU and shoving in their face the landslide that they provoked to themselves. Is Britain, with its falling economy and political instability as Great as you wanted yet?