Phoenix was originally released on Dick Lucas Bluurg records back in 1986 by the then current line-up of Simon Mooney, Andy Turner, Andrew Turnbull and Steve Curran. Produced by Bruce Treasure (Wozniak) and engineered by Neil Ferguson and Jih Seymour, The recordings were re-stored by Andy Pearce.
The A-side of Phoenix opens with Blind Eye that has a short ambient intro before the raging guitars come in and the drums start pummelling away at your brain, making sure there is nothing left, they ponder if things will get better before they die or not, will those walls come tumbling down or will we be stuck in the same failing system.
Watch & Wait the hardcore apocalypse is coming, you'd better watch out or rise above the despair, trigger happy drumming driving home the point they are making, it builds with fusillades of guitar and bass intensity.
Hedonism is one of the things they might actually be in favour of, this keeps us the speedy thrashy guitars and surging bass lines to indicate just how hedonistic they want to become.
Computerage is probably the bands most prescient song, about the coming of the Computerage and how it would turn into a curse more than a blessing, machines take over everything running our lives, we would become slaves to those machines with far too much knowledge available making it impossible to filter the dangerous stuff out.
Eye To Eye has nothing to do with contact, but the lack of future they feel, they want to find a way to get agreement on the best way forwards, over furious drumming and those guitars that never give up.
The B-side opens with Rules a full on thrashy rant against so many pointless rules strangling us all, making us feel bad for doing things that humans normally do, this is a problem that has only grown in the intervening years.
American Dream is it something we should aspire to or despise, the American Way seems so brutal, is this a dream worth living.
Doomsday Plus One how have we survived the end of everything and how will we re-build after doomsday, the distinctly deathly bassline with guitars firing off from them, cries of freedom and hopes that life will go on and on without need for another pressure drop.
Summer has come, does it mean they are finally happy, of course not, the drums seem to fly around the speakers as tears cascade at all the horrors they see around them, at what's happening to the earth. The pain and distress feel like summer to them.
Dark & Lonely has almost folk guitar with the bass at the forefront on the intro before those raging guitars an drums come back in, to instil all the Dark & Lonely things they feel in just one 24 hour period, what has made you so sad and lonely, who wouldn't talk to you, why do you feel so abandoned, is it being reflected back to you.
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