Tthe sequel to cult band shirts worn by Riz Ahmed for his Oscar-nominated starring role in Sound of Metal confirms the insider evidence of the film as much as that of Ahmed’s character. One of them will especially evoke unexpected nostalgia for underground punk fans: a white Rudimentary Peni T-shirt with the cover of the Hertfordshire trio’s 1988 album Cacophony.
Formed in 1980, Rudimentary Peni shuffles awkwardly to the edges of the anarcho-punk scene, their breathless pace and sheer strangeness marking them as something else. Although they were brilliant, they were far from natural artists, especially since singer Nick Blinko’s gurgling false-to-baritone scream could hardly be recreated at full volume.
The band last played a concert in 1993, and the news of a new album this month came out of the blue, especially since it’s been 26 years since their previous album. Blinko’s mental illness also jeopardized releases. “In depression, work is rubbish,” he says, speaking by email in a rare interview. “No ideas, no drive.” Fans at least had time to study Blinko’s very intricate and often disturbing drawings of decapitated priests, giant fetuses and numerous coffins on the early unfolding sleeves.
“I really admired Rudimentary Peni,” says producer Steve Albini when he discovered it in the early ’80s. ‘They exhibited a kind of mania that personified their music, like no one else could make it. All my favorite music sounds like there’s only one way to achieve this through some kind of obsession. ‘
Cacophony is now seen as an underground classic, as is their anarcho-punk debut in 1983, Death Church, and two previous 7-inch releases crammed into 12 and 11 tracks, respectively. Their ferocity and brevity broke ground for much heavier grindcore orchestras like Napalm Death and made a fan of Albini. “Very few bands, of which Rudimentary Peni is one, have kept the perverse and personal quality of punk music intact while developing musically,” he says.
Cacophony, a concept album about horror writer HP Lovecraft, came to Death Church after a five-year hiatus, spending weeks at the top of the British indie chart. Cacophony’s songs contain a few songs on the core topics of the group of dead, clergy, and dysfunctional families, but most of the material is about Lovecraft, from his roster of monstrous creatures to stories of his writing career.
However, Blinko does not think the compound sold Rudimentary Peni to lovers of Lovecraft. “Lovecraft students prefer sleek connections,” he says airily, referring to Chicago psych-rockers HP Lovecraft, “not a Lovecraftian cacophony with quote analysis.”
As a simple punk album, it was a mess. But those who ventured a second listen were rewarded with a counter-intuitive cohesive mix of punk, thrash, deathrock, gothic mourning and even something similar to modern classics played by overloaded amps (there’s a nod to composer Michael Nyman, who meets a pie-man in a rhyming pair).
Their next album, Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric, from 1995, was largely written at a time when Blinko was hospitalized with serious error. He believed he was Nicholas Breakspear, the AKA Pope Adrian IV, the only English pope to rule between 1154 and 1159 – he and Blinko share the same initials and birthplace, the village of Abte Langley. The refrain “Papas Adrianus” is repeated from the beginning to the end of the album.
Eventually, he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in Blinko, and the effects of which he – along with his treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy – described in his 1995 semi-autobiographical novel The Primal Screamer.
“I was depressed at 18 and had attempted suicide, and I saw precursors to those feelings,” he says. ‘Then, around 26, I had a psychotic crash. Depression was a more obvious diagnosis – schizoaffective disorder took much longer. Sometimes I had a kind of acute anxiety and I could not even think of explaining it, which made the situation even worse. ‘
This diagnosis, coupled with his self-taught and obsessive drawing style, has seen Blinko described as an “outsider artist,” a sometimes limiting framework given to artists with mental health problems or unusual lifestyles. Blinko’s work is remarkable in its own terms, the often grotesque scenes with very small details that are probably filled with skulls, as these are microscopic repeated texts.
The outsider art label has made his remarkable work at least desirable and marketable in the art world, with some of his drawings collected in the famed Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, and others sold at Sotheby’s. Blinko says problems with health and medication have affected his ability to work on this art and music. Except that depression numbs his creativity, when he is in a manic state, he says, “work is completely deep, but not long”.
The new album Great War of course contains the cover art of Blinko and takes his lyrics from the war poetry of Wilfred Owen. It begins with one of bassist Grant Matthews’ unmistakably premature introductions, before a biting guitar kicks in on Blinko’s lamentable rendition of Anthem for Doomed Youth: one minute and 57 seconds of rage showing the lo-fi, almost-black metal for rest.
“I felt like I was perfect for what we do in World War I,” Blinko says. ‘Some [of the album] even sounds like that. It has long been associated with insanity. Whether it was composed in the midst of mania or not, it is completely deep. The artwork also looks good on a T-shirt.
Big War by Rudimentary Peni Released on April 23 on Sealed Records