Accept The Darkness: Antisect's "Out From The Void" EP
By the mid-1980s, while the original ideals of anarcho-punk remained, the initial excitement and freshness of the first wave had largely faded. A dark future loomed as atomic fear, Thatcher's reign, and the threats of the Cold War were ever present. Antisect's worldview came to reflect that, as slowly their anarchistic politics were replaced by a more lifestylist philosophy, focusing more on the struggles and coping mechanisms to deal with the challenges of daily life. The outlook was bleak, and Antisect captured these feelings of uncertainty and disillusionment on 1986's "Out From The Void" EP.
The two song slammer is a jagged, grinding affair with metallic riffs that twist and turn, expressing the abandonment of hope; while pounding drums like those of approaching Medieval armies convey the stark reality of what lies ahead. Over all of this, a lone voice screams out in righteous agony. The grimness is summed up by chorus: "Hope, future, poisoned by fear." When the record is over, the listener is left with no choice but to ACCEPT THE DARKNESS.
In this interview for Negative Insight, two of the three members who played on the "Out From The Void" EP, guitarist/songwriter Pete Lyons and bassist John Bryson, share their memories on the record, how it came together, and the era in general.
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Although "In Darkness, There Is No Choice" was very heavy for anarcho punk, it still was decidedly different from the "Out From The Void" EP which came out in 1985. What influenced this change toward a heavier, more metallic sound? Was this a conscious decision?
JB: To be honest it feels like a natural progression to me and it certainly wasn't a conscious decision. Pete Lyons wrote the music (and the lyrics) and still does, and it comes from the gut. We were all listening to a lot of different stuff at the time; everything from punk to hard rock and metal, to vaguely experimental music from different decades. I have always been into heavy rock and metal, and before punk came along, in my early teens I was into Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, BTO, Hawkwind, Budgie, etc; so I always liked the heavier side of music.
When punk arrived (for me it was hearing "New Rose" by the Damned), everything changed. I loved the majority of punk right through from the Pistols to Discharge, and the first punk band I saw was Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, which blew my mind! By the time Antisect produced "Out From The Void," we were listening to a lot of Metallica and Slayer, but at the same time we were listening to more melodic stuff like "Grace Under Pressure" by Rush.
PL: As John says, really. For the most part, our musical influences were always pretty broad, though leaned a lot towards the heavier side of rock. The father of one of my friends introduced me to Black Sabbath quite early on and, although I was already listening to a lot of "punk" stuff by then, I sorta took it on from there. Musically, albums like "Sabotage" [Black Sabbath] and Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" made a big impression on me. I'd always thought that Led Zeppelin and similar stuff, although undeniably great here and there, was just too fucking "flowery" too often for me. I was just never that fond of some of the vocal stuff that went on. The fusion of heavier riffs (although "Out From The Void" doesn't really sound that heavy at all) and harder edged, more politicised vocals just made sense to me at the time. Hence how we developed. Not really so much of a conscious decision. It was the direction we were going in even as "In Darkness…" came out. By the time we were touring that LP, we were already progressing down a road which had heavier influences. Bearing in mind that there were two years between the two releases, those who saw us in the meantime would probably have been readily aware of what was to come. It just took the actual release of the EP for this to be documented, I guess.
What bands were you listening to that inspired the heavier sound?
JB: I think I already answered that in the last question. By the mid-1980s, we were definitely very into Metallica, etc. When Antisect toured Italy in 1984, Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" was a massive favourite and we had it on cassette to play in the van. All the punks in the squat where we stayed in Milan loved it too and kept borrowing it.
PL: Yep. As above.
The lyrics on the "Out From The Void" EP seem to show a disillusionment to some degree with the politics of the punk scene and offer commentary on lifestyle and the openly questioning what the future will bring. Can you please discuss the state of mind you were in during this time and what brought about this change in philosophy within the band? Were you disillusioned with the activist side of the punk scene?
PL: I'd seen the "punk" scene unfold and evolve for a few years by then and was finding myself ever more detached from what felt to me like a stagnation of ideas and progression. True, the authorities in the UK and other parts of the world at the time were laying the law down in an increasingly hard edged style. This had the effect of creating a lot of disillusionment in those that had been involved in the scene for some time. The lyrics were my attempt at expressing that. I wanted to shift things more into the realm of personal politics and try to move things on from the "Smash the System" rhetoric. To me, that had already been said years earlier in far more eloquent ways by Crass, and I felt a lot of what had come out since was, for the most part, third rate, clichéd repetitions of that. The "Out From The Void" lyrics were my expression of the frustration I was feeling with a community that had seemingly lost its way.
JB: Well yes, I was disillusioned with the scene, which had become a bit of an exclusive closed club for supposedly like-minded people whilst at the same time being very fragmented and quite bitchy. Before meeting Antisect I wasn't really very political at all, so I kind of got into the scene and then got tired of it in a very short space of time. As I said, Pete wrote the lyrics, and they very much reflect his state of mind rather than mine. I had tried to write lyrics for the band a few times, but frankly they just weren't good enough, and also, I do think that Pete's lyrics were (and still are) exceptional.
"Out From The Void" was released by Steve Beatty of Endangered Musik (and later Plastic Head Distribution) which unfortunately led to a contentious relationship between the band and label. Can you please elaborate on the situation, and aside from not agreeing to the release initially, would you have done anything differently if you could go back?
JB: To be honest, my memory of what went on is very sketchy. Pete and I have discussed it since, and I think we both felt that we hadn’t been fair with Steve through the whole thing. Frankly, we were going through a bit of a weird time as a band and as a group of individuals. We were living in squats in east London, indulging in whatever we could and generally not functioning as well as we might. The budget for recording was uber tight so we booked a very small studio in Tottenham and recorded the record in a day. We were extremely disappointed with the result, and I think we asked Steve for more money to record it again, which we did, with a bit more success but to be honest we still weren't (and aren't) very happy with the result. I know there was some argy bargy with Steve about money for recording, but my memory of what happened is so vague I don't really remember properly what happened.
PL: As John says, we were in a bit of a weird place at the time. Physically and mentally and were pretty much teetering on the edge of becoming a dysfunctional band. We screwed up the initial recording and what eventually came out, although maybe a little better, was about the best we could do, bearing in mind our circumstances and the disparate lifestyles we were all leading at the time. Steve, for obvious reasons, felt the label shouldn't cover the cost of the re-recording, and we were simply too skewed to make sense of this at the time. Of course, we should have covered that cost. No question. It was our fuck up not the label's, but in our collectively dubious state of mind at that time, felt we were being hard done by. Which basically was just not the case at all. So in answer to your question, yes, fucking right there is. I would have liked to have gotten our shit together enough to have done it properly in the first place and hence avoided all the stupidity that followed. Lessons learned, I guess…
Any idea how many copies were pressed by Endangered?
PL: No idea. Enough for it to reach Number 4 in the Indie Chart at the time. But aside from that, the relationship between ourselves and Endangered Musik had become so strained by the time it came out, we didn't really keep track of it.
JB: I really don't know, but it was only a few hundred. Imagine our surprise when we got in the UK Indie Singles Top 10! It even got reviewed in Kerrang, and thoroughly slated!
The artwork for the EP was drawn by Paul Garner. How did you come to use him, as he was not someone closely associated with the punk scene?
JB: I had been at art college with Paul doing graphic design. (I dropped out midway to join Antisect in 1984). Paul was (and still is) an amazing artist and at the time we were in the process of recording the now mildly infamous "lost second album." It was to have a gatefold sleeve and we wanted a mad, post-apocalyptic scene in the inside cover. Paul very graciously drew this amazing piece of artwork for us at no charge. We kept it safe ready for the LP.
Meanwhile, I think Steve needed the artwork for the "Out From The Void" sleeve urgently, because I think we had kept fobbing him off because we were all too wasted and flaky to sort it out. Again, I can't really rely on my memory here, but I think we were told that someone would be arriving to pick up the artwork for the single that day or the next day. So what could we do? I managed to get a photocopy of Paul's amazing artwork for the LP and literally cut out a section from it with scissors and glued it on to a piece of black paper. I then wrote the word "Antisect" freehand in Tippex correction fluid above the picture and "Out From The Void" below it. Job done! Pete then manually typed out the text for the back on an old-fashioned manual typewriter and cut that out and glued it to black paper for the back. Ridiculous, but it was the best we could do under the circumstances. It always amazes me that the "Tippex logo" is still featured on badges, patches and other merch. I also of course see it painted on the back of jackets. Very weird.
Paul's complete artwork later came to light featured on the back of the "Live in Leeds" bootleg LP and elsewhere, and to this day I have no idea how they got hold of it! It's a pity that it is quite a bad photocopy and does not do the original artwork justice. Other sections of the artwork also were reproduced for banners and logos on other stuff.
Was the cover illustration based on a concept the band came up with or Paul Garner?
JB: Entirely Paul's concept based on a really loose brief from us, which was probably something like "Do a mad, crazy post-apocalyptic scene of death and destruction!"
PL: Haha. Well, as John says, the whole thing was done in such a fucked up, ridiculous way, that the notion of a "concept" is a pretty loose one. We basically lifted a section of Paul's artwork and slapped it together with John's Tippex masterpiece at the 11th hour before it was due to go to print.
Aside from the unreleased second LP, were other songs written in 1985-86 aside from the two that appeared on the EP? Are there practice tapes or anything that exist?
PL: Yes. The song writing continued during and after the "In Darkness..." sessions. I wanted to keep things moving along, so would often suggest variations on how some of those tracks were performed. I liked the unpredictability that doing that created. We enjoyed evolving (as we still do). And taking things into newer areas (for us, at least) became an important part of what we were about. There are plenty of live recordings still doing the rounds in one shape or another that document this (of varying quality though, it has to be said).
JB: Pete was writing songs through that time, but I couldn't tell you which ones. I think versions of songs that Pete wrote back then have actually evolved into some of the songs that appeared on "Rising of the Lights"*. Certainly, when I returned to the band after a 30-year break, some of the riffs were familiar to me. I have no tapes from that period.
*Give it another listen and ignore the whining on the web!
Antisect was known for being a band into drug use. How did this impact the band, and do you think you would have been more productive or released more records over your career if not for drugs?
JB: Our hedonistic lifestyle definitely reduced output and also the quality of output in my opinion. None of us really had a drug problem, we were just having too much fun and our priorities were getting distorted as a result. We were a terrible influence on each other back then and so I think it was just a case of "shall we rehearse and write songs, or shall we get shitfaced?" You can guess which one won all too often. Again, I have to say that my memory of those times is horribly sketchy so in many ways I can only raise memories of memories if you know what I mean. It was a long time ago, and I thought differently then.
PL: Yeah, I guess I have to say that, in line with how we were living at the time, drugs did play a part in how we operated as a band. Or, then again, I could probably also say our drug consumption at the time influenced how we were living and consequently again, the workings of the band (if you know what I mean). As has probably been well documented elsewhere, it was a fucking mental time, and the availability of interesting things to smoke, swallow or imbibe combined to make it even more mental on occasions. (Mental enough to scrap an entire second LP for instance.) I have to say though, that although drugs and alcohol may have played a part in limiting the band's output, what was also a pretty huge factor was the hand to mouth existence that we were living at the time, often turning, what, in more usual circumstances would be the most simple of things into, for us anyway, feats of ridiculous complexity. I recall one incident, shortly after Antisect broke up and I was putting together Kulturo, where I had a 5-piece drum kit, complete with cymbals and hardware, plus a passenger grimly trying to keep hold of it all, dangling off the back of my motorcycle as we slithered 5 miles through 6 inches of snow to try and make a rehearsal happen. Fucking ridiculous! But stuff like that was pretty common in those days.
One member who I have always been curious about was Tom Lowe, as he played with the Varukers on their first couple records before joining Antisect. Do you remember how he came to be in the band? Was it easier having someone join who had previous experience recording in a studio, playing live, and been in a semi-established band? How come he didn't last in the band that long?
JB: To be honest, Tom's relationship with the band all happened before I joined in 1984 so I cannot really comment. My understanding was that Tom had simply stood in for Wink a couple of times, though I don't know why. Sorry.
PL: We got to know Tom due to our association with Discharge. He was the brother of Garry's girlfriend at the time. It was a period when Wink decided we were no longer for him; we were on the lookout for a replacement bassist that suited what we were doing, and Tom felt like a good choice. We already knew him, we got along pretty well, and he was just a really likeable guy. As it turned out, my memory is a bit hazy around it, but I think he only did a couple of shows with us. Maybe just the one, which would have been the Zig Zag Club with Discharge in 1982. Not long after, Tom felt that his work situation, and the fact that he lived a fair distance from the rest of the band, combined to make him unable to commit in the way everyone would have liked, so we parted company. The odd thing about it was that, during this time, Wink had a change of mind and decided that he wanted back in, so everything reverted to how it was before pretty easily.
Did the turnover of members wear on the band? Do you think you would have been more productive with more line up stability?
JB: I don't know if it wore on the band, but I'm someone who likes harmony and hates conflict, so I felt bad each time someone moved on. When I first joined, we were a 6-piece band, so maybe it had just got too big to maintain. Six people is a lot to squeeze in a van and the cracks were appearing before I joined. Within a year of my joining Antisect we were down to a three piece. I think it worked very well. (Coincidentally, within a year of my re-joining in 2016, we were a three piece again! As I said in the "Rising from The Void" documentary film*, "Is it me?") *Watch it now on YouTube folks!
PL: Well, we began as a 4 piece and, in the town where we lived, we were basically the only 4 people who wanted to do something of that nature enough to actually do it. Like most folks, we used to go to local shows and that is where I met and became friends with Rich and consequently thought it would be cool to have two vocalists, so I invited him and later, his partner at the time, Caroline into the band. I won't go into the reasons why both were later asked to leave, as this isn't really the place for that, but suffice to say we later parted company. I don't think their departures affected the band at all really. If anything, it felt like a stronger unit without them. Likewise, that of vocalist Pete Boyce. (Though in his case he kind of dumped us in the shit by not choosing to tell us until we'd arrived to pick him up on the morning of the first date of a UK tour). I'd say that, in just about every occasion, it gave us the kick up the arse to re-evaluate a few things at the time. I had always been largely responsible for the musical side of how things were put together anyway, so line up changes didn't alter anything in that respect, and it became a similar case in so far as the lyrics. The only thing that did bug me a little about how things were arranged was to do with vocalists really, and that how someone who hadn't written the words, would interpret what I had written. It wasn't a problem on "Out From The Void," as John and I were pretty close friends and knew, more or less, how each other's minds worked. There were the odd few occasions with various people before that though, where it seemed like either some things got lost in translation or weren't really understood to begin with. But although stuff like that was frustrating (probably only for me though). I don't think the line up changes really held us back at all.
Any other thoughts or anything regarding the EP or the mid-1980s era?
JB: Well, it was a lot of fun! The EP didn't turn out as we'd have like, but I'm still proud to have been part of it and I get why it became so popular. It's not great production wise, but listening to it now it is very much 'of its time' and has charm as a result. It is the sound of desperate, disorganised, intense people with no resources making music that we believed in, whilst living an extreme alternative lifestyle. As such it is authentic and that has value.
I enjoyed the mid-'80s, probably a bit too much. Like a lot of people in that scene back then, I was a massive hedonist and did not notice (or care that much) how my actions and reactions affected others and sometimes I just wasn't great to be around. I do however look back at the scene and those days with fondness and there are hundreds of crazy stories, but I wouldn't want to go back, and I would not want to be around the person I was back then. It's great that there are so many old photos popping up on the net and I enjoy seeing them. I feel lucky to have been there and more so to have been in Antisect (twice!). I also feel lucky to have survived because not everyone has.
PL: In truth, it constantly surprises me how people still want to talk about it. Both the EP and the times. When you consider it was nearly 40 years ago. (Fuck! How to make someone feel old.) The whole period was a fascinating time for me and I'm glad to have lived through it and survived, mistakes and all. It does sadden me that plenty of others who were doing likewise, haven't made it, but that's the price we pay for some of the choices we make, I guess. I wasn't that far away from having my own excesses come back to haunt me in a terminal way myself, after all. I did have a fucking great time though, absolute insanity at regular intervals. And at a few points along the way, it did seem like we and others like us were making a positive difference.
It's sad to think that a lot of folk involved back then have seemingly struggled to come to terms with where their lives are now though. I do sort of understand the fascination for some to look back at those times, but hope that the tendency for nostalgia can be avoided and also that the folks who weren't around then, can use what they might learn about what went on as inspiration for what they might do today. As this is where we are. The present and the future are more important than the past, after all.
JB – John Bryson • PL – Pete Lyons
January 2021
Antisect color live photos taken by Craig Pancrack at the Riverside Newcastle on April 6, 1987 during their U.K. tour.
All other photos and ephemera from the personal archives of John Bryson.
All photos used with permission.
Special thanks to Sned and Scotty Hellkrusher for their help with this feature.
Paul Garner is still working as an artist, and his works can been seen on his site at www.paulgarnerart.com.
