So here we are again. Tick Tock Pulse Pulse goes the cycle. Single after single. Album after album. Sitting on the 127 Arriva bus passing through the flooded grey gloom of Crowland between Shepshed and St Margarets bus station at 6.07am. I look around and I wonder how much has changed since I wrote the release notes for This Is Crowland?
This album cost us dearly. Spit and venom, bile and blood were consumed building this monster of a record. Eleven songs each more intense than the last. It cost me a piano, sunk into the dark waters of the River Soar with barely a ripple (although it did make a big noise when it was sucked under by the water). The Marina Association were understanding, but this was not my first offence. To sink one piano in the river is the hapless accident of a vain idiot. To sink a second is generally considered poor form. So this album cost me my home.
Late one night in November, Pete had to once again submit to the curse of the Mountsorrel Quarrymen. The hours of labour to edit the finest details of the drum tracks on some song that was cast aside and deleted before it could pass from the digital to the analogue took him beyond endurance. The only way he could find the strength to carry on was to once again take the knee and kiss the stone. He has that haunted look now. He knows he can only break those promises once or twice more, because they will remember. Come for him.
Sydd? Indestructible and indefatigable was found sobbing. Sat by the church doors. Wrapped in tinsel and stinking of dry, exotic cheeses that are not normally on sale in the United Kingdom. At least not anymore. Yes we all gave up something. Sacrificed. For you.
Chaos is a musical essay of sorts. This Is Crowland was an ironic stab at the stupidity of the modern world, but there was always a certain safe distance. We were wrong. There is no distance. Stupid has come to consume us and carry us away. Culture War was a call to action, recognition that politics is no longer the art of controlling your environment (Thompson, H 1973) but has become the drive to change everyone else’s environment whether they like it or not. Chaos is the next step. Third of the trinity. If there is a culture war (and there is) and if we no longer have time and space to deal with stupid, then our final refuge, as individuals, as loving groups of like minded humans, as a civilisation, as a species, is chaos itself. Make it. Embrace it. Prepare for it. Or write an album about it.
Many years ago stupid was the force of law and order and we were the festive flames of chaos, brothers and sisters. Now we are tied to the law and rights and wrongs and stupid has learned to unleash madness and violence upon us. People, we must embrace the chaos again. Reclaim it. Only then can we slip through the cracks and reignite something better. Ask not for whom the pendulum swings, for it swings directly at you. Dodge and dive or loiter and die.
One final thought. Yes, punk is dead. Move on. You’re welcome.
Game Fit
Beast
People Pleaser
Sonic
Heavy
Peacekeeper
Love in the Circle
Lee Iococca*
Electric fly
Raise your Glass
Agents of Chaos (We got the Yip)
All rights reserved. Copyright 2026 9 o’clock Nasty. Recorded at Studio 9 and Boat Studio in Crowland, UK
We are Pete Brock, Ted Pepper & Sydd Spudd.
Artwork by Ted Pepper, except the Chaos logo which is an Addermyre design.
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