Three years can be a mighty long time in the music industry with styles and tastes changing with the ‘next big thing’ and bands going out of fashion almost overnight. However, in the three years since south Wales punks Social Experiment unleased their brutal (and totally unfashionable) ‘Rumours Of Our Demise Are Not Greatly Exaggerated’ debut, the planet on which we reside has become one of intense and constant upheaval, with the next big thing (musically at least) being the last thing on anyone’s minds.

What Social Experiment skilfully do with ‘Everything Is Connected to Everything Else’ (their long overdue second long player) is take those things and use them to shape the soundtrack to our seemingly never-ending apocalypse by delivering a dozen razor-sharp missives that would be guaranteed to have Daily Mail readers instantly up in arms.

From the UK’s escalating homelessness problem courtesy of ‘System Failure’ to the political corruption of ‘Social Experiment’ via the illegal breeding of designer dogs, castigated by ‘Fashion Accessory’, nothing is seemingly off limits, with even that mate you had who has now become a bit of racist cunt due to the fallout from Brexit even getting a mention during ‘I Don’t Like Your Attitude’. Puddle (vocals), Newt (bass), Nicky (drums) and Paul (guitar) literally blaze through their set in a little over thirty two minutes and at times they make me wonder is this what an early Discharge jamming with Slayer might sound like? There’s even time for some levity at the end of it all via the Dirtbox Disco-esque ‘Drinking After The Bell’. It’s not all doom and gloom you know.

Anger might very well be an energy but when it’s used positively and comes all wrapped up in a glorious production/mixing job courtesy of Danny Guy and Jason Livermore, you can’t help but feel inspired by the likes of ‘Thank You – Fuck You’, ‘Destitution’ (complete with a spoken word intro courtesy of ole toad face Farage) and perhaps the band’s most commercial track to date, the excellent ‘Same Shit, Different Day’.

As I sat down to write this review, the rock world was waking up to the tragic news that the Angelic Upstarts’ legendary frontman Thomas ‘Mensi’ Mensforth had lost his battle with Covid. Now you may be wondering why I mention this here in summing up? Well in Social Experiment the legacy of Mensi’s work, in not just music but also his fight and spirit, is very much still alive, and I couldn’t help but smile as ‘System Failure’ came blasting out the speakers angry as fuck, it actually had me thinking “this one’s for Mensi.”

And who knows, maybe, just maybe, Leonardo DaVinci really was onto something when he said ‘Everything Is Connected to Everything Else’ all those years ago – even when it comes to punk rock.

To find out for yourselves if the Italian polymath really was indeed correct, click on the following link and go order your copy of the album on LP or CD.

Buy Here

Author: Johnny Hayward