When you begin your musical career by releasing a debut record as genre defining as ‘Appetite For Destruction’ or The Stone Roses’ ‘Self-Titled’ album you’re always going to get people asking if the new one is as good as that record. Dirt Box Disco have that very same albatross hanging around their necks too as their debut ‘Legends’ is easily one of the best UK punk rock records of all time in my book, yet somehow, they’ve managed to dodge that metaphorical debut bullet, largely because they have consistently released strong follow up records ever since that astounding album first appeared back in 2012.

Here in 2023 with the imminent release of the band’s eighth studio album, ‘Rokapokalips’ what strikes me now, perhaps more than ever, about the “almost veteran” Dirt Box Disco, is that (to my ears at least) they have more than just a proclivity for atrocious spelling in common with a certain 70s/80s rock band from the Black Country known as Slade.

Okay granted the opening word from singer/guitarist’s Spunk Volcano masked mouth to introduce ‘# Bollocks’ is never going to be viewed in the same endearing way as Noddy’s immortal “Baby, baby, baby” holler, but there is just something about this all new ten track record from the Dirt Box gang that immediately makes me think of Slade’s early 80s renaissance, and I’m not exactly sure quite what it is.

Perhaps it’s the fact that the band (by their own workaholic standards) have been a bit quiet of late, or that whilst the terrible musical chemical laboratory experiment that helped create Dirt Box Disco will forever be embedded within the band’s musical DNA, here on ‘Rokapokalips’ they’ve broadened their sound palette to include a touch of ska during the verses of ‘Kill The Music’ (just like Slade embraced the Celtic jig to once again attain chart success) and in ‘Land Of Hope & Glory’ Spunk, Maff, Danny and Chris have a song that could very easily sit on a Cockney Rejects or Cock Sparrer album (and Slade were of course as equally at home playing to punks and skinheads as they were heavy rockers back in the day).

Granted these are only very tenuous links though, largely used to bring an album you’ve yet to hear fully to life and I should add that this is still very much the Dirt Box Disco we all know and love, albeit there are just enough new things going on to keep us all thinking, whilst also singing along, and of course smiling, as one listen to ‘Up The Dirtbox’ (fnarr, fnarr) will no doubt prove.

After the knockout punch that was ‘TV Sex Show’ the band’s 2020 debut Weab-less record, it was always going to be tough to follow the likes of the glorious ‘Unstoppable’ and anthemic ‘Barebones’ where the band had sounded revitalised, but when you have the songwriting machine that is Spunk Volcano revving his engine and penning such instantly memorable tunes as this album’s title track, the insanely hummable ‘Cinderella’s Motorhead Tattoo’ and ‘I Don’t Wanna Go Without You’ (yup I had to read it more than once too) you’re never going to be a shortage of amazing songs with which to fill your next record. Just give top sing-a-long-a-Dirtbox ‘Happy Pills’ a play and tell me I’m wrong. It’s a song chock full of the band’s trademark “Woah Oh” gang vocals, albeit here the underlying lyrical theme does appear to be a little darker than usual.

For those of you who have pre-ordered ‘Rokapokalips’ from Avenue Recordz directly you should be getting your CDs and LPs anytime soon, and for everybody else the album is being released on July 21^st, but you can also hit THIS LINK and get the masked menaces to send you your copy pronto!

And remember, “We’re strong, together we are stronger, and we don’t quit, Dirt Box Disco Armageddon, Rokapokalips”

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Author: Johnny Hayward