The Redskins were one of those bands for whom an exclamation mark always felt it made sense. Having only released one album in their lifetime (1986’s Neither Washington Nor Moscow), it would be easy to conclude almost forty years later they lacked impact, but the advent of the year long Miner’s Strike transformed them into boots-on-the-ground activists, a job that in those years came without much fanfare.
Fronted by the literate and sardonic Chris Dean, the trio were probably most famous for being Marxist-Leninist skinheads at a time when that paraphernalia was associated with their political opponents, but musically they often wrapped their agit-prop in a layer of gloriously anachronous soul.
These Furious Flames! captures them in their most effective guise, combining a set-and-a-half taken from mid-eighties gigs in which their truth arrows rarely missed. Anyone born after Thatcher came to power might struggle to set some of Dean’s frequent in-jokes in context, but otherwise sit back and prepare to be happily propagandised; come for strike anthems Hold On and Keep On Keepin’ On, stay for the cover versions, including a doubtless knowing but nevertheless groovy Back In The USSR.
FORWARD! COMRADES!
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 
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