During Los Campesinos! seventh album All Hell, we get a screenshot moment of the divided Britain they’ve come to terms with over the last 14 years of conservative rule: “Union flag is waving while the building’s burning,” singer Gareth David declares over doom-ridden harmonizations and a shrapnel-laden mixture of drums and keys. This is their most apocalyptic vision of the world around them to date.
Originally formed in Cardiff in the mid-2000’s, Los Campesinos! have a habit of saying it as they see it. One of their most memorable lyrics, “But you could never kiss a Tory boy without wanting to cut off your tongue again,” comes from their 2010 album Romance Is Boring, which was released just before Britain’s conservative party took power, with the ensuing years of their rule being dominated by austerity and polarizing debate. With a large portion of Los Campesinos!’s existence as a band happening during these 14 years, All Hell feels like the culmination of a period of intense pain for the band and an indictment of the current state of the UK.
At some points, it feels like All Hell is a list of grievances. “Feast of Tongues” snarls at “bootlickers,” “The Coin-Op Guillotine” explores the crushing weight of working for little reward under capitalism and “Long Throes” has the biggest grudges to bear. It rallies against punk bands who are “crooning for kindness, asking ‘why can’t we all just get along,’” a criticism that has been leveled against bands such as IDLES. Los Campesinos! are at their best on this album when going direct. They are visibly anguished at the UK’s continual re-electing of the Conservative party, proclaiming “how many times are they going to vote for the bastards who would sooner annex paradise?” (With 2024 being the year the UK finally tired of Tory rule).
Within this anger and the listing off of various issues that have affected the UK, there’s an underlying message to songs such as “Long Throes.” That we’re not only falling out of love with our country but with ourselves and with each other. A constant theme of Los Campesinos!’s discography has been to marry their political views with the human issues we deal with on a daily basis. We are not simply polarized by culture wars, we’re begging for our soccer team to climb the league table, we’re processing traumas we may never get over and no matter how many times our heart bleeds, we try and try again to find love.
We can debate policies all we like, as concurrently we fight personal battles to find ourselves and be freed from loneliness. The band effortlessly blends together these various contradictions within our lives throughout the first half of the album. The second half of All Hell loses a bit of the momentum that captivated during the first few songs. In large parts, that’s down to the directness of the lyricism being swapped out for more abstractions on tracks such as “0898 Heartache” and “Clown Blood/Orpheus’ Bobbing Head.”
With the album being 15 tracks long, there’s also a sense of wasted space. “III. Surfing A Contrail” and “II. Music For Aerial Toll House” finishes before they really begin and “I. Spit; or, a Bite Mark in the Shape of the Sunflower State” feels especially lacking in impact when you consider previous sub-two-minute Los Campesinos! tracks like “My Year in Lists,” which is amongst the band’s most memorable.
All Hell isn’t much of an evolution on Los Campesinos!’s brand of emo rock, and the most impactful moments are when their instruments swell in harmony or their voices combine to create haunting, funereal images. It’s an album that will undoubtedly please Los Campesinos! fans, with whom they have a special connection built upon shared left-wing views and the bracingly emotional way they have projected heartbreak alongside those views. There’s also a gold mine of references for them to explore in the band’s ever-expanding lore.
Los Campesinos! have painted a powerful picture of just how divided the UK has become. There’s little light to be found here, only within the connections we have with each other, that are at risk of fading away at any moment. The final song “Adult Acne Stigmata” feels like an apt summary: “You’re so beautiful, the sky is blue, but we all know well, it’s ‘All Hell.’” We move forward in full knowledge that the future is uncertain.
Check out our recent ranking of Los Campesinos!’s discography here.
