Well, I really should be writing a four-page paper on NAFTA for my history class, but since I’m lazy, and would prefer to protest things I don’t fully understand, I’m writing a review of some semi-obscure anarcho-punk CD. The System’s …Is Still Murder is another CD discography of a band that only put out a couple EPs, so in order to fill out the CD all of their demo tracks are on here as well.

The System was a pretty typical anarchist punk band from the scene’s heyday of the early `80s. They don’t really have any big distinctions from the legions of other bands, except for the fact that their recordings have now been reissued. The music is fairly standard stuff, more in the vein of Flux of Pink Indians (whom they often opened for) than Crass. The songs manage to be catchy without being poppy, like many of the first wave of punk bands, and they tend to be a little on the slow side, as opposed to some of the thrashier bands. Although the songs don’t suffer from being played relatively slowly, the band seemed to feel it was necessary to repeat the chorus about 500 times each song, which stretches several two or three-minute songs ("Dogs of War," "Thought Control," etc.) to well over the four-minute mark.

The lyrics tackle the typical anarcho-punk topics without much originality, but, unfortunately, the CD does not include printed lyrics. The vocals are clean enough that you can gather that they don’t want any more war, and that the government sucks, but beyond that, they don’t seem to delve too deeply.

Overall, there’s nothing really bad about the System, I just assumed that if Overground were giving them such a high-profile reissue, there would be something that differentiates them from all of the other anarcho-punk reissues of the past ten years. The booklet is nice, and has enough info to tell you exactly what you want reissued next (Hagar the Womb! Andy T!), and for less than $10 on Interpunk, it’s a good deal. I dunno…up the punx.