by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” said the philosopher George Santayana, and such deadening repetition we have seen in the turgid year of 2020. Fools have protested the use of masks, just as they did during the 1919 Spanish Flu pandemic; the US police state has allowed the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, just as they did Trayvon Martin before them and Emmett Till before him.
It’s something that Melbourne musician Jake Robertson (Ausmuteants, School Damage, Hierophants), the one-man hurricane behind Alien Nosejob, is keen to impress upon his audience on Once Again The Present Becomes The Past. This is remarkably his third record of the year - although he’s certainly had time available to him during Australia’s strict coronavirus lockdowns - and released once again by the excellent Anti Fade (Bananagun, Vintage Crop, Primo!) and Iron Lung in the US.
It was preceded by Suddenly Everything Is Twice As Loud in January and HC45 in February. Stylistically, it very much sides with the latter, a thrilling collection of hardcore punk. On Suddenly… Robertson often sounded like the Cleaners from Venus, led by Martin Newell, but the only thing remaining between the two is their unrelenting prolificacy; Newell would never leave his beloved jangle pop behind for this long.
The album was initially conceived as a concept record about Australia’s first and largest air raid, the 1942 Bombing of Darwin, until Robertson realized the repetitive nature of history would be better-suited to what he wanted to say. In this way, it’s his most focused release yet, both lyrically and sonically. Everything is tight, the tracks striking quickly and bitingly. He channels early hardcore effectively, the record a ferocious blitz of guttural punk.
Yet Robertson eases us in, his “Piano Prelude” being a literal calm before a storm, just the ominous sound of wind and space. Then the “Airborne Toxic Event” arrives. Robertson unleashes an aerial assault to mirror the aerial assault from the title. “Every time I take a breath / brings me closer to my death / oxygen, looks like smoke / water looks like diet coke,” he screams, that first part ringing especially true in a post-COVID landscape, certainly if you’re standing in the vicinity of Donald Trump. The track takes its name from Don DeLillo’s White Noise: in the novel’s second part, a chemical spill releases a noxious black cloud, forcing an evacuation and the main character, Jack, to confront his mortality; it was also published in 1985, when Cold War tensions were high. History repeats itself.
Twelve more tracks follow but the songs are short and frenetic (the longest doesn’t get above three minutes). The triple hit of “Spearfish Torpedo,” “Air Raid On N.T.,” and “Pointed Shears” blast by at a breathless pace, Robertson’s voice sounding strained and exhausted. After “The Day After,” a rare moment of quiet (mere streaking sci-fi synths filling the air), he restarts the blistering pace. On “Present Becomes Past” he maddeningly howls his words, as if in a race against time to let them out, as if “Once again the present becomes the past” is a secret that he wishes everyone else to find out. A snare drum drives “9.58am” at full-throttle, sounding much like Dead Kennedys; “Mutilated Turtle” utilizes a similar effect, like a machine-gun drum militaristic march to hell. Robertson really is gifted at eking out as much interesting instrumentation from a solo position.
“Once More 1984” is an obvious Orwellian reference (a record about the collapse of civilization couldn’t not contain one). It’s a leering shot of crust punk, as is the dirty “The Path To Extinction”. Robertson then has one final quiet moment for his listener. “Dead Pelican” is a final interlude, the wind sounds and melancholic keys returning to create a circularity from the opening track. It’s the sound of the dust settling: history has repeated itself. It no doubt will again.
It’s rare to find a musician capable of matching their quantity with such quality, for Once Again… could claim to be the strongest Alien Nosejob release out of this year’s three. Its viscerality and anxiety are all too apt for this current fragile moment we find ourselves in. Forget the seething hardcore punk racket, forget the historical concepts: the simple line that Robertson shouts during “Airborne Toxic Event”, “Everything’s turned to shit,,” is all that really needs to be said.