Fresh out of the courtroom, Kneecap have gone right back to releasing music that strikes a chord with the deep anti-imperialist mood that has gripped the minds of workers and youth across the world with renewed force since the genocide in Gaza and the Iran war.
As with previous Kneecap records, its position atop the charts, even reaching #2 in the UK, has no doubt been a pain in the arse for the ruling class in both Britain and Ireland.
If there was still any doubt that the attempts by the British establishment to bury Kneecap by branding them as terrorists have backfired spectacularly, then this will have put them to rest
There are many highlights in the album, especially ‘Carnival’, where a re-creation of Mo Chara’s trial serves as an ominous opening. The trial saw Mo Chara charged with a terror offence for his alleged support of Hezbollah – all for waving a flag at a gig in London.
The final verse of ‘Carnival’ ends with the line “history will remember you pieces of shit and you’ll never be forgiven”.
The whole song takes aim at the British establishment, exposing the real reason behind the trial, describing it as a “circus of distraction” with the aim of shifting focus away from the horrors unfolding in the Middle East with British support and backing. As the song puts it, “Away from their actions is where they will steer you”.
The hypocrisy of the court itself, an institution that supposedly stands for truth and justice, is also put on blast. As Mo Chara points out throughout the song, the British courts have a long history of dragging Irish people before them on politically motivated charges
To emphasise these previous miscarriages of justice at the hands of the British State, Kneecap went as far as to include Gareth Peirce on their legal team during the trial [read: circus], one of the lawyers for both the Birmingham Six and Guild ford Four (both groups of Irishmen who were disgracefully wrongly convicted.)
Another highlight of the album is ‘An Ra’. It opens with the intro to ‘Rule, Bri tannia!’, which becomes more distorted until it fades away – a parallel to Britain’s declining world standing as an imperialist power.
The song features the band sarcastically listing everything they are ‘grateful’ to the British ruling class for, from “civilising us savages” to “sharing your culture with us: Jimmy Saville and HP Sauce”.
While rattling off a laundry list of the crimes of British imperialism and Britain’s Epstein class, the band at the same time satirises the British establishment’s whitewashing of their own history, whereby they expect their past and present colonial subjects to be thankful for centuries of brutal oppression.
Fine Art was incredible and 3CAG contains some of my favourite songs ever. But as an album, FENIAN takes the cake.
The band’s rage at British imperial ism, which is sometimes subtle and other times anything but, permeates almost every song across the album.
With each successive addition to their discography Kneecap raises the bar and I can’t wait to see what they come out with next!
