Sick Of It All

Wake The Sleeping Dragon!

NYHC lifers unleash the fire in their bellies on album 11. It’s 32 years since Sick Of It All formed in Queens, New York. A gang of angry young men with a thirst for social justice and a talent for nose-bloodying punk rock served up at 100mph alongside an all-encompassing sense of community.

In 2018 they’re a gang of angry old men, and it’s clear from

Wake The Sleeping Dragon!’s raging opening barrage of Inner Visions that they’ve lost none of their vim and vinegar. But while the title track, Work The System and Bad Hombres rail against the powers that be and Bull’s Anthem is an oddly jaunty animal-rights anthem, there’s positivity to be found in the likes of Crazy White Boy Shit (a high-octane love letter to Bad Brains) and a generous dose of humour, not least in Self Important Shirthead, sticking it to the self-obsession of social media and slamming to a conclusion with a succinct

‘Fuck off and die!’

In giving themselves the freedom to write about anything, Sick Of It All have a fresh sense of can-do-anything fun to balance the fury.