VA - Shellshock Rock: Alternative Blasts From Northern Ireland 1977-1984 (2020)

The plight of Northern Ireland throughout the 1970s and 1980s is well documented. Less widely acknowledged, though, is the unifying impact that punk rock and everything that came in it's wake had on the country's youth. Whilst violence, disenchantment and danger became everyday obstacles, punk provided an outlet, a means of expression and something beyond the political landscape in a way few other cities on earth could have understood. The Shellshock Rock film first captured this in 1978, and we proudly extend that account with three discs of tracks recorded during a period that breathed new life into the country's musical culture. The bands of Belfast and beyond created a scene entirely of their own, without the aid of an existent network of venues and publications. Punk forged alliances that reached across sectarian boundaries, and pushed back against a culture of traditions and establishment which seemed to offer very little to the country's youth. Featuring in-depth sleeve-notes, essays by both Stuart Bailie and John T. Davis, unseen imagery and, for the first time outside of Japan, the seminal Shellshock Rock film, this latest addition to our series of deep, geographically focussed sets promises to be the most vital of them all. Nowhere was punk as necessary and as life-changing as it was in Northern Ireland.