Four years after the incendiary ‘#Resist’, London’s political electro-punk agitators Calling All Astronauts return with their most uncompromising statement yet. Noise Against Tyranny, released via their own Supersonic Media, is a ten-track gauntlet of blistering industrial beats, gothic atmospheres, and post-punk bite- an album that’s as furious as it is unflinchingly relevant.
The record plays like a dispatch from the frontlines of a cultural war. From the first pounding bars of ‘Pray For Your Soul’- a thinly veiled strike against conservative Christian hypocrisy- to the closing title-year track ‘1979’, an anti-fascist poem given new urgency, there’s no room for ambiguity. David B’s vocals are part rally cry, part venom-laced sermon, riding Paul McCrudden’s collision of jagged guitars, buzzing synths, and beat-driven muscle.
Each song strikes its own target. ‘War On Truth’ is a furious broadside against far-right disinformation campaigns, its urgency matched by propulsive percussion. ‘I Can’t Breathe’ trades political outrage for raw emotional gut punch, tackling the suffocating reality of domestic abuse with stark honesty. ‘Take Me To Hell’ locks climate change denialists in its crosshairs, seething over corporate greed, while ‘No Way Out’ skewers the populist clowns stumbling from disaster to disaster. Even the seemingly lighter ‘Time To Party’ turns into a sly manifesto for creative freedom, blurring drum & bass with a message against rigid genre boundaries.
Self-produced for the first time after working with Grammy-winning Alan Branch, the duo’s influences are proudly worn, from the shadowy pulse of Sisters of Mercy to the industrial grind of Nine Inch Nails and the rhythmic assault of Pendulum, yet Noise Against Tyranny never feels derivative. Instead, it’s a weaponised hybrid- anthemic, confrontational, and impossible to ignore.
Calling All Astronauts soundtrack the resistance. ‘Noise Against Tyranny’ isn’t background music- it’s a call to stay angry, stay alert, and keep pushing back. In a world still circling the same political drain, this is the noise we need.