Civic Keep Rock Intensity High with Compelling Listen ‘Taken By Force’ (ALBUM REVIEW)

Photo credit: Marcus Cobyln

Channeling everything from Raw Power-era Stooges to Australian punk forbearers The Saints, Melbourne-based band Civic prove the hype over their 2021 debut LP was clearly deserved with the raucous follow-up, Taken By Force. The record is a burst of ferocity, with singer Jim McCullough vocals impressively competing to be heard over distorted guitars in quick 2-3- minute bursts (with the anomalous five-minute track in the middle). 

The band describes the album as “1984 meets Endless Summer,” though admittedly there’s a little more of the dystopia of 1984 than Endless Summer here, with plenty of dark imagery of AK-47s and a world at war. The opening track, “Dawn,” with its military drumming and air raid siren, quickly segues into a Buzzcock’s worthy mix of fast three chord riffs and snotty lyrics serving as the perfect intro to what follows. The delivery of everything from the vocals to the instrumentation on this album is almost always focused on intensity, making for a wildly compelling listen.

“With our live shows we’ve always made a point of being super loud and in-your-face,” McCullough said. “As an audience member I’ve always enjoyed that feeling of really believing in the band but also feeling like everything’s teetering on the edge of falling apart at any second.” Listening to Taken By Force, you can’t help but get the feeling that the world is falling apart as well.  

The one atypical song here, is “Trick of the Light” – that five-minute-long outlier – that channels garage rock, and a brilliant mix of goth rock that recalls bands like Gene Loves Jezebel and The Church. Despite its length and musical touchstones, it still manages to fit in with the other tracks nicely.  

Coming in at 11 tracks (though the final one “Dusk” is simply the sound of waves in the ocean), the record is over seemingly as quickly as it started. In true, classic pretention-free punk rock fashion, Civic get in, do their damage and get out. 

Much like the Idles and Viagra Boys, Civic are the latest in a thankfully growing line of younger punk bands that went back an entire generation – beyond Green Day, Rancid and Blink 182 – for musical inspiration. They’ve managed to take 1970 three chord distorted punk rock and mix it with today’s climate of chaos and uncertainty for a fitting soundtrack to modern times.    

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