Various Artists: Birds Of A Feather Vol. 3 – album review

BIRDS OF A FEATHER VOL 3

Various Artists

Grow Your Own

CD

Out now

Grow Your Own have come up trumps again with the third in their series of Birds Of A Feather compilations. In the A5 booklet (a page per track) the Grow Your Own team make their intent clear: “The inspiration for Birds was Crass’s Bullshit Detector. We remember how we discovered new bands through them and we wanted to do something similar – to try to help give bands a bit of exposure where you could hear something you might not otherwise have heard. As we are a very small DIY label and do this in our spare time after work and at weekends, we can only put out a small number of records each year, and we thought the CD comp format was the best vehicle to do this as we can fit lots of bands on and keep the price low…We are an inclusive label and welcome hearing from you – young bands, punx of colour, women, LGBTQ+, however you identify.”

So with that in mind, I would just urge you to try it!

A fair few of the 25 bands on this comp have featured on the pages of Louderthanwar and it covers a range of styles across the punk rock spectrum from 77 style through hardcore to the depths of psycho-delic darkness. Whilst it features bands/artists who have been, or are due to be, released on Grow Your Own, this is less of a label sampler and more of a snapshot of some of what is going on music-wise in the world of DIY anarcho-punk.  I was particularly pleased to see the prominent statement “Copyright on tracks owned by individual artists”. Nice to see someone standing up for musicians for once!

There are some stand out songs of course but from experience, my own personal preference may well change over time as I grow familiar with more of the songs.  So without enough space to pull apart all 25, rather than focus on individual artists here is a rundown of who is featured just to give you a taste:

• Riviera Kid
• Ryan Riot
• Dogma
• Reality Asylum
• Constant Fear
• SeekDestroy
• Nouveau Bleach
• 51st State
• Haest
• Do Less
• Hysteria Ward
• Drunken Marksman
• Rabies Babies
• Andy H
• Cherry & Peesh
• System of Slaves
• Junko Fuse
• The Throttles
• Slow Faction
• Dead Tribe
• T-Bitch
• Zero Again
• Butane Regulators
• Bug Central
• Sickness

If that interests you then head over to the Grow Your Own Bandcamp site to pick up a copy.

~

All words by Nathan Brown. You can read more from Nathan on his Louder Than War archive over here.