The Day the Country Died

The Day the Country Died
Studio album by
ReleasedJanuary 1983
Recorded22 June–26 June 1982 (1982-06-26) at Pickwick Studios in Corsham, England
GenreAnarcho-punk
Length34:56
LabelSpiderleg
ProducerSubhumans
Subhumans chronology
Wessex '82
(1982)
The Day the Country Died
(1983)
Evolution
(1983)
Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
Allmusic[1]

The Day the Country Died is the debut studio album by English anarcho-punk band Subhumans. It was recorded in five days in June 1982 and was released in January 1983 through Spiderleg Records. The album was later re-released via Bluurg, the band's own record label.

The album is influenced by the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. The most obvious sign of such an influence is the song "Big Brother"; Big Brother is the dictatorial political leader figure in Orwell's novel. The song revolves around how "Big Brother is watching you", and when Dick Lucas sings "there's a TV in my front room and it's screwing up my head", it is a comparison between the telescreen in the novel which monitored citizens constantly and excessive viewing of mass media. Today, there is a huge amount of video surveillance in the United Kingdom, showing the foresight of this subject matter. Like the novel, the album has dystopian overtones.

It also describes a world ravaged by war, most likely our world which arguably is, this is suggested by track titles such as "Dying World" and "All Gone Dead". The latter contains lyrics like "So long to the world, that's what they said, it's 1984 and it's all gone dead", which can be seen as another reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Day the Country Died is widely regarded as a classic punk rock album.[citation needed]

  1. ^ "The Day the Country Died - Subhumans". Allmusic.

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