The Celibate Rifles Title: The Turgid Miasma Of Existence

It seems that the Australian punk scene has seldom been more vital than it is today, with swathes of new bands emerging, and taking it to the world – Amyl and The Sniffers, The Chats, C.O.F.F.I.N and Civic to name just a few.

With guitarist Kent Steedman producing, the band commenced recording at Sydney’s famed Alberts Studio before a misunderstanding led to them being booted out, whenceforth they decamped once again to Rick Turk’s Honeyfarm Studio in Duffy’s Forest, where they’d made their first two albums.
Songs like ‘Sometimes’, ‘Conflict Of Interest’, ‘Some Kind Of Feeling’ and the hardcore/jazz fusion of opener ‘Bill Bonney Regrets’ – now a YouTube favourite – have gone on to become Rifles classics, their incisive Damien Lovelock lyrics – ‘Sometimes when I get home, I just want to go out again’, ‘Get up in the morning have the same thing for breakfast, freeze-dried coffee and multigrain toast’ – dryly underpinning the suburban ennui implicit in the album’s title. Their itchy buzzsaw punk, meanwhile, is balanced by more reflective sounds of ‘Sentinel’, ‘Glasshouse’ and ‘No Sign’ and adventurous use of cello, dulcimer and bass clarinet.
“Some good tunes, hard…” considers Kent today, modestly. “Ironically just about every sentiment is unfortunately still current today… fuckers still invading countries, problems with drugs, the drudgery and isolation, the intrusion on our person space, destroying natural places and lack of care or empathy and media manipulating. Bit sad really as I write it… no wonder turgid… it’s hard and angry to some degree… Sonically very Australian, blame me for a lot of it… how I heard stuff, I didn’t always have the skill to bring what I heard out, but the energy compensated a bit. It was consciously made within our skill set to not follow the current recording trends of the time…”
Reissued in a replica of its original gatefold sleeve, the new edition comes with a two-page insert and download code with four bonus tracks.