Jeez, where to begin? Quite possibly New York City’s most outspoken anarchist crust-punk band, Leftover Crack *are also one of the most nauseating and lyrically-challenged acts to come out of the scene since *The Casualties. Okay, so maybe not that bad, but still pretty unlistenable, with an ambiguous lyrical message that seems to offer nothing but outright hate and violence as the answer to all the world’s problems.

But before I elaborate on this, could you first please cast your eyes on the album cover. Designed by *Alternative Tentacles *designer John Yates, you’ll see Tony Blair using a remote control to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre, while Halliburton fat cats look on with big wide evil grins, using a Halliburton petrol pump as a blow torch. Hey, y'know for a minute there it seemed the band was actually trying to imply that George Bush masterminded the September 11th attacks with the help of Tony Blair and the big American Oil companies! Er.. hang on...

Their logo also incorporates a pentagram and inverted cross, thus immediately aligning them with the occult yet there appears to be nothing in the sleeve to justify such imagery. I’m sorry if I’m being pedantic here but, surely, for a band to present an objective political statement their message has to be clear and offer genuine solutions, yet throughout this album all they seem capable of offering is scathing criticism, subjoined with a recurrent theme of hopelessness and despair, whether it’s a seething hatred and distrust of Clear Channel (‘Clear Channel Fuck Off’), the US prison system (‘Burn Them Prisons’) or just life in general (‘Life Is Pain’) – and that’s just the first three songs!

Any semblance of structure to their arguments is simply nullified due to an intensely hostile attitude that’s seemingly borne from their stale crust-punk scene and proliferates through an acutely bleak so-called ‘punk’ outlook that thinks any form of authority is out to fuck them over. Where else would you find a track such as ‘One Dead Cop’ _that actually advocates the murder of police on the basis that _“they kill and rape” and that they’re actively involved in a government conspiracy “to jail the poor”, without any logical reasoning at all! Indeed, quite why Steve Albini leant his production talents to capturing this I’ll never know because it is utter meaningless trash that achives nothing but widen the dichotomy between them and anyone with at least half a braincell. Avoid, avoid avoid!