Feeding of the 5000

Never a mere rock group, Crass was a collective of sorts, with a political agenda and an artistic unity of vision. FEEDING OF THE 5000 is a welcome reissue of Crass's first album, originally released in 1978. While the songs here are perhaps not the most mature of Penny Rimbaud, Steve Ignorant, Eve Libertine and the gang's oeuvre, they are nevertheless focused and energy-filled.
Crass's targets here include the Church, the media, the government, and punk rock itself which it declares to be dead. The recording is raw and energetic. The band lays down riff after riff without even pausing to tune its instruments. The resulting music sounds very good, in a very subversive way. Here, Crass strips punk down to a new, revitalizing level; this sound would become their trademark. While the message, not the music, is perhaps the band's greatest concern, the songs on FEEDING OF THE 5000 stand on their own and represent an interesting point in the early history of DIY punk.