My notes for last year's Gloucester Music Festival contain a couple of comments on Demob. Andy Kanonik, lead singer/shouter wore a back-to-front baseball cap and a T-Shirt that bore the slogan "If It Ain't Punk It Don't Rock".

Gloucester City Rockers:

The band were accompanied by a gang of devoted fans and friends called The Riot Squad. They played a brand of original punk that could sit nicely next to any song by The Clash or The Stiff Little Fingers.

I also remember saying that Andy K looked like the kind of man who would deck you half way between the pub and the kebab house.

Never Mind the Baseball Cap:

Fast forward to this year and all the above has now been committed to CD. The T Shirt's Slogan is now the album's title, The Riot Squad are now commemorated in a song of the same name. The only thing missing is the back-to-front baseball cap.

The album is an explosive sounding punk record. It could have been made twenty five years ago. It could have been made last week. It has that kind of authentically old/fresh as a daisy feel to it.

Combat Rock:

The songs deals with issues from serial killers ('Crime Through Time") to people being bored in the streets ("Stand Up and Be Counted"). In between, there is a lot of reminiscing about the band's history.

"Riot Squad" gives us a list of names of members of the Riot Squad, many of whom appear in the album's liner notes.

Patriotism:

The Colours is an odd diversion from normal punk-dom. There is something rather stately sounding of it. It's hardly going to be used for next year's Trooping of the Colour, but neither is it The Pistols' "God Save The Queen".

It is perhaps an alternative national anthem, celebrating what pride in your country should mean, and mourning the way patriotism has been abused.

The Bill:

"Crime Through Time" is an odd song. It lists a series of serial killers from Ian Brady to Adolf Hitler and features a radio news report about Fred West. It's a song about injustice. The song asks why innocent people allowed to be jailed along with the guilty.

Crime and the police are a constant theme of the album. "It's You" and "Big Brother" also feature lyrics about being arrested and the aftermath of being "always in the nick". The latter of these goes to the tune of "If I Had a Hammer" - wo-oh-oh-ohs included. It also sounds like Billy Bragg has taken to the microphone.

Human Punk!:

If It Ain't Punk It Don't Rock is a fantastic, energetic album that, like all good punk albums of the good old days, will make you think a bit as well as jump up and down in a drunken mob.

Fans of Busted maybe a little confused by the sound of Demob. This is punk as it was first meant to appear: aggressive, angry and 'ard.

13/08/04 - First published on www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire on this link