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Pre-Post-Punk

This Heat formed in London in 1976, the year the UK was alive with the first flourishes of British punk rock. But they weren't a punk band. At all. Instead, they were an experimental recording concern whose natural sensibilities ran closer to that supposed antithesis of punk: prog-rock.

The trio —Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen, Gareth Williams— were heady, intellectual, and political, assembling sound collages in new and unexpected forms.


Rather than thrashing out three chords in front of fired-up crowds, This Heat preferred to work in the studio, taking influence from a host of sound-science pioneers —krautrock tape-splicers Faust and Can, dub production legend Lee 'Scratch' Perry— as they manipulated and looped magnetic tape, broke guitar parts into angular shards, and favored sinister incantations for vocals.

In their early days, prog-rock and punk were both in popular favor, and, in theory, This Heat could've been embraced as a band landed somewhere between the two. Instead, they band seemed uncomfortable and out-of-place until the tide of popular-culture turned, and punk-rock snottiness morphed into post-punk thoughtfulness.

Though formed, essentially, pre-punk, This Heat became signature post-punk act. Though not nearly as acclaimed as Public Image Ltd, as popular as Joy Division, or as influential as Gang of Four, they were there in the mix: the musical movement at its most cerebral and progressive, daring to attempt the very reinvention of music, restructuring songform and re-imagining lyrics for a brave new world.

This Nuclear Soundtrack

This Heat spent three years assembling their second —and final— album, 1981's Deceit. That three years was spent holed up in a disused meat locker in an abandoned pie factory; its industrial, austere, bleak, bombed out environs evocative of the music being made therein. The band dubbed the space Cold Storage, the name an obvious play on the facility's former life, but, furthermore, an evocation of the Cold War. The studio had all the hallmarks of a bomb shelter, and, bunkered down there, This Heat were essentially sealing themselves off from the outside world, hoping to survive the looming apocalypse.

From its mushroom-cloud and Khrushchev-picture festooned artwork to its singular lyrical study, Deceit is an album that, even for post-punk standards, stands fiercely political. "Independence" ironically chants the Declaration of Independence over a dubbed-out mix of finger-played bass, trilling tape-loops of flute, off-the-beat drums, thrummed autoharp, and new-agey synths. "S.P.Q.R." appropriates anthems of Ancient Roman parochialism as critique of modern Empire-building, set to a chaotic tangle of discordant guitars.

This is the Way the World Ends: with a Bang Then a Whimper

The penultimate "A New Kind of Water" is, in its lurching, fervent, almost-rocking desperation, a Last Supper on the eve of nuclear annihilation; a toast to the end-of-the-world where the sight of "New York, Moscow, Nairobi in flames" only leads to much fiddling. "Who can watch as the earth burns, shatters and dies?" This Heat ask, but the blank monotone of their chanted unison comes across less as plea for change, more cold reportage from the brink.

That song is succeeded by an eerie finale, "Hi Baku Shyo," whose title refers to the Hibakusha, survivors of the Atomic blasts in Japan. In its wasteland of rhythmless groans and fractured tones, this is clearly the soundtrack for after-the-blast: the fervent politicking of the past half-hour lost to a void of nothingness, razed away in an instant.

It's a terrifying end to an album that, even over three decades later, still sounds terrifying. It seems fitting that, as this LP ends, so did This Heat. After its release, Williams departed for a stay in India, and the band came to a natural conclusion. History has unearthed countless other artifacts that have been released after Deceit —another record of unreleased pieces, scores of bootlegs, Peel Sessions— but "Hi Baku Shyo" seems like the perfect sign-off, the culmination of a brief, brilliant career.

Record Label: Rough Trade
Release Date: 1981