The (International) Noise Conspiracy

A New Morning, Changing Weather

Burning Heart Records

The (International) Noise Conspiracy is a Swedish punk-rock band with a definite mission. The band is philosophically autonomist Marxist—each of their songs is revolutionary in nature and political in content and quote authors such as Noam Chomsky, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and, of course, Karl Marx. The album insert includes an essay entitled “The Global Fear Factory,” an earnest and slightly naïve piece about how capitalism breeds “subtle and diffuse low-level fear” and how resistance movements are springing up “on a plane internal to capitalism, erupting all over its body.”

The songs on A New Morning, Changing Weather are similarly revolutionary in nature, although sometimes verging on the ridiculous—the absurdly-titled “Capitalism Stole My Virginity” is one example. The trouble with the album is that the songs aren’t all that good. The (International) Noise Conspiracy has a distinctive sound, similar to that of Millencolin and Pennywise, but their songs all sound as if they have been constructed the same way.

The lyrics have much more importance than the music here—in this way, A New Morning is like a more sincere version of Pennywise’s release from earlier this year, Land of the Free? The album has a few songs that catch the listener’s ear— “A Northwest Passage,” “Up for Sale” and “Dead Language of Love” are highlights—but taken as a whole, the album has little to offer unless you are a passionate capitalism-hater.

—Daniel M.S. Raper