For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? is the second studio album by English post-punk band The Pop Group. It was released on 21 March 1980 through the record labels Rough Trade and Y.[1]
Initially released to mixed reviews, the album has received critical acclaim in recent years. After being commercially unavailable for several decades, it was reissued in February 2016.[2]
All Japanese Rough Trade CD editions were identical to the original LP, but the UK Freaks R Us CD is incomplete, replacing the track "One Out of Many" with the stand-alone single "We Are All Prostitutes". The 2016 reissue also uses this tracklisting.
Background and music
For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? was recorded at Foel Studios. The photo on the cover is the photograph Two Gypsies by André Kertész.
Mark Fisher described the album's mix of "murky funk, free jazz squalls, dub diffraction, howls and shrieks" as "the sound of a society falling apart."[2] Comparing it to the group's debut, AllMusic wrote that "the lean, blunt sound of this album connects with even greater ferocity, starting with a guitar-driven variation on James Brown's primal funk sides of the late '60s and adding elements of free jazz, atonal experimental music, and found noises until the music begins to sound like some sort of riot pouring out of your stereo."[3]
Upon its release in 1980, For How Much Longer received mixed reviews, with publications at the center of post-punk discourse (such as the NME) dismissing its agit-prop didacticism in favor of the fevered mysticism of the group's debut album, Y.[2][6]
In recent years, however, writers have lauded the album's musical and political radicalism. PopMatters called the work "a genre-defining (and genre-defying) epic, as fearsome and fearless as popular music can be."[4]AllMusic opined that "Gang of Four's stellar early work sounds meek and toothless compared to the Molotov cocktail that is For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder."[3] Mark Fisher, writing for Fact, stated that "the debates provoked by For How Much Longer rehearsed some of the disputes over aesthetics and politics that had exercised revolutionaries throughout the twentieth century. Was the message the most important thing, or was it formal innovation that made artworks revolutionary? The remarkable thing about For How Much Longer is that it refuses to choose".[2] In 2016, Record Collector described the album as "highly relevant" and "frighteningly prescient," stating that "the post-punk Bristolian radicals did actually succeed in synthesising something fierce, funky and fantastic from their unholy mash-up of Ornette Coleman, Funkadelic and heavyweight, Channel One-style dub.[5]
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