Album Review: Fun Protestants, WKD INFUSED BLOOD

Fun Protestants aren't some oxymoronically named, pastiche answer to KNEECAP. On their thumping, trance-meets-spoken-word debut WKD INFUSED BLOOD, Mish Thoburn and Cameron Clarke have created a sharp record that uses satire to examine Nordie identity.

It opens on July 11, 2007, at the Castlemara Bonfire. Aliens have descended and handed Blue WKD to the tire-burning hallions. The drink makes the locals aggressively loyalist, and despite none of them knowing who he is, they feel the sudden urge to draw King Billy’s face everywhere.

That's what much of this album is about: ideas so trodden on by time that they’ve become bastardised. A me-versus-you thing built on the placement of toasters (as exhibited exquisitely on ‘God Save My Toaster’). ‘Show Me Your Bony', meanwhile, turns proddyness into a sort of sexualised mind virus, showing how tribalism can be a trade-off for individuality.

‘Eco Trainers’ skirts around sectarianism entirely with a hypnotic monologue from a woman who buys sustainable runners to make herself feel better. She ignores the fact that they're shipped from Australia, implying that our emotional relationship with consuming is a bigger problem than the crap we buy.

Closer ‘No Surrender (To The Fascist Agenda)’ swaps the humour for a call-to-arms in response to the 2025 Belfast riots. The real threat, it turns out, isn't the lad who says 'H' differently, but the one trying to torch your local hotel.

Maybe Fun Protestants are onto something.

8.5/10