Album Review: Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies, Keep On Raving In The First World

These brilliant, pleasingly bizarre pigeonhole-botherers are back with the much anticipated follow up to 2021’s Euphoric Recall. Led by their topless, envelope-sporting singer/rapper/violinist Post Punk Podge, the Limerick outfit’s latest Frankensteins together The Prodigy’s bite with PiL’s bark and Beefheart’s flair for the absurd to make their own monster.

Mental health, hedonism, misogyny in music and more are under the microscope – and it’s an anarchic and entertaining affair that comes close to capturing the magic and mayhem of their iconic live show.

The likes of the Madchester-fuelled ‘DNA,’ defiant stomper ‘Not Enough Women’ and floor-filling title track, which includes a cheeky nod to Neil Young, impress. Best of all is the cyberpunk-meets-Arab Strap-minded ‘Shithole’ which is arguably their finest recorded moment to date. Built around a football terrace chorus that is destined to be a future live favourite (“This place is a shithole/I wanna go home”) it’s a darkly comic, impossibly catchy banger.

Fearless and feral, Keep On Raving In The First World is a lot of fun...

8/10