Description
Subhumans – 29:29 Split Vision – Red Vinyl Record
Subhumans’ 29:29 Split Vision, released in 1986, is a raw, challenging, and politically dense album that marked a turning point in the trajectory of the legendary UK anarcho-punk band. Known for their razor-sharp critique of capitalism, war, environmental collapse, and authoritarianism, Subhumans had already made their mark with albums like The Day the Country Died and From the Cradle to the Grave. 29:29 Split Vision, their final album before a long hiatus, is perhaps their most musically ambitious and philosophically expansive release, pushing the boundaries of punk into progressive and experimental territory.
The title refers to the structure of the album: one side consists of traditional punk-length songs (approximately 29 minutes), and the other is made up of the nearly 17-minute epic “From the Cradle to the Grave”-style suite “Worlds Apart”, which is a scathing and sprawling reflection on alienation, technology, and humanity’s fractured consciousness. This long-form structure had precedent in their earlier work but here, it’s even more surreal and fragmented, blending spoken word, jagged riffing, tempo changes, and dissonant instrumentation.
Musically, the album expands the Subhumans’ palette well beyond the 1-2-3-4 simplicity of early punk. Songs incorporate off-kilter time signatures, jazz-influenced breakdowns, eerie atmospheres, and moments of near-psychedelic introspection, all while retaining the aggressive, guitar-driven backbone of UK anarcho-punk. It’s complex without being pretentious—an effort to mirror the chaotic systems and ideologies they rail against.
Lyrically, frontman Dick Lucas is at his most introspective and abstract. While earlier albums featured direct critiques of Thatcherism, war, and societal oppression, 29:29 Split Vision turns more inward and philosophical. Tracks like “Businessmen” and “Somebody’s Mother” still address systemic cruelty and detachment, but with more existential underpinnings—how societal conditioning, capitalism, and political apathy affect human psychology and perception.
The standout piece is the aforementioned “Worlds Apart”, which plays less like a song and more like a collage of punk, poetry, and sound art. It’s fragmented, nonlinear, and intensely cerebral, dealing with themes of societal decay, artificiality, and the dissonance between modern life and meaningful existence. Though divisive among fans, it’s a bold artistic statement—a refusal to conform even within punk’s own subcultural norms.
By the time of this release, the Subhumans were already distancing themselves from conventional punk tropes, and 29:29 Split Vision reflects that restless energy. It’s punk in ethos—challenging authority, rejecting simplicity, embracing DIY—but musically and lyrically, it’s closer to progressive protest music than traditional hardcore. It’s not an easy listen, but it was never meant to be.
Though 29:29 Split Vision didn’t receive the same immediate acclaim as earlier records, it has grown in reputation over time. Today, it’s seen as a brave and uncompromising swan song before the band’s long break (until they reunited in the 1990s). It captures a band at the height of its creative tension—aware of its own contradictions, skeptical of all systems, including its own, and pushing listeners to think, reflect, and question everything.
Brand new, never played and still in the factory plastic
Track Listing
Somebody’s Mother
Think For Yourself
Walls Of Silence
Heroes
Dehumanisation
Worlds Apart
New Boy
Time Flies…
