Description
Subhumans – Worlds Apart – Vinyl Record
Subhumans’ Worlds Apart, released in 1985, is a politically charged, musically ambitious album that captures the UK anarcho-punk veterans at a moment of evolution—where the urgency of their early punk roots merges with increasingly complex songwriting, philosophical depth, and genre expansion. As the band’s third full-length studio album (following From the Cradle to the Grave and The Day the Country Died), Worlds Apart represents a significant deepening of both their ideological focus and musical palette, while still maintaining the raw fire that defined their identity.
Worlds Apart finds Dick Lucas grappling with the global systems of control, militarism, ecological collapse, media manipulation, and cultural alienation, but with a broader lens than the direct confrontational style of earlier records. The album title itself suggests a central theme: the growing divide between what is and what could be, between those in power and the disempowered, between the artificial and the authentic. This philosophical dualism runs throughout the album—not just in the lyrics, but also in the tension between sonic aggression and melodic exploration.
The opening track, “33322,” is a fierce, driving indictment of bureaucratic conformity and institutionalized living, referencing the standardization of life into codes and categories. Lucas’s vocal delivery is urgent and slightly more refined than on earlier releases, but no less passionate. The band sounds tighter and more technically adept, suggesting a greater confidence in exploring rhythmic changes, varied tempos, and dissonant guitar work.
“British Disease” stands out as one of the most scathing critiques on the album, targeting nationalism, racism, and the xenophobia rooted in Thatcher-era Britain. It’s a sharp and relentless track, propelled by Bruce Treasure’s cutting guitar lines and Trotsky’s steady, almost militaristic drumming, with Lucas skewering the contradictions of patriotic pride in a decaying social order.
“Can’t Hear the Words” flips focus inward, dissecting the breakdown in communication and media saturation, an increasingly prescient topic in the digital age. Throughout the album, the lyrics begin to lean more toward abstraction and introspection, reflecting a growing desire to unpack not just systemic issues, but the internal mental and emotional fallout of living in a fractured world.
Worlds Apart is more textured and expansive than its predecessors. The production is cleaner without sacrificing grit, and there’s a notable willingness to incorporate post-punk atmospherics, off-kilter rhythms, and subtle experimental flourishes. Tracks like “Fade Away” and “Businessmen” explore the emptiness of capitalist aspirations, alienation, and the soul-crushing mechanics of routine existence, using layered arrangements that go beyond the traditional punk blueprint.
Perhaps the most unique aspect of this album is how it feels like a bridge between classic anarcho-punk and the more progressive, genre-bending elements that would appear on their next (and more overtly experimental) release, 29:29 Split Vision. Worlds Apart doesn’t abandon the Subhumans’ core ethos—it matures it, asking bigger questions and trusting listeners to wrestle with ambiguity.
Worlds Apart has earned respect as one of the most thought-provoking and musically evolved punk albums of the 1980s. While it may not have the immediate rawness of The Day the Country Died or the conceptual scope of From the Cradle to the Grave, it succeeds in creating a tight, thematically cohesive body of work that still hits hard decades later.
Worlds Apart stands as a crucial piece in the Subhumans’ legacy: a work of intellectual punk, delivered with conviction, nuance, and a refusal to conform—even within the nonconformist punk world itself.
Brand new, never played and still in the factory plastic
Track Listing
33322
British Disease
Heads Of State
Apathy
Fade Away
Businessmen
Someone Is Lying
Pigman
Can’t Hear The Words
Get To Work On Time
Carry On Laughing
Straightline Thinking
Ex-Teenage Rebel
Powergames
33322
