Cockney Rejects – ‘Power Grab’ (Cadiz Music)

By Jim Rowland

After first forming some 44 years ago, street punk legends Cockney Rejects have signalled their intention to hang up their touring boots at the end of next year. And so brand new album ‘Power Grab’, the band’s ninth studio album, could be their swan song. If it is, the Rejects are going out in a blaze of glory…

Like a lot of bands, when the Covid period live lockdown kicked in, Mick Geggus and Jeff Turner did all they could do – sat down and began to write some new material. After long weekends in the studio with producer Kevin Poree, the result is ‘Power Grab’, quite possibly their finest album to date.

But don’t expect the early Oi! Oi! East End street punk of ‘We Are The Firm’, ‘Shitter’, ‘War On The Terraces’ or ‘The Greatest Cockney Rip Off’ here. Although elements of that remain, ‘Power Grab’ displays much more of the hard rock leanings the band progressed to with the Pete Way produced ‘The Wild Ones’ in 1982, and boy do they do it in style here.

The blistering anthemic opener, ‘We Were Never Bothered’, sets the stall out immediately, and is probably the album’s most punk-leaning track, with the likes of ‘Paper Tiger’, ‘Get Your Shit Together’ and ‘That Thing We Do’ fusing hard rock and huge Sparrer-esque street punk choruses to fine effect.

‘Same ol’ Same ol’, ’40 Years Undefeated’ and ‘Stab In The Back’ all lean in a more straight hard rock/metal direction, the latter having a definite feel of AC/DC to it, with the title track ‘Power Grab’ being an epic, belting slice of classic rock, and one of the album’s many highlights. Talking of highlights, and once again being in a hard rock/metal direction, albeit a little more pop-rock, is ‘My Heart Ain’t In It’, a catchy-as-hell, brilliantly written song proving that when it comes to hard rock, the Rejects are a darn sight better at it than some of their long-haired, spandex-sporting contemporaries from the early ‘80’s these days. ‘Up For The Fight’ and bonus track ‘The Cold Light of Day’ follow similar lines to great effect too.

There’s a couple of decent cover versions thrown in along the way, the one from the main album being a (hard) rocked up version of the Stray Cats’ classic ‘Runaway Boys’, a great rendition with some slightly altered ‘anglicised’ lyric updates. The second cover, thrown in as the second bonus track on the CD is their version of Tom Petty’s ‘Learning To Fly’ which was originally done as a charity thing around the time of covid. It’s not what you’d expect from the Cockney Rejects, but still works, and is of course a great song in the first place.

You’ll be surprised at how good ‘Power Grab’ is, I certainly was. It really is a top drawer, for the most part, hard rock album with killer songs from start to finish, with great performances from every member of the band. For my money, there won’t be many better rock albums this year. If this really is the last one, as I said before, the Cockney Rejects are going out in style, but then again when they’re coming up with stuff this good, the temptation must be there to keep on going, in the studio at least. Time will tell…

• ‘Power Grab’ is released today (Friday 28 October). You can get your copy HERE.

Cockney Rejects play the following dates: