Music / New Model Army

New Model Army are an English rock band from Bradford. They are named after the "New Model Army" - the Parliamentary army from the English Civil War.

Formed in 1980, the band have released more than a dozen studio albums over a career that's lasted over forty years and are still touring as of 2024.

Discography

Albums

• Vengeance
• No Rest for the Wicked
• The Ghost of Cain
• Thunder and Consolation
• Impurity
• The Love of Hopeless Causes
• Strange Brotherhood
• Eight
• Carnival
• High
• Today is a Good Day (2009)
• Between Dog and Wolf (2013)
• Between Wine and Blood (2014)
• Winter (2016)
• From Here (2019)
• Unbroken (2024)

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New Model Army's work contains examples of the following tropes:

• Argentina Is Nazi Land: "Vengeance" starts by describing a Nazi who fled to South America in '45 after committing atrocities in the camps. He's warned that he can live his life "in expectant fear" as some day he'll pay for his crimes.
• Armour Piercing Response: "Stupid Questions" talks about answers that the questioner's not ready to hear. The whole song is about bad faith questions the singer is tired of humoring — a warning that they risk answers that will abruptly end the questioner's petty games.
  If you really want, I can name the names.
  Be an angel of death at the children's games, so
  Don't ask any more stupid questions
  You already know the answers
• Genre Mashup: In founder Justin Sullivan's own words: "We've been labelled as punks, post-punks, goth, metal, folk – the lot, but we've always been beyond those style confines."
• I Am the Band: Justin Sullivan (aka "Slade the Leveller") is the band's founder, frontman and the only member to have been with the band since the start.
• Precision F-Strike: Despite the anger behind many of their songs, there's no significant swearing on most New Model Army albums. 2024's Unbroken is the exception, but limits the swearing to a couple of lines in a single song, "Reload".
  If I have to see another fucking Union Jack
  Flying on the orders of the government
  I'm going to be sick
• Protest Song:
  • "I Did Nothing Wrong" doesn't directly mention the British Horizon scandal, a miscarriage of justice in which computer errors meant that almost a thousand people were wrongly prosecuted for theft and fraud, but it's very recognisable to anyone who knows the story. The band have confirmed the connection in interviews.
  • "Another Imperial Day" is a scathing look at the way the UK treats refugees and asylum seekers. The Title Drop at the end contrasts the arriving migrants with the British bombers heading to their homelands.
    The bombers are heading the other way — south and east
    Into the blood red crimson sunrise of another imperial day
• Revolving Door Band: The band have gone through fourteen different members in their history, not counting touring and guest members.
• Small Town Boredom: The protagonist of "Green and Grey" writes to a friend who's left for the big city, "the land of gold and poison / that beckons to us all". The singer criticises their decision, but acknowledges that more young people are leaving every day, feeling that nothing changes in their town and everything happens "somewhere else".
  Never once did you wish any of us well
  Those who had chosen to stay
• Written by the Winners: "Drag It Down" talks about modern society tearing down statues, abandoning faith, and destroying its tales of heroes and magic. The song takes the view that "Mammon is a jealous master" who's now triumphed, discrediting and destroying the past.

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You screamed "give us Liberty or give us Death"
Now you've got both, what do you want next?

— "Here Comes The War"