The 1980s were an eclectic decade of colourful aesthetics, playful experimentation and innovation. It was a decade whose colossal increase of technological advancements opened the doors of sub-genres and gave artists the opportunities to expand their musical horizons. It was an exciting time, when youth culture was raw, real and rebellious, with a strong sense of identity. Feelings, thoughts and nuances were expressed solely through music. There wasn’t any internet or social media, or instant gratification or any sense of self-entitlement. Artists back in the 1980s relied on their instinct, authenticity and creativity to get their music out there, and gaining a solid fan base relied purely on talent. Where Punk enabled freedom of expression, Post-Punk, unlocked a variety of gateways that created a more infinite more abstract, arty and avant-garde soundscape. It was a decade where anything goes, and where the polarised realities of wealth, values and politics were captured through the video-age of expression, whether it be a MTV blockbuster or a DIY work of art on a budget.
The 1980s was also the decade where Industrial rock was still hungover from the hedonistic sensibilities of 1970s punk and wired to the grid of Krautrock. It was a genre of music still taking shape, mutating like a post-punk parasite, sucking the blood from goth rock, whilst headbanging against the metallic walls of heavy rock. Whilst Industrial rock remained in the dark underground, it was growing more heads like a deadly beast, whilst branching out globally and redefining itself by the counter-cultures’ occurrences of society. Chrome, Killing Joke, Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, Cabaret Voltaire, Z’EV may have arguably been the pioneers of 70s Industrial Rock, but by the early 80s, the surge of technology meant that Electro – Industrial rock, improvised art-rock, trance-dance, and Musique Concrete was becoming more accessible and widespread amongst youth culture. Along with the success of Wax Trax Records, based in Chicago, Independent music such as Industrial Rock, New Wave, Punk and Post-Punk was reaching a wider audience, and importing music from the UK, which also became embedded in the psyche of the local music scenes.
Wax Trax Records, was also a major catalyst for Scottish musician Chris Connelly, whose band “Fini Tribe”, was signed back in 1982. Connelly, along with his band mates, John Vick, Andy McGregor, Philip Pinsky, David Miller and Simon McGlynn, were recognised as key players of Industrial rock, embracing technology and reflecting the eclectic experimentation and genre jumping of the 1980s. What was great about Fini Tribe was their enthusiasm and fearless approach to making music. Here was a band that crossed many musical boundaries, ripping up the rule book, using unconventional sampling, at a time when 1982 was still consolidating the oscillator sync, and cross-modulations of 81. They were in many ways ahead of their time, whilst representing a generation that was on the cusp of a technological revolution.
Following the success of Connelly’s musical career; (“PTP”, “Acid Horse”, “Front Line Assembley”, “Murder, Inc” and Pigface, as well as his own solo career), and the ever growing popularity of Industrial rock music, it seems the perfect time for Fini Tribe, to release a compilation album of all their tracks, they recorded between 1982 and 1987. Released on October 10th 2025, via Shipwrecked Industries, the album, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, is available as a three-CD digipak with a 24 page booklet, and as a vinyl LP in a gatefold sleeve insert. Consisting of 47 tracks, the album will be available via all digital platforms and will feature the legendary John Peel session from 1985, the original 12” singles (including “Detestimony”) and the Wax Trax singles, as well as unreleased live tracks. A retrospective album, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, will also include a wealth of archival photographs, an essay by original member Andy McGregor, who also designed the sleeve, and essays by longtime friend Shirley Manson (Garbage, Goodbye Mr. MacKenzie) and author Alastair McKay, an early champion of the band.
With its 47 tracks, listening to The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, may seem like a mammoth task, but as soon as you put on those headphones, you quickly become submerged into a secret underworld of Industrial rock. It’s an epic collection of tracks, which simultaneously feels nostalgic and fresh. You get to hear up close the retro cool breeze of the 1980s innovation and get to appreciate just how forward thinking the early electronics were and how the spacious interludes filled in all the gaps. The De Lorean car factory in Belfast may have gone into receivership in 1982, but right now listening to Fini Tribe’s collection of songs, feels like I have gone time-travelling to an imperative and groundbreaking time for music. If Marty McFly were listening to this album right now, he could learn a thing or two about innovative music. Sod Van Halen, Marty, go back to 1982 and get in tune with good old-fashioned Post-punk, New Wave, Goth-rock, Jangly-pop, Trance-dance, Industrial rock, Funk-Punk, Adult Alternative, Glam rock, Art-rock, Neo-Jazz, Ambient–rock, House-Trance and Musique Concrete.
It’s abstract theatrics and nocturnal noir personified. It’s riotous rebellion singing from the rooftops of the dark dystopia, whilst colliding with the Cold War clouds of urban decay. It’s an album endorsed by Mavericks, which has stood the test of time and incorporates the socio-ecomonics, the innovative technology that is still influential and relevant today.
Through the charismatic vocals of Connelly, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, sings behind the macabre mist of dry-ice, like a phantasmagorical dark lord of goth-rock. Mysterious, theatrical and arcane, Connelly delivers with a haunting disturbance and uncompromising majesty, that ghost-rides aside Vega and Rev on a carriage of confrontation, and goose-bumps inside the lucid tunnels of punk purgatory.
It’s music that chills, thrills and offers an escapism into a cinematic arthouse of Lynch, Kubrick, Hitchcock and Burton, stirred up with an intoxicating mix of Derbyshire-esque radiophonics. Along with the spectral synths, cavernous clatter, tribal beats, eerie chimes, and white noise, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, backtracks, spins and pinches the nerve system of New Wave, and transmits a multitude of sensory signals, playing havoc with the sonic synapses, whilst interrupting the Post-Punk pathways. Through the slurpy synths, rumbling bass lines and Iron-cast slams, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, drags its demons from its own sleep paralysis and awakens the senses from its tortured state. It’s a master of disguises, alter-egos and subconscious surges, that night crawl through the soul sewers, amongst the reverie rodents and rotting realities. It’s also an album that has more lives than a large cat prowling down the dark alleys of proto-punk, whilst preying on the lost souls of ethereal-rock.
Through the rumbling bass lines, stabbing beats and spiked synths, The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, creates a distracting cacophony of distortion and disorder that sinks and slithers down the potholes of prog-rock, and soaking the omnibus ambience of horror-rock. It’s a mesmerising piece of musical mayhem that beams from the luminous lights of jangly-rock and dazzles from the esoteric enterprises of Art-rock. What’s great about this album is it really showcases the versatile vocals of Connelly and the diverse soundscape of Fini Tribe. It’s an album that one minute could be congo dancing in a celebratory carnival of tribal beats and the next minute be wrestling the tangled vines of post-punk. It’s an album that time capsules the zeitgeist spirit of the 1980s, that embraces the polarised politics, the glossy aesthetics and dark romanticism. It’s also an album that capitalises on the technological age of the 1980s, that goes beyond influences and redefines the rules and ethics of DIY punk. When it comes to the ideology of the Fini Tribe, then the name speaks for itself. They are a tribe of brotherhood, collective improvisation, and authenticity, whose creativity and vision have aged beautifully, without needing any hair dye, botox or fillers.
It’s a truly remarkable collection of tracks, a unique blend of complex compositions that floats on the oblique waves of Krautrock, dances amongst the glow lights of Avant-funk, that jitters and bends on the elongated lines of minimalism and Neo-jazz. So for anyone who wants to explore the underground tunnels of the 1980s, unscrew the nuts and bolts of alternative rock, get lost in the foggy graveyards of yesteryear, and feel a tirade of unhinged passion, exotic excursions, and percolating suspense, then I say that The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987, is an album for you!!
Track List:
| 1. | Cathedral (2025 Remaster) |
| 2. | Backwards and Forwards We Lean (2025 Remaster) |
| 3. | Curling Theme (2025 Remaster) |
| 4. | All Fours (2025 Remaster) |
| 5. | Detestimony (2025 Remaster) |
| 6. | Throttlehearts (Rising Mix) (2025 Remaster) |
| 7. | Adults Absolved (2025 Remaster) |
| 8. | Monimail (2025 Remaster) |
| 9. | I Want More (Row Row Row the Mix) (2025 Remaster) 05:30 |
| 10. | Idiot Strength (2025 Remaster) |
| 11. | Make It Internal (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Mix) (2025 Remaster) |
| 12. | Little Visitors (2025 Remaster) |
| 13. | All Fours (Remix) (2025 Remaster) |
| 14. | I Want More (7″ Mix) (2025 Remaster) 03:08 |
| 15. | Make It Internal (Integrity Mix) (2025 Remaster) |
| 16. | Splash Care (Peel Session) |
| 17. | Goose Duplicates (Peel Session) |
| 18. | An Evening with Clavichords (Peel Session) |
| 19. | We’re Interested (Peel Session) |
| 20. | Paperself |
| 21. | Me and My Shadow |
| 22. | Goose Duplicates (Instrumental) |
| 23. | Splash Care |
| 24. | An Evening with Clavichords |
| 25. | Goose Duplicates (Vocal Mix) |
| 26. | We’re Interested (Instrumental) |
| 27. | Big Jug / Wet Steel Rail |
| 28. | We’re Interested (Vocal Mix) |
| 29. | Restless |
| 30. | Cure for Madness |
| 31. | Bye Bye to the October Sky |
| 32. | The Constant |
| 33. | Throttlehearts (Vocal version) |
| 34. | Dirty Harry (Live at Calton Studios, Edinburgh, 1987) |
| 35. | Do We Understand Each Other (Live at Calton Studios, Edinburgh, 1987) |
| 36. | I Want More (Live at Calton Studios, Edinburgh, 1987) |
| 37. | Idiot Strength (Live at Calton Studios, Edinburgh, 1987) |
| 38. | Bye Bye to the October Sky (Live at Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, 1983) |
| 39. | Backwards and Forwards We Lean (Live at Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, 1983) |
| 40. | Cure for Madness (Live at Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, 1983) |
| 41. | Restless (Live at Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, 1983) |
| 42. | Paperself (Live at Pleasance Theatre, Edinburgh, 1983) |
| 43. | Backwards and Forwards We Lean (Instrumental) |
| 44. | Monimail II |
| 45. | City on a Fence |
| 46. | Torch/Distance |
| 47. | Choke |
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/finitribe
“I Want More” single https://finitribe.lnk.to/iwantmore
Album pre-order (all formats) https://chrisconnelly.bandcamp.com/album/the-sheer-action-of-the-fini-tribe-1982-1987
Album pre-save (digital) https://finitribe.lnk.to/sheeraction