7/10

Mark Vennis has always written like someone with a reporter’s notebook in one hand and a matchbook in the other. And on his newest collection 'Goodbye To All That', he takes that instinct and aims it straight at the stories Britain prefers to file away: the men shipped out, the labour that kept the machine running, the people brutalised in the name of “greatness,” and the weird, stubborn myths that still cling to the national imagination like smoke to a pub coat.

This is a record that moves like a montage, stitched together by sharp songwriting and an elastic sound that can pivot from folk-leaning storytelling to bruised rock momentum without losing its grip. The through-line is guitar, played with a restless, forward-leaning push that suggests urgency rather than virtuosity, and it’s matched by vocals that feel lived-in, sometimes exhausted, sometimes furious, often both at once.

Where the album really hits is in how it treats “British identity” as a set of contradictions you can’t scrub clean with nostalgia. Vennis keeps returning to the gap between the pageantry and the cost; between flags, uniforms, polished speeches, and what actually happened to the people caught underneath the wheels. You can hear that tension early in 'The Beating of the Drum', which sets the record’s pulse with movement, coercion, and momentum that won’t let you stand still. 'Empire Road' follows like a grim travelogue, a song that feels like it’s watching the pavement roll by while the past keeps climbing into the passenger seat.

Mid-album, 'The Trader' sharpens the focus into something properly chilling, with commerce and conquest braided together so tightly they become indistinguishable. 'An English Tragedy' widens the lens again, revealing how performance and power can look almost absurd until you remember what they’re built on. By the time you reach 'Just Another Campaign', the record’s most biting examinations of duty-as-habit, you can feel the machinery of repetition: the way violence becomes routine when it’s packaged as tradition.

And then there’s the closing stretch: 'Golden Country' and 'Requiem' don’t offer neat catharsis, but they do land with a bruised grace, as if stepping away from the noise to admit the damage is real, persistent, and unfinished.

'Goodbye To All That' is ferocious, thoughtful, and strangely singable for something so heavy with consequence. It’s the sound of an artist refusing the easy version of the story, and making the harder one hit like a hook.