The Exploited (UK)
A thirty-year riot shows no signs of withering
There's no question as to what the almost official T-shirt or back patch theme at the next summer’s Ilosaarirock Festival is going to be. Most likely the hottest fashion item around, favoured by the young and the not so young festival guests alike, is going to be a shouting, mohawked skull with the name "The Exploited" emblazoned under it. But if the band's emblem (calling it a 'logo' sounds just a bit too bourgeois in this context) is iconic, so is the band. The Exploited's first album Punk's Not Dead started a riot that still, thirty years later, shows no signs of slowing down. The band's unadulterated venom is always in fashion, whether the name of the current prime minister happens to be Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown or Cameron.
The Exploited's raised middle finger points to every direction at once. Always at war with the world, the world has done its best to silence them: The Exploited have been tear-gassed by the riot police in Germany, banned from entering the state of The Netherlands, been thrown into jail in Spain – and in the United Kingdom, their home country, they came up with a new but regrettably unrepeatable name for Margaret Thatcher. They've been everywhere and at almost anything, except for one thing: they have never sold out and never will. The Exploited is not a band that plays punk rock, The Exploited is punk rock.
