Review: Pressa – Irresponsabilmente

True Working Class Oi! from the West Coast

It’s already been one year since it was released, but this record by Pressa, a band from the province of Rome, is still fucking hot: the ideal album for Oi and street punk lovers, with melodies and choruses that immediately stick in your mind, and genuinely Working Class lyrics. In the songs on “Irresponsabilmente“, the band narrates the daily life of  those who wake up every morning to do their backbreaking, precarious, underpaid jobs, without any sort of right and filled with hate against the rich who live their luxurious life by making money out of the exploited workers’ sweat (see the song “Mani Sfonnate“, an anthem against the bosses, half of which is sung in their local dialect!). The condition of being an outsider is not confined to the social and working sphere, but it inevitably affects the inner self; songs like “False Promesse” and “Notte di Tempesta” are about that anguish that sometimes gets you and seems to never let you go, except for those nights spent at the bar with your friends and a lot of beer to keep you company (“Voglio andare a bere”). The desire to “run away from work” and from this rotten society, maybe on a Vespa, is the recurrent theme on this album by Pressa and, in the end, of all the exploited people. So let’s keep singing it along and let’s keep on fighting together, Oi!

Vote: 9/10

Review by Riccardo Santi

Translation by Tomà and Alessia Baraldo