If your whistle has been wet by Liberation Hall’s recent Vivabeat compilation (reviewed here), then it’s time to delve deeper into the band’s discography. Also released by those groovy cats at Liberation Hall, the band’s iconic debut album gets re-released and bolstered by four bonus tracks. Perfectly capturing the late ‘70s/early ‘80s zeitgeist, Party In The War Zone is an album very much of its time and drips with cold war paranoia, yet its also forward facing and futuristic, and grasps at the era’s technical possibilities. Vivabeat are considered Los Angeles’ best kept secret but that’s bound to change with this reissue.

Vivabeat were post-punk in it’s purest definition and fully embraced the freedom that the genre offered, yet they remain a pleasantly hard band to categorise. The keyboard motif that introduces the opening song ‘Working For William’ brings to mind synthwave with a touch of Kraftwerk and John Foxx, but there’s a strange reggae beat bubbling beneath. It’s a nice tension of opposites and it pretty much sums up the Vivabeat modus operandi; it’s the push and pull between the antiquated and the modern, the synthetic and organic, which makes Party In The War Zone such a rewarding listening experience. Musically, we can draw comparisons with Japan and Roxy Music, it definitely has that art rock vibe (and lead vocalist Terrance Robay drew favourable comparisons with both Bryan Ferry and David Sylvian) but Vivabeat were far greater in scope. Each of the ten tracks comprising this album had their own identity with the spiky and angular new wave ‘Pop Girl’ following the rock machismo of ‘Not Dead Anymore’ without missing a beat. It’s an album that’s stitched together by its own eclecticism and it’s this constant flux which keeps the listener engaged throughout the whole album.

Much of Vivabeat’s work has a strong visual element and these songs will place vivid images in your mind’s eye, and no more so than ‘Man From China’. It’s a vignette, a musical novella featuring men in trench coats meeting illicitly by the Berlin Wall. Much was made of Peter Gabriel drawing inspiration from the song’s whistling refrain for his ‘Games Without Frontiers’ single, but I’d argue he also borrowed from its cinematic quality. Yet, Party In The War Zone is bursting at the seams with great ideas, such as the double-tracked vocals on ‘I Know Your Room’ (that sense of paranoia again) and the light-hearted wordplay on final track ‘Jet Set’.

Four bonus tracks extend the running time, of which the haunting ‘The House Is Burning (But There’s No One Home)’ is a definite highlight. Drawn from later in the band’s career, they give a good indication of how the band would shapeshift and evolve. My only (minor) complaint is that the sleeve gives no indication from where these four tracks are culled (are they singles or LP cuts?) and for the pedantic among us, that’s important information. But that’s small beans, this is the definitive version of an era-defining album and is your invitation to join the Party In The War Zone.

• Party In The War Zone is released via Liberation Hall and is available now (from here).

Track List:

1. Working For William
2. From The Bop
3. To The Heart
4. Not Dead Anymore
5. Pop Girl
6. Man From China
7. Wild World
8. Enemy Fire
9. I Know Your Room
10. Jet Set

Bonus Tracks:

11. The House Is Burning (But There’s No One Home)
12. The Good Life
13. On Patrol
14. The Power Of Love