“War Economy,” from Mekons’ 2025 album Horror, is a quintessential post-punk jam with a funky pogo beat, urgent guitars and snarling vocals that rip through lyrics as relevant to the Thatcher/Reagan era as they are to today. When Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu) reconfigured the song for the newly released companion album Horroble (Mekons vs. Tony Maimone In Dub Conference) he teased out an even more ominous quality, with vocals echoing as if the past and present were joined in chorus to sing the same song. In a way, that’s what “War Economy” is about.
“This excursion into Iran doesn’t make any sense, logically. They can’t even explain it,” Jon Langford says on a video call. It’s the first week of April and the Chicago-based Mekons co-founder is on vacation in Georgia. “Apparently, now we’re fighting to open the Straight of Hormuz, which was open before we started fighting the war.”
He continues, “The war is like this snake eating its own tail, but the one thing that is constant and certain about all that is that Trump and his friend’s in the military industrial complex will be making money and gaining more power.”
This wasn’t a simple tangent of conversation inspired by the morning news close to six weeks into the Iran War. It is, precisely, what Mekons mean in “War Economy,” even if the song was written in between Trump presidencies and released a good year before the current mess. And, two months after our conversation, when Horroble is released, the situation remains largely the same and “War Economy” rings all the more relevant. It’s a little eerie how on-the-mark Mekons songs are. “The Mekons records are never meant to be comfortable,” says Langford. “They’ve always been about, we should be addressing issues that affect us in real life. We thought that’s what punk was about.”
Founded in Leeds in the midst of England’s punk wave, Mekons have been active for about 50 years, amassing an ample discography of stylistically eclectic and politically astute albums. (For more on the band’s history, watch the documentary Revenge of the Mekons.) Amidst their prolific output, the band has experimented with rock, country, folk and reggae, always with their own spin. That legacy is more than apparent on Horror, a stylistically eclectic dive into themes of imperialism that take shape on songs like “War Economy,” “Private Defense Contractor” and “Mudcrawler,” the latter of which is about the Irish famine. The album was recorded in Valencia, Spain. “There were eight of us and we managed to set the studio up where we employed every instrument that they had, so it was like a series of workstations,” says Langford.
The band had previously planned to record at the same studio in 2020, but that trip was postponed due to the pandemic. Instead, they made the lockdown album Exquisite (yes, like exquisite corpse). So, when they finally made it to Valencia in late 2022, they arrived with little material.
“A lot of the album came out of writing on the spot and writing with eight people together contributing stuff, so a lot of the music that we made was quite dense and really needed editing down and working it into something,” Langford adds. Back in the States, band member Dave Trumfio mixed the album at his studio and Langford came in to help piece it together. “I think we made an album that was the best album that we could make looking at the songs in a logical, coherent way.” But, they also asked Maimone, an old friend of the band to try mixing the material. “It was so wild and unplanned and we told him to be brutal and take which bits made sense to him and make something out of it,” Langford explains
The end result was two albums with distinct takes on the same batch of songs. “The Horroble album became a companion piece, but also maybe the dark underbelly of Horror, which was already a pretty dark album,” says Langford. “I got really excited by the idea. I’m a really big reggae fan and Tom [Greenhalgh, Mekons co-founder] is as well. We love the idea of dub albums and versions and there was enough layers of material in the songs that we made in Valencia for someone else to come and build something totally different out of it.”
In between the release of Horror and Horroble, the band toured extensively through the U.S., U.K. and Europe, playing quite a bit off Horror. “War Economy,” Langford says, did particularly well with the crowd. “That became a great live number. It’s fun to play,” he recalls. “It’s quite a simple song, but there’s quite a lot going on in it.”
It’s the sort of song that let’s the band make a statement on stage without saying much. “On the tour, we thought about it a lot, how to address it and whether we would stand up and make big political speeches every night and denounce corruption and racism and Trump,” says Langford. “We just thought we would play the songs, which speak for themselves, and try to make it a kind of joyous, positive sort of affair that would give people a bit of relief from that because it is a kind of mind control that’s going on and I think people need some headspace to be able to think of ways to actually counter what’s going on. So we thought we’ll be part of that.”
Mekons is back on the road now, with East Coast dates scheduled in June. Both Horror and Horroble (Mekons vs. Tony Maimone In Dub Conference)are out now.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to the Beatique Mix for June, 2026, featuring music from Yoko Ono, Scott Walker, Slayyyter, Purple Disco Machine , Madonna and more.
Keep Reading:
Imagine Peace with Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at The Broad
Moviola Captures the Difficulty and Absurdity of American Life on ‘Earthbound’