It’s been a busy year for Watford indie punks and Empire favourites Nervus. While spending their time touring the UK and Europe with Worriers, Anti Flag, Koji and labelmates Cultdreams - they’ve also been writing and recording their new record Tough Crowd. Where once, songwriter-in-chief Em Foster (vocals / guitar) furiously wrote and recorded songs in her bedroom, as a type of personal catharsis, looking at the personal, and then the immediate politics of identity, gender and queerness - this third album took a different journey, using a whole new collaborative process and approach. As a result, this record speaks differently to their older work. Spending ten days away together at The Ranch in Southampton and steered by Neil Kennedy (Milk Teeth, Creeper) they stepped away from their signature self-recording, and really came into their own, together. The results are there for all to hear. Tough Crowd is ferocious, joyful, and as biting as it is inviting. It’s Nervus, but sounds like if Crass had helped write Pinkerton. Where the previous record Everything Dies touched lightly on the issues of the human impact on the environment, consumerism and destruction, the new album digs deeper on these, tearing into the devastation that humanity is wreaking on the planet, both environmentally and socially. But while these political and destructive themes are present, Tough Crowd is also an album full of hope. For fans of Superchunk, Against Me! and PUP.