After 27 years, New Model Army is still going strong. The band is releasing their 10th CD, "High", on September 4th and are kicking off their US tour in Philadelphia on September 5th.





The band is playing three shows in the area:
September 6th - Mercury Lounge
September 7th - Maxwell's
October 5th - Southpaw (last date of US tour)

I have seen the band a few times and always thought they were a great live act - very much in the same "ragged but right" spirit as The Clash or Sham 69. The Big Takeover said that "On any night… they’re the closest thing to The Clash out there: and not even Joe Strummer has much on Sullivan".

Without ever having had a Top 20 hit in any country in their 27 year history, New Model Army have album sales in the millions, have attracted some of the biggest producers on the planet (Glyn Johns, Tom Dowd, Andy Wallace) and built up an almost religious devotion amongst fans. They’re a classic modern cult band, opting for the pursuit of musical and lyrical vision rather than celebrity status. By the mid 1990s, having grasped that the Internet was changing the whole music industry, they opted for the totally independent path of owning their own label.

"High" is NMA’s most guitar-driven and melodic album for some time, while the lyrics are the customary mixture of political and personal, timeless and absolutely current, but always with a vivid piece of storytelling at their heart. As is their tradition, New Model Army has once again placed a legend behind the boards with Chris Kimsey (The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Cliff, Killing Joke) both producing and mixing the album.

The current line up of New Model Army is Justin Sullivan (vocal and guitar), Nelson (bass), Michael Dean (drums), Dean White (keys) and Marshall Gill (guitar).

Links:
New Model Army's MySpace page (seems to be the band's main website)
New Model Army's Website (hasn't been recently updated)
New Model Army's Wikipedia entry