New Model Army: Four Decades Beyond the Style Confines
Photo: Wojciech Pędzich / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:New_Model_Army,_3-Maj%C3%B3wka_2023_23.jpg
New Model Army have never been easy to file. "We've been labelled as punks, post-punks, Goth, metal, folk – the lot, but we've always been beyond those style confines," Justin Sullivan said in 1999, as quoted on Wikipedia. The band's 2007 track "Wired" has logged 571 plays on U-Rock® since late August 2026, by the count used in our band list. Two more songs, "Guessing" and a 2005 remaster of "225," sit on our WURN-dB Underground playlist.
Bradford, 1980
According to Wikipedia, New Model Army formed in Bradford, West Yorkshire, in the autumn of 1980. The founders were singer, guitarist and principal songwriter Sullivan, bassist Stuart Morrow and drummer Phil Tompkins. They named themselves after the standing army the Parliamentarians formed in 1645 during the First English Civil War, and played their first gig in Bradford that October. The songs drew on a shared love of punk rock and Northern soul.
Wikipedia says Sullivan is the only member who has been there throughout, through four decades of line-up changes. As of 2024 the band was Sullivan, Dean White on keyboards and guitar, Michael Dean on drums and Ceri Monger on bass.
John Peel, The Tube and the indie chart
Wikipedia tells the early story this way. In 1983 the band released their first singles, "Bittersweet" and "Great Expectations," on Abstract Records, and got airplay from BBC Radio 1's John Peel. In February 1984 they appeared on the TV show The Tube, where host Muriel Gray introduced them as "the ugliest band in rock and roll." The producers were uneasy about the lyrics of "Vengeance," so the band played "Christian Militia" instead. Their debut album, Vengeance, then reached No. 1 on the UK independent chart, displacing The Smiths.
The major-label years
Wikipedia says the band went on to sign with EMI. 1985's No Rest for the Wicked and its single "No Rest" both reached the UK top 30. The single caused controversy when the band wore T-shirts reading "Only Stupid Bastards Use Heroin" on Top of the Pops. The same account says US immigration at first refused the band work permits, saying their work had "no artistic merit." They were allowed to tour the US in December 1986.
By then The Ghost of Cain, produced by Glyn Johns, was out. Wikipedia reports that David Sinclair of The Times named it his best album of 1986, calling it "the best thing to happen to English rock music since the first Clash album." Thunder and Consolation followed in February 1989, moving the band toward a more folk-rock sound.
"Wired" and High
The song U-Rock® plays most comes from much later. "Wired" is on High, released in 2007. Reviewing the album, SPIN said the band "still makes fervid, dramatic punk rock that stops just short of overzealous hectoring." It praised "powerhouse drumming and forceful vocals" with "a cranked-up sophistication, guided by a strong sense of melody." The review singled out "the more ferocious 'Wired' and 'All Consuming Fire,'" which "make their point with sheer muscle."
Still going
The band has stayed active. In March 2024 Sullivan talked to Soundsphere magazine about the album Unbroken and about how the band has lasted more than 40 years outside music's mainstream. Wikipedia describes Sullivan's lyrics as ranging "from directly political through to spiritual and personal," and says they have always been a key part of the band's appeal.
Why it matters on U-Rock®
U-Rock® exists to play bands who built their audience the hard way: independent charts, sessions on the radio, endless touring. New Model Army did all of it, and they are still doing it more than 40 years on. "Wired" will keep coming around on the stream, next to the younger bands on the WURN-dB Underground playlist.
U-Rock® play data: 571 plays of "Wired" (WPHL-DB) as of the band-list snapshot, 2026-10-12 21:14 ET. The band list uses the higher of two logs: CORE airplay_spins (571 at that time, first play 2026-08-30 14:41 ET) and BROADCAST AzuraCast song_history (511 for the same period). The CORE log records more spins of this track than AzuraCast does. We report the band-list figure for consistency.
Sources
- Wikipedia, "New Model Army (band)" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Model_Army_(band)
- SPIN, "New Model Army, 'High' (Attack Attack)" (Sept 2007) — https://www.spin.com/2007/09/new-model-army-high-attack-attack/
- Soundsphere, "Justin Sullivan talks New Model Army's 'Unbroken'…" (Dom Smith, 6 Mar 2024) — https://www.soundspheremag.com/features/interviews/justin-sullivan-talks-new-model-armys-unbroken-the-secret-to-succeeding-outside-of-the-mainstream/
- Spotify, "WURN-dB Underground" playlist (embed) — https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/0bZ0fCQCL7IkKfqcQycsMI
