It’s interesting comparing the state of things in 2005 to the madness that is 2018. While we’re currently gritting our teeth through Trump’s presidency until his four years are up or he finally gets kicked out of office, at the time, George Bush was bumbling his way through his supposed “war on terror”, which did about as much harm as it did good. Meanwhile, Tony Blair was still wearing that big Cheshire cat smile, as complicit in the calamities in the Middle East as his American counterpart whilst the optimism of his New Labour campaign had died long before. We were four years past 9/11 when the 7/7 bombings happened. There was a lot of fear and paranoia at the time. Thirteen years later, not much is different.

Culturally, the world was in a weird position. We had only seen a small percentage of how big a dickhead Kanye West would become. Simon Cowell was at the peak of his stranglehold over the world with his assembly line of reality TV wannabes. And the country had somehow gone mad when ‘crazy frog’ sold by the bucket load. In terms of the indie rock scene, however, everything was rosy. The glut of drab, lifeless weepy rock bands that got big in the wake of Britpop were slowly fading thanks to the likes of the Strokes, Franz Ferdinand and the Libertines, with the likes of Kasabian and Arctic Monkeys ready to take up the mantle. But amidst all of these great acts, Bloc Party arrived to drop an album that would stand as a snapshot of its era. Audibly and aesthetically, Silent Alarm is as identifiably a part of its era as Franz Ferdinand’s and Arctic Monkeys classic albums. The spiky guitars, yelping vocals and tight rhythms can be found in a myriad of bands around at the time. But while it’s revered by critics and Bloc Party’s diehard fans, Silent Alarm isn’t as revered or lionised as its contemporaries. Which is a shame, because this album is probably the only album of its time that is just as important and relevant today as it was when it was first released.

While all those bands I mentioned wrote great songs that still get a reaction whenever you hear them on a night out, they’re not songs that tick with you and make you think. It took Pete and Carl wanting to kill each other that caused them to write songs as complex as ‘Music When the Lights Go Out’. Franz Ferdinand aimed to dominate dancefloors and Kasabian the terraces, while Alex Turner hadn’t fully matured as a songwriter yet. Bloc Party’s frontman and lyricist Kele Okereke, however, was writing about a wider palette of themes and topics. How many other bands of the time can you think of that could score a hit song like ‘Helicopter’, with lyrics focusing on Bush’s foreign policy? Or, in ‘Price of Gasoline’, the general public’s ignorance of the hypocrisies of the Iraq war? Okereke aimed to make music that made the listener think as much as dance.

In our current era of pleasant and happy-to-be-here bands afraid to express an opinion less they offend anyone, it’s inspiring to hear a band speak with conviction on issues that they’re genuinely angry and passionate about. In fact, looking at the mess that the world finds itself in today, it would be interesting to see what an up-and-coming Bloc Party could create if they were getting started today. And in an era defined by the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements, Bloc Party stood apart from the very white ‘boys club’ of indie rock music. With a drummer of Chinese origin, and a singer both black and gay, they score high on the minority bingo. The Bloc Party of 2005 were as progressive then as they would be today.

This abrasive and upfront attitude is reflected as much in the music as it is in the lyrics. If there’s one word that can describe the sound of Silent Alarm, it’s tense. This is an album that sounds like it’s about to split apart at the seams at any minute. No guitarist at the time could sound as sharp as a knife like Russell Lissack did. Matt Tong and Gordon Moakes’ tight rhythms held the songs together whilst propelling them forward with an uncontrollable urgency, while Okereke’s vocals scream and howl like he’s trying to reach through the speakers, grab you by the shoulders and start ranting and raving in your face.

But Silent Alarm works as much on a personal level as it does on an intellectual. Much of the album focuses on themes and subjects you wouldn’t find in many indie bands catalogues. Songs about depression, loneliness, mental illness and addiction don’t exactly make for great singalongs. But Silent Alarm is one of the most deeply layered and thoughtful album of its time. Contextually, the album and band it can be compared to most is Joy Division and Ian Curits’ lyrics. Think about it; ‘She’s Hearing Voices’ is a spiritual successor to ‘She’s Lost Control’, Okereke’s unsettling words about how “she just can’t sleep” and “she’s falling down the stairs, she’s tearing out her hair” mirroring Ian Curtis remarking on how “She’s Lost Control again”. The lyrics of ‘Like Eating Glass’ centre on loneliness and feeling cut off from everyone, the subject of the song comparing his isolation to something torturous: “Like drinking poison, like eating glass”. It’s not hard to compare this to Curtis’ feelings of anxiety and self-doubt in ‘Isolation’. Throughout Silent Alarm, Okereke touches on feelings of loneliness and panic in a way that none of his contemporaries could, with listeners able to relate to and take comfort in songs that reflect their difficult situations, and while it’s arguable that Bloc Party would write individual songs that reflect on these issues better later on (‘I Still Remember’ and ‘Flux’ being perfect examples), Silent Alarm is their only album in which these songs coalesce with the bands other themes and ideas to create a cohesive whole. It’s an album that affects your heart as much as your head, and stands as a piece of art that can challenge your ideas about the world and yourself.

In the end, the tragedy of Bloc Party is that for a band that felt so special when they first arrived, they eventually fell into the same clichés as many other bands have before; diminishing returns, members exiting, a frontman more concerned with his solo career. For how much they stood out at the time, Bloc Party’s career followed the likes of Franz Ferdinand and the Strokes: brilliant, game changing first album; second album that sold more but wasn’t as good; third album that’s just plain crap; and subsequent music that’s good but nothing special. Following Silent Alarm, A Weekend in the City was good, but couldn’t match its predecessor. When I first heard third album Intimacy I thought it was one of the worst albums I’d ever heard, and was the point where the band completely lost their momentum. Four had one perfect song in ‘V.A.L.I.S’ but nothing else was memorable, and by the time of their latest album, HYMNS, there were only two original band members left, and they sounded like they’d completely stopped giving a shit. Okereke’s solo work had begun influencing the direction of the band, and his lyrics suffered due to it. Seriously, how did a guy who once wrote a line as simultaneously bizarre and intimate as “you told me you wanted to eat up my sadness, well jump on, enjoy, you can gorge away”, end up writing something as cringe worthy as “tell your bitch to get off my shit, smoking on that home-grown”?

While there following work has done a lot to dent Bloc Party’s reputation, particularly Intimacy (honestly – fuck that album), the power of Silent Alarm remains as potent as it did the first time the world heard it. While their sound and aesthetic has influenced bands like Foals and The Maccabees, none of them have come close to creating something as profound as Silent Alarm: not even Bloc Party themselves. And while the world seems as chaotic and confusing as it was in 2005, it’s inspiring to know that there’s an album that can force you to confront the problems within the world, and can make you reflect on the feelings and insecurities in your own life.