The UK punk band that released the 1978 album “The Feeding of the 5000” was Crass.
“The Feeding of the 5000” is Crass’s first album and a foundational release in anarcho-punk. Recorded at Southern Studios in London on October 29, 1978, it combined a deliberately raw sound with lyrics attacking war, religion, capitalism, police power, and the music industry.
The album’s release was disrupted when a pressing plant refused to handle the track “Asylum,” which was considered offensively blasphemous. The original version replaced it with silence titled “The Sound of Free Speech.” Crass later issued the song separately as “Reality Asylum,” and a 1980 repress restored it to the album.
The title references the biblical story of feeding 5,000 people, but Crass used it with an anti-commercial twist: drummer and founder Penny Rimbaud said 5,000 was the minimum pressing quantity, far more records than the band expected to sell. The album’s cheap pricing, stark artwork, and independent production became models for later DIY punk releases.