'We will suffer for this band, Michael, ' he prophesied. 'But it will bring great things.'

A haunting tableau of an era gone forever, The Thresher chronicles the underground music scene of the 1990s through the eyes of ambitious young men who rebel: would-be artist-tyrant Michael Glendower and his sometime comrade, the redoubtable musician Shiv.

Together with its companion volume, Hide the Decline, The Thresher forms a panorama of the Western world from the late 1970s through to the madness of the early 2020s. It explores the conflict between individualism, nationalism and globalism, and the role of art in an increasingly sterile and conformist modern world.