Kings of the Wild Frontier

The record was made in the weeks after McLaren took the first Ants away. Ant, Marco Pirroni and the drummers Chris Hughes and Terry Lee Miall worked at Rockfield, the residential studio in Wales, and at Matrix in London. Ant described the Welsh studio as remote, with no distractions, so the band could immerse themselves in it. He said it was made in a traditional way, with the band hitting bits of wood and anything else that gave the right sound, and that Dog Eat Dog, the first track finished with all the vocals and the crashing drums, became the blueprint for the rest. Hughes, who had been drumming on the songs every night, produced it, and Ant said that was not like bringing in an outside producer to put their mark on it.

The sound rests on the Burundi beat. Hughes said the carrier beat, clicking sticks, shouting and chanting were what he knew of the style, and that Pirroni's contribution was a take on 1970s glam, with the New York Dolls, Roxy Music, early Elvis and Link Wray's Rumble in the mix. Pirroni said he took the cowboy twang from Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The songs run through a pile of references: Davy Crockett in the title track, Clint Eastwood in Los Rancheros, Apocalypse Now in Killer in the Home, The Magnificent Seven in The Magnificent Five. Jolly Roger shares its music with Morricone's theme for Seven Guns for the MacGregors, and The Human Beings is built almost entirely from the chanted names of Native American peoples.

The sleeve photograph by Peter Ashworth came from a video test the band shot in a Brixton rehearsal room on 5 August 1980, followed by a second shoot in a blacked-out studio two days later. The first UK copies carried a different mix of Antmusic that began with a fade-in. After the song became a hit, pressings used the single mix with its drumstick introduction. The American edition dropped Making History for Physical (You're So) and Press Darlings.

It went to number one in the UK on 24 January 1981 and spawned three hit singles. Robert Christgau reviewed the American edition in the Village Voice in March 1981 and described a clever pop-punk amalgam with two drummers, lots of chanting and numerous B-movie hooks, though he found the hooks grated. Stephen Thomas Erlewine later called it one of the great defining albums of its time. Looking back for the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2017, Jason Bracelin said it was more focused and fully realized than the debut. The album won the 1982 BRIT Award for Best British Album.