Belligerent British-sounding American singer Richard Brown fronted the group with two friends, both former classmates of his at Apponequet Regional High School: guitarist Frank Michaels and bassist Peter Bevilacqua.

The three had enrolled at Southeastern Massachusetts University together, where they studied history, finance, and industrial relations, respectively, but, after exposure to left-wing politics, and despite having no previous musical experience, all dropped out of college during their senior year to form a punk band,[18] which Brown would name the Proletariat.

[1] They grew into a sound unlike other Boston punk or hardcore bands, characterized by drums holding an almost militaristic steadiness while guitars alternated between jarring upstrokes and overdriven chords.

[16] Between November 1981 and March 1982, they recorded material at Boston's Radiobeat Studios with producers Jimmy Dufour and Lou Giordano,[22] and brought a couple of songs as reels for airplay on local radio, making some stations' top-ten lists.

[26] Named for the drug in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World,[10] the album demonstrates the band's art punk roots, with lyrics examining social issues from Brown's distant Marxist perspective, critiquing capitalism without embracing determinist revolutionary dogma.

[6][13][17][20][30] This lineup was short-lived, and the Proletariat disbanded shortly after performing a pair of shows on July 1, 1985 with Italian band Raw Power and the local act Rash of Stabbings, at the Living Room rock club in Providence, Rhode Island.

Both the album and single showed another side of the band, including layered melodies and featuring a guest appearance by Roger Miller of Mission of Burma playing piano on an updated version of "An Uneasy Peace", as well as Laurel Bowman's soft-toned voice in sharp contrast with Brown's staccato pronouncements.

[3][4][5][10][11][40] In the spring of 2017, the Proletariat performed a handful of shows in the United States and Canada, including an appearance on March 25 at the fifth edition of Bleak Outlook, the annual citywide weekend music festival of Tacoma, Washington.

[44][45][46] Besides the Proletariat's official output, there are recordings of three live performances they did on Metrowave, a show that ran on Sunday nights from 9pm to midnight on Emerson College's FM radio station, WERS.