REMEMBER Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine? Guitarist Les Carter is now a member of Ferocious Dog, who will energise the Fibbers stage in York on October 22 with their raw take on traditional Celtic folk.

Expect to find their ever-growing "family of fans", The Hell Hounds, among the audience when they perform songs from their late-2015 album From Without with its combination of aggression, passion and seething political comment.

Production by Matt Terry, mastering by Al Scott, a track co-written with Nick Burbridge, of McDermott’s 2 Hours (Living On Thin Air), and the addition of orchestral strings all add to From Without being a coming-of-age moment for the Nottinghamshire band.

The six-piece from Warsop mesh traditional instruments, such as fiddles, whistles and mandolins, with rock, punk, reggae, ska and Celtic vibrations and a buzz-saw rock'n'roll attitude that drew the biggest ever crowd for a 6pm slot on the Left Field Stage at Glastonbury.

Ferocious Dog's frontman is Ken Bonsall, he of the Mohican plumage, who says in his blog: "The roots of everything we do as a band are buried deep in the events that surrounded me as I entered adulthood.

"Leaving school at 16 in a mining community in Nottinghamshire, 1984 wasn’t the most harmonious time. Our family bore the brunt of the strikes; my Dad and brother were in the midst of a year-long strike, and I’d join them on the picket lines. We were right in the eye of that political storm. We stayed true to the NUM at Welbeck Colliery, later being moved to Kellingley, in North Yorkshire, with a 50-mile each way commute to contend with."

Bonsall spent 30 years a proud miner, socialist and unionist. "In many ways it would have been easier to have not joined the strikes, but the principles at stake meant too much - and these shape the music we make now," he says.

"Slow Motion Suicide from our latest album tells the story of the impact the decimation of the mining industry had on just one particular character, but that kind of worthlessness and hopelessness was – and maybe still is – rife in the aftermath of Thatcher’s destruction of the industries."

Bonsall has always played music, but it was only in his last few years as a miner that the band took off in earnest. "I was also a retained firefighter at the time, so juggling two jobs and the band was really hard work," he recalls.

Inspired musically by The Specials and The Beat - who "smashed the racial divide, something that means a lot to us too" - Ferocious Dog name their political mentors as New Model Army, Levellers, Billy Bragg and the aforementioned Nick Burbridge.

"My working-class roots are something I’m proud of," says Bonsall. "Tony Blair tried to tell us there was no such thing any more but that’s nonsense. Even if I were a millionaire, I’d still be working class and proud of it – and we use the band as a platform to talk about these issues.

"Given the lack of union opportunities for the current generation, we want to keep the message of solidarity and justice out there. This is all the more important given the current batch of politicians running roughshod over us."

The biggest impact on Bonsall was the loss of his son, Lee, who took his own life aged 24 in 2012. "Lee served in 13 Air Assault in Helmand Province, Afghanistan at the age of 18, and shortly after deployment his best friend was shot by a sniper, fulfilling a role that Lee would have been doing had it not been for some training he’d missed due to a boxing injury," he says. "The guilt he felt at ‘living another man’s life’ proved too much for him ultimately.

"Rather than be offered counselling and treatment [for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder], Lee was told to ‘man up’ and marginalised. Well trained in keeping his troubles to himself, ultimately he wasn’t able to deal with them.

"We remember him in songs (The Glass tells the story of his final day) and through the Lee Bonsall Memorial Fund. We’ve successfully lobbied the MOD and Government to review and change their treatment of people leaving the forces."

Looking ahead, Ferocious Dog are to support Levellers on their Levelling The Land 25th anniversary tour in November and December across Britain and Europe, including Leeds O2 Academy on December 1.

Tickets for October 22 are on sale at £12.50 on 01904 620203 or on the door from 7.30pm.