With a sound owing as much to the agnostic rage of 1980s punk bands like Discharge and Crass as it does the experimental noise tendencies of Killing Joke, not to mention overtly politicised lyrics to boot, Bad Breeding are a welcome breath of fresh air. Formed in the Hertfordshire “new town” of Stevenage at the tail end of 2013, their visceral social commentaries make them one of the most relevant bands to emerge from the UK underground in years. In that time, the four-piece – Chris Dodd (vocals), Matt Toll (guitar), Charlie Rose (bass) and Ashlea Bennett (drums) – have established themselves as one of the most challenging yet exciting live acts in the country.
…Divide is the band’s second album, following on from their vitriolic self-titled 2016 debut…
…and provides a bleak stomping ground, in which to vent frustrations with our current socio-political no-man’s-land. Collaborator Jake Farrell has written accompanying essays for the album’s release, which acts like a manifesto, denouncing and degrading the leaders of Brexit with razor-sharp satire. Beginning where the referendum ended, the record channels a similar sense of disillusionment that came with their first effort, but feels a lot more intensified and focused. Now all targets are locked on the people who claim to be one of us, masking their elitism by diverting eyes to immigration and other insignificant factors in our countries demise.
‘Whip Hand’ is an unexpected introduction to the dank undergrowth of a post-leave Britain, opened by the crackled skipping sound of an aged piano sample. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect to hear under a hip hop acapella or in the trailer for a creepy slasher flick. But it doesn’t last long, quickly becoming infected by screeches of guitar feedback that are eventually devoured by a chaotic burst of raw energy and aggression. In a way, the track is reflective of the referendum itself, a sense of complacency from ‘Remainers’ that people would see through the immigration fables and ignore the NHS bus banners. But instead, here we stand, doused in a cataclysmic bar-brawl of noise, distortion, bleeding into a deadened feedback buzz.
Most tracks on Divide clock in around the two-minute mark, but a lot is crammed into a short space of time. Some are lightning fast thrash-punk epics (Entrenched, Loss) and others are thick, brooding behemoths (‘Anamnesis’, ‘Death’, ‘Endless Possibility’). The only thing resembling breathing space are Interludes ‘I’ and ‘II’, which are presumably there to break up the album a little, but the former pierces the ear like a bad case of tinnitus and the latter whirs incessantly like looming drone, interspaced with white noise and barely decipherable chatter. ‘Death’ is probably one of the most damning moments in modern punk, like a freight train crashing through a level crossing. It’s an instrumental bloodbath that rips up article 50, sets it alight and tosses it into a pit full of Politician’s carcasses. If you’re looking for melodies, don’t bother. This is pure, distorted dirt of the most ferocious kind. Any signs of jubilance are skewed (purposefully), out of tune or contorted into mangled rubble. Bands like Iceage and Ceremony laid down the groundwork for the ramshackle re-invention of modern punk, but that doesn’t come close to the pure ferocity Bad Breeding are capable of unleashing.
If anything, Divide is proof that ‘The People’ haven’t spoken and an aging punk like Lydon has no idea about the current political landscape. The corrupt leaders have been given a free pass to spout their hate-fuelled vitriol and It’s not ok. Very few or even no modern British punk bands have managed to encapsulate the feelings of a segregated nation (politically and socially) as viscerally as Bad Breeding have here. Divide as informed as it is urgent and we need it, right now. — godisinthetvzine.co.uk