ALBUM REVIEW: Bad Breeding – Contempt (One Little Independent Records)
Contempt is the fifth album from Stevenage hardcore outfit Bad Breeding, and it’s plain to see why they’re regarded one of the most essential punk bands in the UK today.
It comes two years after Human Capital, their second album for the renamed OLI label, and it’s just as uncompromising as those which went before.
Over the course of its 10 tracks it rages against the capitalist system, the effects of austerity, and destruction of the planet and its inhabitants.
Although they sound like a very modern hardcore band, Bad Breeding owe just as much to the anarcho-punks and thrash bands of the ’80s, like Crass and Rudimentary Peni.
Indeed, Contempt comes with three thought-provoking essays on homelessness, pollution and animal rights activism, aiming to educate listeners as well as entertain. And entertain they most certainly do.
Their raw energy is intoxicating, and their sonic onslaught highly visceral, but there’s much more to them than noise. It takes talented musicians to pull off so many effortless changes of pace.
Bludgeoning
It kicks off with the bludgeoning Temple Of Victory, a mid-paced song packed with piercing guitar lines, about the establishment using false narratives to promote disunity. It’s one of five songs clocking in at over the five-minute mark, showing hardcore doesn’t have to be short and fast.
Bad Breeding deal in irregular song structures, with nary a traditional verse-chorus in sight, and the use of industrial musician Ben Greenberg as producer has brought out even more intensity to their sound, if that seemed possible.
Heavily distorted guitar, fuzzy bass and pummeling drums morph at times into a cacophony of hard-to-define noise, as evidenced in tracks like Discipline, while vocalist Christopher Dodds doesn’t so much sing as howl his lyrics.
Lead single Survival explodes into life as he rages about ecological collapse, while Devotion, full of razor-edged guitar, picks up the Crass baton and roars off into the distance with it.
Liberty shifts from thrash to lumbering hardcore and back, and Retribution, one of the fastest songs here, is also the shortest, at under two minutes.
Apocalyptic
Similarly, Idolatry starts off like an express train, but gets angrier as it slows down, while title track, Contempt, which closes things out, has a real apocalyptic feel.
Bad Breeding treat us to chugging riffs aplenty, heavy breakdowns, even the occasional solo, producing a heady mix of passion and power.
Just as important is their message about the way society is heading due to the greed of those at the top, while those at the bottom struggle. Protest and survive? You bet. 8/10.
