“The cognitive dissonance inherent in the political message that growth is happening and essential whilst, simultaneously, we as a populace watch the functions and effectiveness of the state atrophy and retreat into nothingness, is a civic and rhetorical trick hard to fathom, but it is entirely prevalent in modern Britain” – Jake Farrell
Some things don’t change.
The 20th of October 2016 provided a surprisingly temperate evening in Manchester. Four months after the cataclysmic events of the Brexit referendum, and with many seemingly still in a state of shock, Soup Kitchen played host to a four-piece punk band from Stevenage. The cold brick walls of the basement venue sweated in tandem with a rapt crowd numbering no more than around 50. The four men on stage in nondescript t-shirts and short-sleeved button-down shirts tore into their set. It was ferocious. It was vital. It was conducted by a snarling man in a Harrington jacket who prowled back and forth and spat lines of pure vitriol about wealth inequality and burning flags, in his own world as much as he was the crowd’s. It was Bad Breeding.
Eight years on, Bad Breeding have released their fifth studio album Contempt. Whilst the above thoughts of Jake Farrell (a long-time collaborator with the band whose excerpt above is part of an essay included as a vinyl insert in their self-titled debut) are as relevant today as they were then, the band’s music has changed and progressed over the years. This newest collection of ten tracks sees an evolved musical platform play host to the unerring message that has underpinned the band’s work since their inception.
‘Temple of Victory’ kicks things off with a chunky bassline and squealing feedback that is initially reminiscent of the likes of Protomartyr, albeit with a much harder edge. These chaps have a predilection for a bass-led album intro (see ‘Whip Hand’ from 2017’s Divide) but the 2024 iteration hits different. The production value is immediately noticeable compared to previous releases; it sounds simultaneously huge and claustrophobic.
First single ‘Survival’ spearheads the album’s impetus with bursts of energy interspersed with heavy, plodding noise rock. Bad Breeding have always had an interesting approach to writing songs; they push and pull, abruptly stopping before exploding into d-beat and then disintegrating thirty seconds later. On Contempt, the band are really leaning into this aspect of the music and it pays dividends. If not done properly, such an approach can serve to slow momentum. However, when a band have a clear idea of what they want to do and the creativity and intelligence to pull it off, the results can be brilliant. Bad Breeding have both and the results are indeed testament to that.
Not enough can be said of the album’s instrumentation but the likes of Devotion and Discipline, two more of the album’s harsh sonic assaults, are emblematic of Bad Breeding as not just a band but a unit. Their music is a vehicle to forcibly drive home the message of how fucked everything is. Whilst that may sound reductive (and is a far cry from the intelligent, thorough and thought-provoking words of frontman Chris Dodd), this hostility and pure anger is prevalent through each of the album’s ten songs. Dodd’s southern bark is synonymous with Bad Breeding but allayed to his contempt for obsessional capital productivity and audible hatred toward the current political landscape, his vocals are a little higher in the mix than on previous records. The vocal effects are nuanced and entirely in line with what the rest of the band are doing. On tracks like Vacant Paradise, the vocals bring to mind Gnod, particularly their 2017 album Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine. Whereas the Salford noise-mongers stride the line between the mundane and the existential, Bad Breeding are firmly rooted in the dripping bile of stark reality.
Ben Greenberg (a member of the brilliant Uniform) has done an excellent job with the production, adding an industrial heaviness to the songs that blends each song into what could more aptly be described as ‘pieces’. The stop/start nature of Contempt, as previously mentioned, almost makes the album feel like it has more than ten tracks. It ebbs and flows masterfully and is surprisingly dynamic for something that sounds like it’s been drowned in thick sludge. It is equal parts aggressive, corrosive punk and head-dismantling noise rock.
Some things don’t change. Whilst that is often a hideous truth to swallow, it almost means that Bad Breeding will continue with their abrasive, brutal demolition of everything that indeed should change. They have proved once more that they are contemporaneous of no-one and deigned us worthy of another brilliant release. We are all better off for having that in our lives.