Bad Breeding Contempt
- Format
12 Inch
Clear
£22.00
‘Because these days are ours to take, Seize with union, love, and rage’ (Retribution)
The story of this island over the past forty years has been one of grossly distorted economic priorities that have led us to our current juncture of dehumanising poverty, entrenched inequality, crumbling infrastructure, and hollowed-out public services. If you were to conjure the sonic manifestation of the rage that this induces, it would almost certainly sound an awful lot like Stevenage’s Bad Breeding.
Returning with their fifth full-length, Contempt, and follow-up to 2022’s searing Human Capital, Bad Breeding are in rampaging form. Ominously distorted guitars, laced with bleakly melancholic melodies set the tone, while a richly resonant bass injects a healthy swing to proceedings alongside the pounding, propulsive drums. Meanwhile, rasping, semi-shouted vocals compete with eruptions of squalling solos and blast beats, fuelling an atmosphere of sinister, disorientating menace. The result is an even heavier iteration of the band’s anarcho-punk hardcore, veering at times into an almost industrial intensity. Lyrically, the album explores the continued degradation of our society through neoliberalism, as well as examining our own complicity in the stranglehold that this rationality has exerted.
Proceedings open with the swaying, post-punk-tinged Temple Of Victory, that dissects the continued grip of the monarchy on our national imagination (‘Behind the callow smear and parades of ecstasy, is weakness sown in costume and buried in conceit’), before the viscerally furious Survival (‘Sold as a spectre, but fed on a drip, Crushed by the sanctity of capital worship’) and the savagely stomping Discipline (‘We feed on the necessity, to plunder flesh and earth, for a surplus we will never see’) tackle the conspiracy of inaction in the face of climate catastrophe.
Side Two opens with a swaggering call to action, Retribution, and the discordant, serpentine Gilded Cage / Sanctuary, then explores the harrowing impacts of economic austerity (‘In the haze of someone’s prosperity, Count the boarded shopfronts and eyes glossed with grief’). Meanwhile, the bristling Vacant Paradise is a brutal denunciation of our willingness to co-operate with a system that degrades us (‘The warmth of uniformity, Gutted of self-respect’). The furiously dissonant title track brings the album to an utterly crushing climax (‘Is this the house we really built, or just the ruins we’re forced to bear?’).
An accompanying booklet contextualises the album’s themes as well as including short essays on our failure of will to tackle homelessness, and the ongoing badger cull, which is as barbaric as it is illogical. The package is completed by stunning artwork courtesy of renowned campaigning photomontage artist, Peter Kennard.