Bad Breeding - Contempt (2024) Hi-Res

The Tories, of course, are already imploding on themselves. They’re pretty much dead in the water at this point, though let’s not fall into the “Ah well, I don’t need to vote then” trap that so many people fell for in the 2016 referendum. Please make sure you do vote. All I’m pointing out is that it appears the Tories are doing a good job of burying themselves and that Stevenage’s Bad Breeding, never one to take any prisoners with their hardcore punk style, are ready and waiting at the cemetery to piss on those bastards’ graves.

It feels like an important album – Contempt – which is their fifth release. And, if you’re not particularly savvy politically (and even if you are), they’ve kindly provided a booklet addressing all kinds of societal and environmental issues, and why these problems are directly related to the past fourteen years of vile Tory rhetoric, making your vote more important than ever.

As usual, the music in this Bad Breeding album isn’t ever likely to produce anything approaching a hit single. Commercial it is not, though you could perhaps argue that ‘Discipline‘ has a kind of Future Of The Left feel about it. Does that make it more accessible to the man on the street? Hell no. This whole record is a fierce, aural assault, and the truth is you’d probably need the lyric sheet with you to know what’s going on, in the same way as you most likely would with Crass, the band with whom Bad Breeding shares the most similarities, both musically and in their admirable political ideal.

Amongst the feral aggression of the sound, there are at least some moments that you can take home to Mum, such as the Iron Maiden-like guitar shredding of ‘Retribution‘, or the Exploited-like repetition of ‘Devotion‘. Obviously when I say ‘take home to mum’, I only mean this if ‘mum’ grew up in the punk era, or amongst the thrash metal of bands like Slayer or Megadeth, and definitely not if she regards, say, Take That as the apex of British music history.

Bad Breeding are a tough listen, and on songs such as ‘Liberty‘, one of the loudest I’ve ever heard. But they do make more sense the more you play them – a bit like the hardcore punk version of Beefheart‘s Trout Mask Replica (though I’m not suggesting it sounds anything like that!) – it’s an acquired taste, for sure, and you can’t help but sit up and take notice.

So play this loud. I mean, it’s already loud, but it absolutely must be. You might even make some purple-faced Tory voters’ heads explode in the process, or at least run home to mummy. Hopefully, she’ll be playing this record too, when they get there, condemning them to eternal Hell. Let’s face it, they’ve put us through eternal Hell for the last fourteen years. Bad Breeding are merely helping us turn the tables, with the added bonus of terrifying them at the same time.