Bad Breeding ★★★
Contempt
ONE LITTLE INDEPENDENT. CD/DL/LP
Stevenage hardcorists’ treatise on austerity and eco-catastrophe.
Two albums ago, these Hertfordshire anarcho-inspired diehards landed at their natural home: since the mid-’80s, OLI has been run by Flux Of Pink Indians’ bassist Derek Birkett. Following 2016’s self-titled DIY debut, the quartet have chipped away at updating Flux’s 1982 classic, Strive To Survive Causing Least Suffering Possible, with max-impactful production and contemporary polemical ire. Here, they achieve a peak in neo-hardcore brutality: after Temple Of Victory opens with a relatively medium-paced squall of fury, most of Contempt thunders by at breakneck velocity, its ferocious intensity and fearsome collective oomph putting even Frank Turner-era Gallows in the shade. Christopher Dodd’s lyrics rail at the UK political class’s attitude towards their public, and endorse rage and violence as the only viable response. Guitarist Idris Mirza finds fleeting windows for Zappa-esque angular flourishes (Devotion) and Slayer-style solo blasts (Retribution); otherwise BB remain single-mindedly focused on their in-the-red revolutionary purpose.