In Kafka’s short story ‘A Country Doctor’ a doctor travels to inspect a young man. Upon arrival he discovers a wound as ‘gapingly obvious as a mine-shaft… worms, the length and thickness of my little finger, roseate and also coated with blood, are writhing against the inside of the wound.’ His patient’s fate is sealed but the doctor comforts and assures him he will recover. Kafka was living in a European country with an equally cavernous wound left in its side to fester. The rise of anti-Semitism in his native Prague and the absurdist slaughter of the Great War was all hurtling Europe blindly to even more unspeakable catastrophe.

Bad Breeding’s debut S/T likewise sees a rotting infection at the heart of European society. One caused by ideologically-crazed governments, and burgeoning extreme right wing xenophobia that’s blooming thanks to catastrophic austerity measures. It’s a wound brushed aside just as feebly as the one that Kafka’s doctor inspects:  “you lack perspective. I, who have been in sickrooms far and wide, tell you: your wound isn’t so bad as all that.” If it’s not treated, things can only get worse.

Bad Breeding’s album could almost be one long sustained note being emitted from this wounded body. Letting out a cry of pain and anguish that rarely fluctuates and never falters. Sonically enacted by relentless blast beats and an impenetrable, dense wall of noise and feedback. There’s still variation enough for it to remain engaging. The ‘Corrupting Fist’ snare stubbornly stomps on beat while the guitar flails around wildly, while ‘Moral Itch’ all but totally collapses into swirling, violent convulsions.

It’s also a howl that is far from inarticulate. Lead singer Chris Dodd’s word choice is often poetic, sometimes flamboyant. The wordiness rubs against the relative simplicity of the music and makes the songs feel overloaded, like having to process horrific and depressive imagery we are constantly bombarded with from our various news sources. The short length of the songs seems to be something Dodd has no control over and he has to think what he’s going to say in real time. He almost never bothers with rhyme or meter because such things are frivolous. He’s rushing to fit in everything he needs to say before everything comes to an abrupt end. He’s never finished. There’s always more to say because the horror never stops. The songs are mercilessly and brutally short. Barely offering a moment of pause between them. The songs tumble and crash into each other like a car pileup. There are choruses here, but they’re working on the level of practicality of a battle cry. Closer in spirit to the short and simple chants designed to spread quickly through an anti-government march.

‘Standard Process’ implements recordings of machinery such as pneumatic drills, the same equipment some of Bad Breeding’s members use in their day jobs. But the guitar’s whirring tremolo and the pulverising bass on the other songs more than suffice in producing this effect on their own. The heavy guitar tone of Tony Iommi in Black Sabbath has been said to mirror the industrial noise of the metal factories he worked in. Likewise Bad Breeding sound like one of these industrial landscapes come to life. A rough beast ready to churn you up in its grinding gears and spit you out like mince meat.

Rather than the directionless misanthropy typically associated with punk, Bad Breeding have specific targets in their line of site, and almost no one is spared. ‘Venerable Hand’ takes aim at the left wing media in the face of the current migrant crisis: “Left wing press print words of kindness / Nothing more than moral pornography”. But it’s the current government and they reserve most of their venom for. Everything from zero hour contracts on ‘I Strive’ and mocks the aspirational jargon of Torie policy: “Aspiring to be aspirational / But not quiet grasping / how to remain upwardly mobile” reveals these as empty rhetoric, meaningless phrases that can be used almost interchangeably and have no reflection of reality. Unemployment and jobseekers policy is succinctly summed up as “fit for work / Ill enough to die” on ‘No Progress’, while ‘A Cross’ challenges institutional power abuse of organised religion.

Returning to the wound, in the video for ‘Corrupting Fist’ these injustices and brutalities are equated with not just pulsating human tissue but also self-harm. While Dodd confesses: “I Blame myself, blame you, blame everyone”. Bad Breeding positions all of this as attacks inflicted by a body upon itself, whether as a nation or the human race in its entirety. The ridiculousness and sheer stupidity becomes clear. We might as well be punching ourselves in the face.

Quotes from Michael Hofmann’s translation of A Country Doctor
Louis Ormesher

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