Bad Breeding - Whose Cause?

  Stevenage anarcho noise merchants Bad Breeding are preparing to return all guns blazing with a new album titled Exiled. It'll be out on One Little Indian Records and Iron Lung Records on June 21st and on the evidence of the 2 songs they've teased us with so far it's going to be something special. You can check out those tracks and preorder the album here :   https://badbreeding.bandcamp.com/album/exiled

  Their third album, it's accompanied by a statement from the band :

"There are homeless young people in Stevenage town centre and in order to feed themselves they are begging people for money. There is a food bank in Stevenage. It provides meals to families who can't afford them; many of them are in work. Demand for the food bank's services, funded and staffed by the generosity of local working-class people, has increased rapidly over the last three years. Yet Stevenage is just over thirty miles from one of the richest cities on earth.

"There is no complexity or ambiguity to these facts - they are a deep, visceral shame on the political forces that have held power for the last forty years. They are not circumstances visited on us by some remote force like the weather. They happened because of savage ideological choices designed to humiliate and psychologically kneecap the great majority of us who are the victims in this sickening charade.

"There is resistance in the face of the brutality. The quiet dignity with which communities have borne this violence and sought to staunch the bleeding wherever possible is one. The inarticulate outbursts of rage, collective and progressive or isolated and reactionary, are another. But neither the coping mechanisms of the kind, or the refusal to cooperate from the rebels, can bring change quickly enough. The entrenched logic of capital and the callousness it breeds within us lies like a suffocating smog over our towns, choking out the sun and the infant cries of our aspirations.

"In these desperate circumstances it is still seen as puerile utopianism to demand that children go to school fed or that young people might have a place to live not at the mercy of a venal landlord or a change in circumstance. Basic human empathy is treated like an unfortunate weakness.

"Sadistic military machismo is unquestioningly lauded. The ability, the desire, to detonate bombs which kill hundreds of thousands and scorch the earth for generations are praised as a sign of strength rather than the mark of a bloodthirsty sociopath. The urge for fascistic violence is slowly winked at and nudged forward.

"Because no one is saying the obvious doesn't mean that it shouldn't be said. When manicured centrists in a detached media-class bubble stack up likes and retweets for being 'radical' enough to say things that any decent human being should feel as a matter of course it is clear other voices are vital.

"To sneer at their self-congratulatory mediocrity.

"To demand more.

"To point out that if you are in the middle of the road you get run down.

"It's not radical to live with dignity. It's not radical for people to be able to feed, house and clothe themselves. But in this country that is a right extended to fewer people by the day. The chance for genuine human flourishing, for a good and fulfilling life in concert with your community, is an ever more remote possibility to millions crushed under the pressure of their postcode."

  As you can tell from the statement, and the lyrics to the song you'll find below, Bad Breeding don't just make glorious noise. They also put a lot of thought into the message they're trying to convey. Definitely one of the UK punk scenes most important bands, they deserve your attention. This is Whose Cause?

Another timely scapegoat plastered on the cover
a portrait of mistrust to march you up the hill
Demonised faith, an all-too-familiar face
Whose truth to trust, who will twist the blade?
See they’ll simplify you and they’ll simplify me
to sanction a war on solidarity
Another barbed tool to facilitate
division through suspicion, fear and hate

And they’ll lead you down the path
to show you all that’s wrong
Milk you until the veil is pulled
… now it’s your turn 
So whose cause are you really bending for?

Another timely scapegoat plastered on the cover
Same monied lobby boys punching down
on easy targets, to dig out the weak
see you might find comfort in the chuckling heap
but who really wins when you recycle their shit?
Just because it fits, doesn’t mean it is
Rank nationalism, what really was it for?
A timeless con trick to keep you 
from scratching at their door