Exiled, an LP by Bad Breeding – OUT NOW – One Little Indian

“Exiled” è un bel balzo in avanti per una band la cui carriera, dal momento in cui si è formata nel 2013, ha camminato su traiettorie bizzarre. Originari di Stevenage, un paesino del Sud dell’Inghilterra, Bad Breeding (formati dal cantante Christopher Dodd, il chitarrista Matt Toll, il bassista Charlie Rose e il batterista Ashlea Bennett) hanno sempre voluto fare punk ma visto che non andava a vederli nessuno si adeguarono suonando altri generi musicali. Insomma tanta esperienza da palco ma poca coerenza con se stessi. A seguito della realizzazione dell’omonimo,  auto-prodotto e auto-pubblicato EP di debutto nel 2016, Bad Breeding sono stati notati dalle figure punk che hanno ispirato la loro stessa musica. Più tardi lo stesso anno si sono esibiti allo Static Shock, il festival punk londinese, e da lì a poco è arrivato il secondo album, “Divide” (pubblicato da due fra le più autorevoli etichette del genere: La Vida Es Un Mus in Europa, e Iron Lung in USA). Per la turbolenta band, che si destreggia fra voci stridenti e rumoroso hardcore, è la svolta.

A mettere gli occhi su Bad Breeding è anche Derek Birnett, che prima ancora di aver fondato One Little Indian era stato un riferimento autorevole della scena anarchica inglese degli anni 80 (era parte della band Flux Of Pink e aveva fondato l’etichetta Spiderleg); e quando la band ha debuttato con One Little Indian (“Abandonment EP”, Aprile 2018) molti esponenti della scena punk legati a OLI hanno riservato loro un ottimo benvenuto. E ora è il momento del nuovo album.

Bad Breeding hanno rilasciato questa lunga, forte dichiarazione in occasione dell’annuncio del nuovo album:

“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.”