Antigen Records – 30th October 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
Old bastards make confrontational noise album nearly forty years in the making. That’s the headline, or the boiled-down version of the biography which accompanies the debut album from Suffolk noise-rock merchants Earth Mother Fucker. Formed in 1988 – long before the EMF who stormed the charts with their hook-laden dance-tinged indie songs – they’ve gigged hard and frequently, but worked on recording at a pace that would make a snail look like Usain fucking Bolt, with the sum total of their output standing as one EP, a live album and ‘a couple of collections of demos recorded in a barn in Holbrook in the late eighties’. As if they could care less. If they were even remotely fussed about being a commercial proposition in any way shape, or form, they wouldn’t have stuck with calling themselves Earth Motherfucker all this time. Even if they had a catalogue stacked with slick pop tunes and smooth r’n’b, they were never going to find themselves dominating the playlists of Radio 1. Even when the station had Mark and Lard in the breakfast slot – can you imagine that happening now? – spinning Radiohead, Placebo, and Depeche Mode babbling about Crispy Ambulance, there’s no way a band called Earth Mother Fucker would be making the airwaves.
Six years ago, their eternal traversing of grassroots venues saw them come to the attention of UK Independent Venue Week, who selected their no-cock rock anthem, ‘I Fuck Therefore I Am, as one of their top nine live performances of 2020, including it on the Independent Venue Week Live 2020 album with Self Esteem, Sleaford Mods and Anna Calvi. You couldn’t make this shit up, but this event prompted them to finally get it together to complete their first full-length studio album, Do Not Resuscitate. As there seems little likelihood of resuscitation by the time they get to that ‘difficult second album’, we should probably celebrate the fact that it’s happened at all.
It’s ‘I Fuck Therefore I Am’ which raises the metaphorical curtain on this eleven-track magnum opus, which has a run time of almost an hour. It starts with some zany slide guitar, but swiftly latches into a filthy groove and comes on like The Stooges. It’s wild, and builds to a frenetic climax which leaves you feeling dazed after just four and a half minutes.
They describe themselves as pioneers of ‘a mash-up micro-genre of one, delivering death country murder ballads and bleached-out retina-detaching noise rock’ – and it’s all here, in spectacular, ear-bleeding glory. ‘Crooked Path’ sounds like the best song The Gun Club should have written, while ‘A Good Man’ introduces Fall-esque vibes with its clanging guitars – although the distorted spoken word narrative takes it somewhere else entirely.
There isn’t a duff track on here. Nor should there be, they’ve had bloody long enough to figure out the tracklisting. But the magnificence of Do Not Resuscitate lies in its rawness, which encapsulates the band’s uncompromising nature. ‘Uncompromising’ is a word which has come to be chronically overused, and we know that nearly every band, every artist in every medium, makes compromises. Sign with a label or publisher, engage a PR… essentially, anything that could potentially further the career and increase audience reach involves a degree of compromise, unless you’ve already sold out before embarking on a path of placing creative works in the public domain. Not these guys.
In a parallel universe, Earth Mother Fucker would be massive. Because there have been other, similarly ‘difficult’ and ‘challenging’ bands who’ve broken through, ranging from the Jesus Lizard to Sleaford Mods – although I’d contend that the latter sold out and bought their own hype, and while the Jesus Lizard’s first UK tour in an eternity saw them playing venues like the 450-capacity Brudenell in Leeds, Sleaford Mods have taken their one-trick gimmick to arena-level, playing to 10,000+ people. Fuck that. And fuck them.
‘Cobalt Blue Climax’ is a disorientating, discordant slice of psychotic gospel country noise rock, and after that, we’re into the frenzied ‘Roadfucker’, where The Stooges and The Cramps and The Screaming Blue Messiahs crash headlong in a crossroads collision, before ‘Happy Shopper’ goes Sonic Youth on dirty speed.
There are no specific standout tracks on Do Not Resuscitate – but that’s because it’s simply relentless and the standard is consistent throughout, despite the stylistic variety. ‘Topper’ is a bot jangly, a bit pub-rock even, and lands with something of a swagger and – but equally, it calls to mind ‘Container Drivers’ by The Fall, before it collapses into chaos. ‘Ips’ is perhaps the album’s most accessible track, straying into post-punk/ indie crossover territory, and hinting at a certain level of songwriting nouse with a solid chorus – which, naturally, they obscure with the scuzzy, lo-fi production. Some would likely charge them of self-sabotage, but this is the very essence of Earth Mother Fucker – a band who refuse to play the industry game on any level.
When bands say they make music for themselves, and if anyone else like it, it’s a bonus, they’re lying. It’s false modesty and pre-emptively providing cover should they fail commercially. But not these guys. It’s impossible to fail commercially when you have absolutely no regard for commercial endeavours or the industry as an entity. Do Not Resuscitate is here as a document of a career spent crossing the road and taking every detour possible to avoid industry shit, and not to win them new fans or any of that shit. But it’s undeniably a fantastic album – and the last track, the six-minute ‘Junkie Faghag’ is something else.
AA
