Aural Aggravation

A1M Records – 29th November 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

For most bands, unexpectedly parting company with their record label on the eve of the release of an album, the lead-up to which has involved three well-received single releases on said label, would be a devastating blow. But not so The Battery Farm. Even before A1M Records swooped in to fund the CD release, they’d already announced that the album would be going ahead as planned. That’s resilience defined. It also encapsulates the spirit of this indefatigable, undefeatable band. The Battery Farm embody tenacity, stubbornness, bloody-mindedness, and graft. They’re not making music for fun, or as a hobby, but by compulsion, with dark themes and dark grooves being very much front and centre of their work.

Flies – released two years ago almost to the week of its successor – was a strong debut, one which showcased the work of a band unafraid of experimenting, of embracing a range of stylistic elements, or revealing literary leanings. They’ve gone deeper and darker on the follow-up.

‘Under the Bomb’ whips in with synths buzzing a crackling static electricity before a sparse acoustic guitar comes to the fore, a sonorous bass note sounding out as Benjamin Corry sings – an intimate croon – and paints a bleak scene that calls to mind the grim images of Threads, the revered BBC film marking its fortieth anniversary this year. Considered by many to be the bleakest and most harrowing film ever made, its anniversary is a reminder of just how recently cold war tensions were so high that the fear of nuclear annihilation was both real and justified, as well as of just how quickly things can escalate – and, indeed, have escalated already in recent years. The closing lines ‘Survival makes you wish you’d never been born / Envy the dead after the bomb’ articulate the sheer horror of the fallout and a nuclear winter, and the song creates the context for an album which is dark, tense, and – justifiably – paranoid, scared.

The band fire in hard in jittery, driving post-punk mode on ‘The Next Decade’, Corry roaring full-throated, raw, raging, then shifting to adopt a more theatrical, gothic-sounding tone. It’s an impressive performance, reminiscent of Mike Patten on Faith No More’s ‘Digging the Grave’, and the overall parallel feels appropriate here. It’s a punchy, sub-two-minutes-thirty cut that’s almost schizophrenic and bursting with tension, paving the way for single ‘Hail Mary’, which hits hard. Minimal in arrangement, it’s maximal in volume. It’s gritty and taut, and when the bass blasts in after the two-minute mark, the sheer force is like two feet in the chest.

The singles are packed in tight, with the mathy noise-rock crossover of the manic panic of ‘O God’ coming next. Again, it’s the lumbering bass that dominates the loud chorus, and it’s a strong hook that twitches and spasms its way from the tripwire tension of the verses. ‘O God, which way is hell?’ Corry howls in anguish. The answer, of course, is whichever way you turn. You’re doomed. We’re all doomed.

The title track lands unexpectedly, as a slow-paced rock ‘n’ roll piano ballad which sounds like it’s lifted from a musical, an outtake from Greece or maybe Crybaby. But midway through it springs into life and takes off in a burst of proggy bombast. As was the case with Flies, The Battery Farm are never predictable, never afraid to throw a curveball, and they get the impact of making such switches, meaning that ‘Stevie’s Ices’, which lands somewhere between Muse and Queens of the Stone Age. The squelchy strut of ‘Icicles’ is different again: part Pulp, part Arctic Monkey in the spoken-word verse, more Nirvana in chorus, the essence of the album as a whole comes together here. The songs, in presenting two almost oppositional aspects between verse and chorus reflect a world that’s torn in two, collapsed, pulling in different directions – and while its theme may not have been directly inspired by the most recent events, given that its writing and recording predate the US election, the circumstances which brought us here – via a political backdrop which sees the UK, US, and so many countries split almost 50/50 between hard-right and broadly centre-left, a situation that brought us Brexit, which brought us Reform and fourteen years of Conservatism, which means that speech in support of the Palestinian people is met with hostile calls of antisemitism… Division and polarity defines the age, and debate is dead.

Powering through the raw big-bollocked punk blast of current single ‘John Bull’s Hard Times’ and the moodier, more reflective ‘It’s a Shame, Thanks a Lot’, a song which confronts anguish and misery and the desire to die in the most direct and uncompromising lyrical terms against a backdrop that borders on anthemic, we stagger to the fractured trickling gurgle of the disembodied ‘After the Bomb’ which spirals towards a climax before it slumps into a wasteland of ruin.

As dark as it is, The Dark Web packs some meaty tunes and beefy grooves, which elevate it a long way above Threads bleakness, but by the same token, it’s by no means a lightweight, sugary confection. Once again, The Battery Farm balance dark themes and slugging noise with moments which are that bit lighter, and even sneak in some grabs and hooks. The Dark Web is a dark album for dark times, but steers wide of being outright depressing. This takes some skill, and The Battery Farm have skill to match their guts.