The Battery Farm make music like they don’t care what we think of them, they just do their stuff. If we like it, then I’m sure that’s OK for them but they probably don’t care if we don’t. Their music is unapologetically doomy and sometimes difficult to listen to. And I love it.
So the new EP ‘Endless Unstoppable Pain :-)’ – and yes that is a simile, a hint there perhaps that they aren’t quite as doom laden as I might have thought. Is the endless unstoppable pain the pain that living in the now puts us under, or the listening experience, who knows? I suspect it’s the former. I may be wrong.
For a band that do doom laden punky post-punk, the opening track – ‘Maggot Line’ – isn’t; it’s out and out rough, raw and raucous punk, old school punk. However this is no walk in the park, this is song where the words ‘we’re all goin’ die’ (and ‘it won’t be long’) are repeated and repeated. It’s a nihilistic celebration of our upcoming certain doom. A song to lose your shit to dancing and singing as the end approaches. Strangely it’s cheerier than you might think; you gotta laugh people, or you’ll cry.
‘Excellent Public Speaker’ is a slice of punky post-punk. Over a frantic bass laden backing words are spoken, intoned, shouted, chanted. And while you throw yourself around the room, you can listen to the words and try to work out what the song is about; or at least I did. It hasn’t quite percolated through yet, for which I apologise. But even without getting what the song is about, it’s compelling. Guitars roar, drums pound, bass throbs.
‘A Little Nothing Man’ is a build and explore song. It starts, gentle voice, bass, sparse drums. It shifts up, that voice and bass get more insistent. And then it happens, mutated surf guitar, guitars so dense it hurts, the voice shouts, it screams. And then it drops out to voice, the contrast is beautiful and exquisite. It leaves you feeling sad, desolate. Desperate to experience that build and that explosion again.
The EP closes with ‘While The Black Smoke Rise’. Dense guitar, a voice rants. A song that is unavoidably political, ant-big companies interested only in profits. Guitars wig out (now is that something people of my age only get, it means they just lose it big time). Is this a song or a spoken word piece over music? I care not one fuck. This is one beautiful fucking noise.
This EP is impressive, fantastically impressive. The music isn’t easy – this isn’t about tunes you can hum while you’re doing your shopping OK – but it’s fucking beautiful.It’s beautiful because this is a band doing their music because they love doing it. Their commitment to it is there in every distorted guitar, every demented drum beat, every shouted, spoken and sung word. And it’s beautiful because they mean every damn word of the songs. And I can’t help but fall deeply deeply in musical love with the band and this EP.
If you like out-there garage-y punky post-punk, if you like guitar heavy noise rock, if you like music that isn’t easy to listen to, if you like music you can lose your shit to; then this is for you.
Snarf it up on vinyl, download or streaming at this link – https://linktr.ee/thebatteryfarm
