The Battery Farm - House of Pain
On the12th and latest release from The Battery Farm.
In our wearying world riddled with social and political discordance, creative outlets play a crucial role in maintaining some façade of sanity. It can be anything from art, to theatre, to music. For some, that outlet is gutter punk.
If you’re not familiar, gutter punk is a noisy, unapologetically crass, and downright disgusting offspring of its fathering genre. The style thrives under adversity to be the loudest voice in the loudest room. So, when life as we know it begins to crumble, gutter-punk rears its brutal head in an explosive state of catharsis.
One band sending shockwaves through the ever-growing scene is The Battery Farm, a four-piece outfit hailing from Manchester. This week saw the release of their 12th single House of Pain along with its B-side A Time of Peace, and they’re nothing short of a gutter punk wet dream.
House of Pain is a culmination of everything that’s wrong in modern Britain. With contemplative themes of survival and personal deterioration, this high-octane track attacks the body and mind. It kicks off as a tornado of noise spun from gritty, overdriven guitar and unrelenting drums. A lick of clean guitar brushes the surface during a post-intro break but is swiftly drowned out when the verse starts. No time to stop and process; only space to survive.
It drives on, an unstoppable force of discordant melodies and jagged rhythms. The picture paints itself with splatters of gory lyrics cried from such a visceral place, as The Battery Farm demonstrate what living this way does to a person.
Further disruption takes place on the flip side, A Time of Peace. This shorter number erupts at a cardiac arrest-inducing pace, guaranteed to raise pulses and cortisol levels. The crux of this story lie in the longing for some form of respite. Or, as the band simply put, “a time when the end of the world felt like less of an inevitability”. However, there is no respite in this song; the moment it breaks down, it rises back up into a cacophony of screaming and distortion. Much like the idea that peace might never bless us again.
What makes these new tunes from The Battery Farm so convincing is that they are rooted in truth. Their lyrics starkly articulate the feelings that plague our current society, while their music externalises emotions that we can’t all access.
If you have trouble with processing the struggle, let The Battery Farm help you out. Let their outlet be yours.
House of Pain and A Time of Peace are both available now on all streaming platforms.
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