Breaking Bad

“There’s a lot of stuff that we’re saying,” explains Bad Breeding frontman Christopher Dodd, speaking to Hot Press an hour before the band’s Eurosonic show in Groningen. “It’s just like a release of energy, really. There’s a bit of a sentimental thing, I guess, in that we feel in a way wronged by certain parts of government where we live. We live in the first new town that was built in England after the Second World War, and it’s quite limiting. Not that many opportunities, I guess.”

Although together only 13 months, the band have already made a serious impact with their incendiary single ‘Burn This Flag’ (released via Hate Hate Hate Records) earning them comparisons with everyone from The Kinks to Black Flag.
Making their first appearance at Eurosonic, they have high hopes that their rage-fuelled sound will resonate with wider audiences.
“It’s going really well over here,” he enthuses. “It’s a big help for a small band just starting out to get to play to lots of different organisers of events, bookers and the general public as well, so it should be quite a positive thing for us to do.”
With no big record company budget behind them, they’re currently concentrating on writing new songs and experimenting with their sound.
“We don’t know how the album will sound yet, we’re just exploring some options. We’re writing and amassing songs and building up a good strong body of work.”
Although Stevenage has a famously high unemployment rate, they all have day jobs.
“We’re doing it pretty much just after work,” he admits. “It’s great, it’s the only kind of outlet that we have. It’s a case of working for a pittance... and then you get two hours in the evening to try and put your energy into something more positive.”
They’re keeping busy on the live front, too.
“After this, we’re doing some shows back in England and then we go to France for five days,” he says. “Then we’re doing SXSW in Texas, and then we go around Europe for the back end of March. And then around April or May, we’ll try and burrow down and finish off the songs and get them into a tight place where we can go off and record the album.”
Despite their hard-edged sound and dark discontented lyrics, Dodd maintains that Bad Breeding are really optimists at heart.
“There’s a lot of positivity in what we do,” he concludes. “It’s about giving ourselves an outlet rather than sitting back and taking things as they come.”