If ever an album’s title summarised the event of its creation, it’s this one.
Since Nine Black Alps ‘quietly disbanded’ (as their Wikipedia entry puts it) in 2017, following an inverted career trajectory which saw them start out on a major label and conclude on an indie, albeit touring with some big-league names, Sam Forrest has been involved in a number of other projects with Strange Pink currently emerging as an exciting proposition on the circuit in the north.
But since early 2017, there’s been Sewage Farm, something of a long-term side-project for Sam and Danny Barton, who also plays as Wolf Solent, as well as being in Cowgirl and previously White Firs. Long-term and consistent enough to have released four previous albums. And what all of these projects has in common is a deep appreciation of US alt-rock, which comes through in the sound.
But something happened to make this one a bit different. As Forrest explains, ‘'I'd originally written a slowcore album influenced by bands like Come and Codeine, but it was hard to play and not much fun either. So we decided to write lots of fast punk songs in our practice room instead. I wanted to keep things fairly raw as I'd been listening to lots of blues artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell as well as punk records like Poison Idea's 'Feel The Darkness'. Plus Pacific Northwest bands like Mudhoney and Wipers have always been a touchstone for me.’'
In short, they said ‘fuck it’, canned the original plan and laid down a whole fifteen-song album – with a running time of a supremely tight 32 minutes in just 10 hours at Fairview Studios in Hull with John Spence (Happy Mondays, The Sisters of Mercy, The Mekons) at the controls.
Blasting off with the raw punk thrashabout of ‘Apathy in the UK’, a sub-two-minute dissection of the state of the nation, ‘Fuck It’ is fast and furious. With the lyrics thrown together on the spot, there’s a keen sense of immediacy, not to mention a directness and lack of self-censorship.
‘As we were making up the songs on the spot, I was primarily singing about whatever we were talking about in the practice room. This meant that I wasn't just complaining about myself as normal, but instead singing about things going on in the real world like politics, the monarchy and things like that.’
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For an artist who’s been recording and releasing music for so long, such a shift in approach is like cutting the ropes on the parachute – but listening to ‘Fuck It’, you can hear the creative liberation in every line, and the fact the songs were, to all intents and purposes, recorded live really gives is a visceral punch. In place the punky / grunge vibe leans over further towards hardcore as the pace and fury explode – as is nowhere more evident on the hell-for-leather racket of ‘Do It Or Die’.
‘Friend No More’ is hard and fast and uncomplicated, landing in the realms of ‘Bleach’-era Nirvana, and anti-Trump rager ‘Piece of Shit’ speaks for itself, and the final track, ‘Killing for God’ makes for a blistering hundred-mile-an-hour finale.
Beyond boasting thick riffs and some quite nice vocal melodies amidst the fire and the fury, ‘Fuck It’ is a great record because it’s an honest response to the world right now. Everything is insane, everything is fucked, and it’s so, so hard to unravel the complex layers of the thoughts and emotions living in it provokes that it’s often difficult to know where to start. So instead of trying to be clever, or falling mute, Sewage Farm have gone primal. It’s the sanest reaction to an insane world.
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