Named after an accident where a local farmer lost an arm to a shredding machine, FARMING INCIDENT have at last released their long awaited debut. You might think by the title of the album that the band have some grandoise plan to conquer the, er, world, but not at all. It simply refers to the length of time its taken them to produce the album.
Formed in early 1999, this four-piece punk outfit from Leeds have been rumbling under the public conciousness for a couple of years now. This should nicely push them through to a wider audience; even though they maintain on calling themselves Agent (then surname), and consider a pig called Derek to be their leader! No, seriously.
Although the production values on 'Our Glorious 5 Year Plan' leave much to be desired, the lo-fi nature of the sound enhances the atmosphere and power of the songs giving an authentic rasp to the proceedings, and at times it sounds like Agent Mays is bashing a cardboard box instead of a drum kit.
There are various nods to their musical influences past and present here, as a lot of this sounds like Mark E. Smith fronting a Buzzcocks/Wedding Present hybrid. I know, it does sound tasty, doesn't it? And to be honest, most of it is.
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There's great titles like 'When Your Political Ideology Has Gone Out Of Fahion', and 'The Harder You Fall, The Better Life Gets' which musically owe as much to the likes of the No Code era Pearl Jam as they do to the Northern luminaries mentioned earlier.
'The Equaliser' is all deep brooding bass, crashing drums and a killer hook, and in the softer moments, such as 'Hyde Park', 'Gravitational Lenz' and the spoken word intro to the album closer 'Rostov', the band show they can build and structure their material, as well as thrash with the best of them.
So, with another album due an imminent release, followed by the expectant tour, it would seem Farming Incident are about to feature on rock's radar for a good while yet. And as we seem to be in the era of that horrible creation; the corporate cartoon punk. That's no bad thing in my book.
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