The Household Name Records roster is a veritable who’s who in modern-day UK punk. In recent years they have boasted names such as The King Blues, Capdown, Lightyear and Adequate Seven who have gone on to fairly big things, though the last three have since called it a day. In 2004 members of several bands on the label, plus members of other big names in the UK punk scene such as Sonic Boom Six, got together to form a new project called Suicide Bid. ‘The Rot Stops Here’ is their second album, coming a year after their debut entitled ‘This Is The Generation’. Described as a “heady mix of bass heavy dub punk”, ‘The Rot...’ is a brilliant album that is bound to put a smile on the faces of ska fans, punk fans, dub fans or anyone for that matter.
The aforementioned description is a pretty accurate one as each and every song here has a thick texture and feature a bass line that is very prominent giving the album an in-your-face mentality but stops short of being obnoxious. Nearly every song has several vocalists which make Suicide Bid seem like a gang. It follows therefore, that unity is an important theme to the band and therefore the album. The title track, featuring a busy guitar part playing choppy ska chords and slurred, but still impassioned vocals, begs the question “how can we expect to look after each other/ if we can’t look after our earth, our mother?” It is one of many rousing moments on the album and actually one of the more laid back songs(this is largely down to the vocal delivery)on an album brimming with good natured energy.
More energetic songs like
‘Torch Guantanamo Bay’ and
‘Wind Ya Batty’ appropriately feature more lively vocal performances from singers such as Itch from The King Blues and Leila from Sonic Boom Six, and are, as always backed up by intensely strong basslines and dub/reggae instrumentation such as organs and various brass instruments. The latter track features an enjoyable trading of lines between male and female vocalists before uniting to deliver a strong chorus. However, as good as these songs are, they don’t come close to the dub-punk of
‘Like A Lion’ which fuses the two genres together better than any other track on the album. Beginning with a very upbeat, prominent brass riff, the track makes brilliant use of all the different vocalists within the collective to make the brightest, liveliest song on the album.
Throughout ‘The Rot Stops Here’ Suicide Bid mix dub and punk, with amazingly fun results, and it just happens that on ‘Like A Lion’ it works a lot better than on any of the other tracks. While all of the songs here are incredibly enjoyable there is not too much variation here, save for the more lo-fi production of chilled out album-closer
‘Article 2 Dub’. The album follows fairly strict blueprints in regards to producing lively, upbeat ska-punk with heavy dub influences, but this is a minor complaint because it is of such high quality. It’s just a shame that Suicide Bid is a side-project and so touring and releases are infrequent and go under the radar, because they are a band that definitely deserve to be heard.
