Ascension LP by Battery Hens

Portsmouth-based “exploratory punks” Battery Hens – release their debut full-length, Ascension today. Throughout, Battery Hens – Matt Chuter (vocals/guitar), Matthew Tiller (guitar/vocals), Rob Day (bass) and Joff Reid (drums) - take an iconoclastic approach to guitar music. Pulling and tearing away traditional punk arrangements, the band stitches them back together to create an abrasive meditation on death, political structures, nihilism and transformation.

Ascension was self-recorded in various DIY spaces intermittently over a long period of change. Bereavements, fatherhood, career responsibilities and health issues disrupted and informed the albums gestation. The result is a sprawling artefact of a difficult time set against the backdrop of a country gone to shit.

Drawing from the worlds of punk, jazz, noise, prog, metal and new wave, the band abandon conventional song structures in favour of complex, varied and intense composition. Extreme repetition (Monster, Dishcarge, The Agony) effect laden noise (Techno Sex) stream of conscious style elasticity (Lovely Violence, No Mercy) and unconventional time signatures (Creature Comforts, Tax Haven) come together to create a claustrophobic, paranoid and occasionally even cathartic patchwork of songs. Clocking in at just under an hour, the album is intended to be heard in one sitting.

Due to on going personal and health issues the band are currently on hiatus from live shows but hope to continue making raw, challenging and thought provoking music.

Influences – Swans, Drive Like Jehu, Fugazi, Melt Banana, The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, Lightning Bolt, Scott Walkers, Gang Of Four & assorted 70s post-punk

Pessimistic music for optimists.

Post-punk/noise/jazz/math/whatever

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