Barnslaughter

Genre: death folk

Era: 1970s-1980s

Country of Origin: UK

1972 was the year that saw the rise of the genre known as “death folk”, and no band typified its farmyard nihilism quite like Barnslaughter. Indeed, their 1971 debut album Ploughman Of Death is considered by some to have given rise to the entire genre, and punishing songs like Satanic Harvest and Barley Suicide defined the movement, reflecting the emotions of literally dozens of disillusioned Wiltshire teenagers for whom The Archers no longer held any meaning.

Barnslaughter dominated the 1970s, releasing four albums over a hectic eight year period – Tractor Eviscerator, Blood Dairy, Disembowelled By Pitchfork and the politically charged Cannibal Common Agricultural Policy Killer – but in 1979 banjo player and songwriter Syd Piggot died of an overdose of hayfever remedy, becoming yet another depressing statistic of an increasingly self-destructive folk scene that had already claimed the lives of The Gloucester Old Spots, Neil Haystack and two members of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Tim, and the group decided to embark in a new direction.

That direction was white supremacy. From the alarming retail-oriented race hate of 1982’s Hell By Date to the frighteningly delusional 1986 concept album Satan’s Grocer, in the 1980s Barnslaughter turned their considerable musical talents almost exclusively towards persuading people not to shop at Handeep Patel’s grocery shop in the band’s home village of Monkflint Giddle.

The change of direction proved to be catastrophic; Barnslaughter’s new-found white supremacist leanings drove away their fans, and eventually, after 1988’s Aryan Shopping failed to chart, the band split and went their separate ways. Today only singer Phil Rurral remains active in the music industry, running the staggeringly unpopular pressure group Musicians Against Blacks And Queers from a maisonette in Trowbridge.

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