REVIEW: Bad Sam - Trauma

BAD SAM’s new album Trauma lands with the force of a derailed freight train, all jagged metal and unfiltered rage, but what sits underneath all that racket is a pair of artists who have spent decades turning chaos into craft. The Newport duo, consisting of DEAN BEDDIS and RICHARD GLOVER, have stripped back their operation down to its barest components: one voice carved out of social frustration and lived history, and one musician responsible for the dense, warped engine driving everything forward. The result? A record that’s punk in instinct but refuses to colour inside those old outlines, a collision of garage rock, industrial abrasion, and spoken-word tirades that teeter between gallows humour and genuine despair.

The opener, Emotional Hostage, sets the tone for the rest of the album. We hear a twitching riff, drums that thud like heavy machinery, and BEDDIS pacing through thoughts about nostalgia, self-delusion, and the false comfort of “the way things used to be”. It’s not a song searching for solutions, it’s more of a warning flare that’s bright and bitterly aware that nobody’s bothering to put out the fire. Pedigree Poor narrows the scope, taking a stark look at financial instability with a sound that feels splintered at the edges. There’s an almost documentary bluntness to the way it sketches a life squeezed by systems that were never built for survival, let alone comfort or lavishness. GLOVER layers so many textures beneath the vocal that the track becomes a kind of sonic pressure cooker, as if the noise itself is trying to break free from the conditions it describes.

From there, the album quickly loosens its grip on traditional punk forms and wanders into stranger territory. The Van channels the spirit of vintage protest hip-hop, filtering it through the grime of a damp Welsh rehearsal room, resulting in something equal parts tense and propulsive. Meanwhile, The Monsters Dance leans into the album’s wilder imagery with a swaggering, almost carnival-like vibe, conjuring up images of an unsettling parade you can’t look away from. It’s a grotesque hook, as well as a warning shallowly buried under satire.

Silent Death cools the temperature a little, as it dissolves into cold synth shadows and a pulse that feels almost suited for a club dance floor. It’s far from providing respite though, instead unsettling listeners precisely because it suggests movement while singing about stasis and decay. Then, recently released single Popcorn and Blood plays like a dystopian sideshow, turning the idea of spectacle into a deformed entertainment economy, unnervingly tying right back into what the duo explored on The Monsters Dance. This sits perfectly before Perpetual Consumption, which circles the record back to unrelenting, direct critique: framing consumerism and overconsumption as structural violence, designed to make us destroy ourselves from the inside out.

The final trio of tracks closing Trauma out are uncompromising, circling right back to a more traditional punk framing. Turn You Off distils the album’s frustrations into something lean and combative, almost like BEDDIS and GLOVER are pausing the wider social commentary to address a more personal kind of burnout - the mental drain of living in a constantly connected world. Salute the Media follows with even sharper teeth, openly antagonistic towards the way narratives are crafted and weaponised in the modern age. BEDDIS pushes his delivery into a taut chant, repeating “salute the media” in a harsh mockery of how compliant people are expected to be, and often are. 

The closing song, Tupperware Death Party, ties everything together with a kind of grim celebration. The mood feels strange, half mocking and half mournful, soundtracking a cathartic end without much thought for the aftermath. The track cuts out a little abruptly, with the last half-minute dissolving into a wash of ambient noise, something between wind, far-off detonation, and empty space. This feels very deliberate, leaving the listener suspended in that uneasy hush which suits the dystopian world it’s been describing all along.

Trauma’s willingness to sit in discomfort is what makes it so gripping. BEDDIS and GLOVER aren’t polishing political frustration into marketable slogans; they’re tracing how it feels to live inside this pressure. The record’s raw production amplifies that mood, though it does come with drawbacks. A few tracks bury sharp lyrical ideas beneath so much grit that they sometimes lose a bit of that sting, and there are moments where the intentional roughness turns more murky than meaningful. However, even with those flaws, this record stands out because it refuses passivity. It’s confrontational, grimly satirical, and deeply aware of the structures grinding people down. In a landscape where political punk now often opts for smooth outrage, BAD SAM insist on abrasion. The scratches are the whole point, and the moments of unresolved quiet at the end make their argument louder than any final shout could.

Score: 7/10

Trauma will be released on 28th November 2025, via Property Of The Lost Records.

Words: Zuzanna Pazola

Photos: Bad Sam, Clwb Ffoto