Released:
1 July 2002, Gallo, GWVCD 38

Website:
Battery 9

About the album Sondebok:
By lead singer, songwriter and guitarist Paul Riekert

"The title translates as 'scapegoat' - that great old tradition of "heaping the sins of the village upon some unsuspecting goat and chasing it off into the desert." The album mainly deals with the matter from the perspective of the goat. The term is also used in Afrikaans as "shit-stirrer" or "bad apple".

Sondebok is "cleaner" than the other albums - more scarred but with naked electronics. Although it offers a rich palate of timbres, it sounds more stripped, which makes it even more relentless and unforgiving. Still guitar-heavy in parts, it does not conform to the specifications of the beat mafia: it has rhythms and influences from many styles and genres including, but not limited to, hard techno, hip-hop, dub, big beat, hard-step.

The view is still cynical, and deals with negative emotions, the darker side of the human psyche - also with the inevitable catharsis following those moments of honest rage. Humour is as much part of this cynicism as the negative stuff. The music and subject matter never takes itself too seriously".

One of the few rock bands that has survived into the new millennium in South Africa, Battery 9's career is only just beginning.