Posts Tagged ‘Rage’

All Are to Return – III

Posted: 27 April 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Tartarus Records – 26th April 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

The mood which pervades all life right now, feels pretty bleak. It’s not only that turning on the news brings endless darkness, with endless reports of multiple wars and families around the globe, but it feels as if a cloud has descended over all existence for all but the mega-wealthy who are living it large, laughing their way around the globe on cruises and in private jets in the knowledge that they’ll be gone and interred in spectacular mausoleums or at least having secured their notes in history and with extensive entries on Wikipedia. My daughter, who’s twelve, and loves retailing me with facts, told me just last night that based on current consumption, oil supplies will be exhausted when she reaches the age of fifty-six. “I don’t want to live til I’m fifty-six,” she said. It wasn’t spoken with an air of pessimism of gloom, but a statement grounded in an acceptance of the hell that the future holds.

It’s in this context that we arrive at III, by extreme experimental duo All Are to Return, who preface their new album with the commentary that ‘We have entered a new age of extinction – of poisoned lands, habitat destruction and encompassing climate catastrophe. AATR III reflects the harshness of life laid bare to the vagaries of capital, of uncaring generations heaping misery on their successors and the life-forms with which they share a fragile biosphere.’

Something I find bewildering is that in the nineties, environmental issues were pretty niche, as was being vegetarian – you’d be hard-pressed to find vegetarian cheese or yucky TVP on the high street, and would only be able to score some half-edible veggie sausages in Holland and Barrett or some crustie hippie shop down some side-street. Now, this is mainstream, and yet still politicians back big businesses who push fracking and deforestation and place profits ahead of what most refer to as ‘sustainability’, but is, ultimately, in reality, ‘survival’.

Perhaps I digress a little, but feel it’s relevant before returning to the pitch which explains how ‘The album’s unmitigated brutality of sound and expression are mediation of these concurrent events. Colossal noise-scapes are shaped with pulsing synth patterns, shredding percussion and vocals that are screams from the void. As a whole, the many-layered compositions carry massive assaults on the senses and a rage unhuman.’

The first few seconds alone are an all-out sonic assault, a blast of harsh static noise, a howling white noise blizzard which hurts. And from thereon in, it only gets harsher, an obliterative wall of noise that goes full Merzbow in no time. It shivers and trembles, grates and vibrates, everything overloading, eardrum-shredding, abrasive, aggressive, snarling, gnarly.

Not everyone ‘gets’ noise: to many, it is just ‘noise’. But noise is a vehicle which provides a unique catharsis, a means of channelling rage which cannot be conveyed in words alone. There are vocals on III, but they’re the sound of demonic torture in a sea of flame.

Thunderous, speaker crackling distortion overloads, and the vocals are butt demented, demonic shrieks buried amidst a skin-stripping nuclear blast. Every track is harsher and louder and denser than the last – and it’s the perfect soundtrack to the world right now. It would equally be a perfect soundtrack to Threads, being pure white-noise, blinding apocalypse in sound.

‘Drift’ is entirely representative: a solid wall of noise, harder and heavier than a slab of concrete – and it is the perfect encapsulation of the rage of life in the now. I sat down to listen to this as Iran rained missiles down on Israel in retaliation for the bombing of their embassy in Syria… Israel immediately vowed to return fire. Gaza has been levelled. We’ve just endured the wettest – and warmest – February and March on record here in the UK and half the country is under water, and many places received the entire rainfall for April in the first week, since when we’ve had more frosts than in the previous two months. Around the globe, wars rage and famine is rife, and frankly, everything is fucked. To think otherwise is delusional. Legacy? It’s clear what the legacy of the 21st Century will be, and ‘Legacy’ encapsulates that perfectly.

All Are to Return articulate their anguish at this fucked-up state of affairs by the medium of the harshest of noise. And it makes perfect sense. III isn’t quite Harsh Noise Wall, but it is fucking brutal. ‘Archive of the Sky’ is nothing short of devastating.

III hurts. It rakes at your guts, it rains heavy blows from every angle. It rapes your ears and pounds your cranium, it thumps your ribs and slays your sense. Every second is a sonic detonation, a devastation annihilation, a squall, a wall, an explosive blast, the sound of the world caving in, the sound of the absolute end. You want to hear the sound of the apocalypse? Listen to this, and live through the end of the world. It’s coming, and sooner than you care to contemplate.

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AATR III Artwork

Kulk – It Gets Worse

Posted: 18 April 2024 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 20th May 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

The latest album from Norwich based two-piece Kulk, It Gets Worse, arrives two and a half years after the release of We Spare Nothing, described as ‘thunderous and experimental’, and honing their ‘unique and monolithic brand of heavy doom and sludge’.

The timing – and the title – couldn’t be more apt. Just when you were probably thinking we’d endured the absolute worst of life on this planet – from Brexit and Trump via a global pandemic and insane inflation and everything money-related being utterly screwed and still getting more painful by the day after 14 years of a Conservative government – it continues to get worse – half the world is at war, the other half the world is either flooded or in flames, and there are mass killings practically every other week. It’s not, then, simply a nihilistic strapline to grab the attention, but pretty much a demonstrable fact. Things never get better – only worse.

The band articulate both the circumstances and the mood when they frame the album thus: “This album is about the universal suffocating weight of hoping for more while navigating a climate where the apparatus for seeking it is being consistently undermined. What it feels like to not only struggle keeping your head above water but to try jumping out from the deep end without losing your trunks. It is selfish guilt and misplaced woe, desire is a distraction from the world at our feet”.

Bookended by short instrumental intro and outro tracks, ‘More’ and ‘Less’, It Gets Worse packs back-to-back balls-out riff-fests, where the bottom end sounds like a bulldozer and the beats sound like bombs. Whereas a lot of stuff on the doom and sludge spectrum is simply plain slow, Kulk are masters of the tempo shift. ‘A Heavy Sigh’ comes on at pace and builds a real groove, before hitting the breaks around two thirds in, at which point it becomes reminiscent of Melvins. The reason Melvins have endured is that – perhaps despite the popular perception – they’ve showcased a remarkable versatility and an urge to experiment, and it’s here that the comparison stands strongest with Kulk: they’re not just big, dirty riffs and shouting, although they do a first-class job of putting those things up front and centre. ‘Out of Reach’ is a pounding, raging roar of frustration amped up and overdriven to the max, hitting that perfect pitch at which blasting out a repetitive riff at skull-splitting decibels is the ultimate catharsis and the only practical and sane response to the world in which we find ourselves.

Things take a turn with ‘Mammoth’ showcasing a more hardcore bent initially, before descending into a howl of feedback, a noise-rock quasar delivered with the most brutal force. The vocals are barely audible, and then things get ever harder and harsher on ‘Beyond Gone’ which goes full industrial, hammering away at a simple, repetitive chord sequence with murderous fury. You feel your adrenaline pumping as they thunder away, combining pure precision with absolute chaos as feedback swirls and squalls all around like an ear-shattering cyclone.

The slower ‘Fountain’ shows considerable restraint and makes for an oppressive four minutes: it brings a bleak mood, and the hit lands late but hard when the distortion slams in. Getting Adam Sykes of Pigsx7 to play on ‘Life Will Wait’ is a major coup, and the track is a belter, built around a hypnotic three-chord riff – because all the best riffs have three chords – and really works the quiet/loud dynamic to the max.

Often, when people – particularly people in my demographic – write of the music of the 90s, it’s with a dewy-eyed nostalgia for their lost youth. Sure, I have my moments, but when I say that It Gets Worse takes me back to the 90s, I’m recalling the excitement of discovering endless obscure little bands cranking out major racket in pubs and tiny venues, some of whom managed to either get records or CDs released by shoestring labels, or otherwise scrape together funds to record and release a 7” or CD – and many of whom didn’t, and only exist in hazy recollections. The point is that these were exciting times. The only positive about living in shit times is that shit times make for good music, as people need an outlet to channel their pain, anguish, frustration, and rage. It Gets Worse is saturated with pain, anguish, frustration, and rage. And because of that, it’s very much a product of our times, and it’s absolutely essential.

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Pissed Jeans – Half Divorced

Posted: 29 February 2024 in Reviews
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Sub Pop – 1st March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

When grunge exploded and was endlessly touted as ‘the voice of a generation’, there was considerable truth in this: as a teen in the early and mid-90s, it felt like a moment in time which was fresh and exciting. After years of polished pop and hip-hop becoming the dominant forms, a breakthrough of music so raw and visceral felt like a tidal wave, crashing through the airwaves and obliterating the endless sameness, while articulating the angst and disaffection that filled the stagnant air at the time. Sub Pop unquestionably played a significant part in bringing these vital bands to the world – the label equivalent of a grass-roots venue putting out records by bands they believed in – and that belief proved to be justified. Even the ones who didn’t go full Nirvana or Hole, like Mudhoney and Tad, were culturally significant and remain so.

Every generation seeks music which speaks both to, and for it, in some way or another. Which brings us, smoothly, to Pissed Jeans. A racketous grunge band on Sub Pop who speak to, and for… well, I sort of feel an audience who are growing up – by which I mean older and more disillusioned all the time – with them. If grunge was initially supposed to be the voice of working class, blue-collar, flannel-shirt and knackered up jeans wearing folks and articulating the angst of the stuck in small town in menial dayjobs, then Pissed Jeans brought a post-millennial, global capitalist, tertiary industry aspect to it. Their appeal has always been their ordinariness: ordinary guys with ordinary office dayjobs, writing songs about the shitness of ordinary life in ordinary office dayjobs, office politics, and generally mundane things that really grind your gears. We love them because when they finally get enough time out of the office to make music, it’s real, and it’s relatable, venting all the frustration and anger that an accumulation of small niggles over the course of a crap day at the office can build to a desire to shout and kick stuff.

Pissed Jeans have always been, if not heart-on-sleeve, a band whose separation between life and art had been fine at most. As the awkwardness and ennui of disaffected youth has faded, so it’s given way to reflections on the tribulations of responsibility and the cloud which descends with the realisation that time is passing – and at an ever-accelerating pace – and what have you got to show for it? You’re still grinding away at the dayjob, you’ve maybe made it to be a call centre team leader or something equally mundane and FUCK!

As much as they’re a band who don’t appear to take themselves too serious, it’s also clear that they’re serious about what they do: they need this outlet, this escape. And so while it’s tempting to focus on Matt Korvette as the lyricist and focal point, their work is very much a collective thing. They all went to school together, and have grown together, and you can imagine them all collectively ad individually navigating arranging band practices around work, wives, and so on. Why Love Now was a dark exploration of office politics and crass chauvinism and the fact that men suck, and attempting to navigate these times as average white men – because when you see average white men posting online in response to the latest grim revelation that it’s ‘not all men’ your heart sinks because it’s clear it’s most men at some time and we all need to do better – isn’t easy when you recognise that you are part of the problem and there’s no escaping it. Korvette’s lyrics are burning with bile, and while loathing abounds, the fiercest, most incandescent anguish manifests as immolatory self-loathing.

Half Divorced is an album burning with blind, impotent rage and life and the hand it deals. It sees the band really dive in hard to their hardcore roots and pack in track after track. Whereas Why Love Now may have ventured into more exploratory territory under the guidance of Lydia Lunch as a producer, with some longer songs, Half Divorced packs them in tight, with most songs coming in well under two minutes, in proper old-school hardcore style, and it’s one of their fiercest collections to yet.

The three singles released in advance, with the latest being ‘Cling to a Poisoned Dream’, are full of dark energy. Whereas its predecessor placed the lyrics more to the fore, they’re often buried in the blurry murk of the furious, balls-out hardcore assault, and overall, Half Divorced is about sonic impact and it rages hard through dingy basslines and squalls of feedback. Half Divorced is an angry record, and you get the impression they’re angry about everything, but a large portion of that anger is inwardly-focused. I mean, what’s more perfectly midlife than making an album that recreates the sound of your teens while being pissed off with work, the world, and the shitness of your ageing self? ‘Alive With Hate’, clocking in at just over a minute and a half is everything the title suggests, and pretty much sums up this dirty articulation of raging while ageing. If they’re overcompensating by cranking it all up a few notches, well, they can overcompensate away: as OFF! demonstrate, age is no barrier to being cool as long as you’ve still got the fire. Right now, Pissed Jeans have got all the fire, and Half Divorced is relentless and raging and as good as they’ve ever been.

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Tyrannus / Magicide – Tory Punching Music

Posted: 16 December 2023 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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Fiadh Productions – 15th December 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

My love of a good split release is something I’ve effused about variously here and elsewhere, and in a way, the contents of this particular split is pretty much secondary to the sentiment. The last thirteen years in the UK have been absolutely fucking shit. That’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. We can’t blame the government for the pandemic, but everything was shit a long time before that, and besides, we can blame them for the shitshow handling of everything, and for the way these disaster capitalist cunts milked every last penny of profit from it for their mates and their vested interests, their undisclosed shareholdings and all the rest.

And I’d keep hearing people defending Johnson, saying ‘he’s doing his best’. Only, he wasn’t. The dishevelled cretin would roll out of bed, half-cocked and probably half-cut after one of the lockdown parties he claims he didn’t know about, babbling bollocks, his only interest being self-interest. And the worst of it is that he wasn’t even the worst. And yet still people defend them, still people vote for them.

I remember watching the news after the last election, and a woman in her 70s appeared being interviewed on a street in Peterborough. She went on about how she was ‘thrilled to bits’ to have the Conservatives back and to have a Conservative MP: she ‘turned out in the pouring rain’ to put her ‘little cross’, and tells why she voted conservative, and how pleased she is that they got in:

“Well it’s the education system really. Oh, and the homeless. So many homeless people here, I’ve never seen it like this.”

And why’s that then? After years and years of Conservative government, you actually buy the line that they’re the part of change? When you say ‘the homeless’, what do you expect this government to do about them? Hire 20,000 more street cleaners by actually retaining 10,000 existing street cleaners and hiring 10,000 more over the next 40 years to come and toss them into refuse trucks? Or round them up into camps and line them up for euthanisation? I’m guessing she meant clean up the streets rather than help them, because well, where’s the fiscal value in that? Anyway, good luck with recruiting minimum wagers to dispose of the bodies once you’ve closed the door to all the Poles and other EU nationals who are currently propping the country up by doing the jobs no-one else wants.

I feel the rage. Every single day. And I feel the urge to punch Tories, and their voters, every single day, too. The current crop of Tories are fucking fascists, and anyone who supports them is complicit.

This EP’s three tracks are a head-shredding blast. Tyrannus bring us ‘Bricks And Flesh, Ashes And Iron’, five minutes of blastbeat-driven snarling black metal that’s both fast and furious, not to mention utterly relentless. It gets the pulse racing alright,and as dark and gnarly as it is, it’s pure, it’s raw, it’s exhilarating, and the guitar solo is absolutely wild.

Magicide give us two tracks, each a minute and thirty-nine seconds long. The contrast is the perfect reminder of the joy of the split release: their offerings bring a different shade of brutality, of pulverising pace. It’s a new hybrid, too, combining frenetic drum ‘n’ bass beats and an industrial edge which calls to mind turn of the millennium Pitch Shifter when they moved away from guttural industrial to create a beat-heavy, post-Prodigy Nu-metal hybrid. Black metal with tripping, stuttering rapidfire drumming, this is simply eye-popping. Thick, trudging riffs growl against grinding percussion and explosive breakbeats. There’s a load of shouting and growling, but the only audible lyric comes when everything pauses for a split second, and the line ‘this is Tory punching music’ rings out crisp and clear, in a strong Scottish accent.

And it is. The EP is full-throttle, an adrenaline rush that really gets you pumped. The message is clear and hard to disagree with for anyone with a brain or a soul. Whether you’re on board with new new labour or not, fuck the Tories. And feel the rage through this EP.

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Ex Everything – Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart

Posted: 16 November 2023 in Albums
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Neurot Recordings – 10th November 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s practically impossible to overstate just how grim things have got lately. It’s not just any one thing, either. The climate is fucked, the economy is fucked, the world is at war. This isn’t about local pockets of fuckedness. It’s all fucked. Ex Everything very much appreciate this, as set out in the notes which accompany Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart: ‘Our world has been gradually falling apart. This may seem like a bleak point of view, but the collapse we’re all witnessing inspired post-mathcore outfit Ex Everything as they created their eruptive debut Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart… “Everything around us–politically, socially, environmentally–seems to be stretching and breaking,” says guitarist Jon Howell. “Our record sits in that terrifying place where you’ve been watching it happen.”

A fair few people I know – my age bracket in particular – have said they’ve stopped watching or reading news because it’s detrimental to their mental health. No doubt it is, but the bliss of ignorance can’t last forever and ignoring everything that’s going on is the ultimate compliance. British politicians in particular repeatedly begin sentences with ‘let me be clear’ – before rolling out an endless ream of obfuscations. So let me be clear. Everything is fucked, and things are only going to get worse.

As their bio summarises, ‘The Bay Area quartet boasts current and former members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves, Mercy Ties, Blowupnihilist, Less Art and others, but listeners shouldn’t mistake this for a short-term project or side band. This is a priority, every member focused and committed, and it only takes a few minutes with the album to understand how serious they are. “This band is completely its own thing,” says Howell. “It addresses the part of us that wants to write fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music.”’

Fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music is precisely what these chaotic, knotty, messy times call for. It feels as if the world was waiting for the pandemic to end to go absolutely all out to annihilate one another. There has, throughout history, always been a war somewhere, but now, there’s pretty much a war everywhere, and in less violent, bloody battles, governments wage war on the poor in the interest of ‘the economy’ and fuck over society’s most vulnerable, from the unemployed to the disabled, not to mention the homeless, the wounded, mostly in the interests of capitalism.

Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart packs eight hard-hitting, heavy tracks which rage and rage and rage and hit so hard, in a furious frenzy. The guitars are often busy and brittle and mathy, but the rhythm section is welded together and blast the hardest sonic attack. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is the sum of its parts, and that’s a positive here: it brings together the best elements of the contributors and fuses them into something tight, taut, uncomfortable. Single cut ‘Exiting the Vampire Castle’ is exemplary: full-throttle noise rock with dominated by shuddering bass and thunderous drums, with guitars which are both grimy but also reverby clanging over the top, while the vocals and raw and nihilistic. This is some full-on angst: ‘A Sermon in Praise of Corruption’ is a full-on, blistering rager, and there really isn’t much let-up in terms of ferocity. This is an unashamedly political album, as titles such as ‘Slow cancellation of the Future’, ‘The Last Global Slaughter’ and ‘Plunder, Cultivate, Fabricate’ suggest. These are highly political times, so it’s only right that Ex Everything tackle the issues.

There is detail, there are moments where they pull back on the pace and the blunt force, but they’re brief, and serve ultimately to accentuate the immense and intense power of the rest of the album when they put their collective foot hard on the pedal And drive forward hard.

In the face of everything, rational contemplation and collected consideration are difficult. The real urge is to give in to the temptation to simply give up, give in, and to scream at the world to fuck off. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart comes close, but better than that, it noisily articulates the nihilistic rage which sprays in all directions. There’s no one thing that’s shit or fucked up: it’s everything. And sometimes the only way to deal is to let it all out. Ex Everything do that, channelling every last drop of fury into this bleak and hefty beast of an album.

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False Fed – Let Them Eat Fake

Posted: 11 October 2023 in Albums
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Neurot Recordings – 13 October 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Let Them Eat Fake may be False Fed’s debut, but the members have between them a substantial catalogue of releases. The band comprises Discharge frontman Jeff Janiak, Amebix guitarist Stig C. Miller, Nausea, Ministry and Amebix drummer Roy Mayorga, and JP Parsons, and collectively, we’re told that this album sees them ‘all stepping outside their musical comfort zones to present an album of discomfort and rage in the face of reality’.

The solid, throbbing bass, glacial synth and squirming guitar that mark the album’s opening with ‘Superficial’ may come as something of a surprise given this preface: we’re deep in dark post-punk territory here, and it’s a huge shift from the hard, attacking pace of either Discharge or Ministry, as well as an immense stylistic departure. Janiak’s vocals, too, aren’t hardcore hollering, but a resonant baritone, at least unto he breaks our roaring and raging toward the end. The vibe is more UK goth circa ’86 than anything else, but this is fitting, given the many parallels between now and then. Yes, so much for progress: we’re right back to the 80s in a climate of fear and a new cold war… and not just a cold war. Instead of coming together to make some kind of effort to address the self-made catastrophe of climate crisis, we seem hell-bent on destroying one another.

‘The Tyrant Dies’ is more what you’d expect from this bunch: industrial-strength hardcore punk with a metal edge: the blasting punk fury of Discharge with the gritty heft of Ministry… but then the bridge slows things and we’re back in goth territory – well, goth as filtered through a strain of Rammstein – and the portentous refrain of ‘we will rise’ feels like a call to arms while at the same time calling on the ‘undead, undead, undead’ refrain of ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’: it’s time for a resurrection.

This album hits harder as it progresses: the guitars drive harder, the drums roll heavier, and goth, punk, and metal tropes melt together to forge something devastatingly intense. I haven’t heard anything that amalgamates these elements – and so successfully – since Alaric’s End of Mirrors, released in 2016 – also on Neurot.

‘The Big Sleep’ is all driving fury, hell-for-leather drums, chunky, chugging metal guitars, and high-pomp vocals echoing from the chest. Meanwhile, ‘Dreadful Necessities’ comes on like Killing Joke with its taut compressed guitar sound and driving beat. It’s dense, and probably more accurately described as steely grey than dark, since it brings a strong, melodic chorus.

The title – Let Them Eat Fake – may be light-hearted on the surface – but obviously has darker undertones in terms of its reference to class division, and that’s one of the major factors behind the album’s anger. And this is an angry album. Let Them Eat Fake is also an album that has a clear trajectory, and it builds as it progresses, becoming louder, faster, harsher, more angry with each song. By the end, it’s positively incendiary, a full-on roar of fury driven with guitars that burn. And ultimately, it makes sense as an articulation of ‘discomfort and rage in the face of reality’. We’re all feeling it. Reality is pain. Let Them Eat Fake tells is like it is.

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Deadlight Holiday – Full Of Hate

Posted: 10 July 2023 in Singles and EPs
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7th July 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

I recall, when I was growing up, people often being admonished for using the word ‘hate’. ‘It’s such a strong word’, would be the lecture. Usually it was adults telling teens this: no, you don’t ‘hate’ school, you don’t ‘hate’ that band, or that annoying kid in your class. I never saw it as such a big deal. I suppose, on reflection, we were using ‘hate’ in a hyperbolic sense. Now, however, we seem to use the word somewhat less frequently, but feel hate – real hate – being expressed more freely. It’s not pleasant, and while much is said and written about the toxic environments of social media, the real world really isn’t any more pleasant. From toxic work environments to increasingly right-wing governments creating division and stoking hatred of minorities, be they immigrants, the poor, or the disabled, the world we live in is not a nice place to be, and it’s small wonder that mental health issues are at an all-time high.

‘Full of Hate’ isn’t about the outward projection of hate onto individuals or groups, but the inward-focused grapplings of torment, as the accompanying notes explain: ‘The song captures the suffocating feelings of anger and isolation that engulf us and often leave us with a feeling of being confined. Moreover, the song does so within the span of ninety seconds.’

And that it does: they’ve condensed all the intensity of emotion into a minute and a half. Zero fat here. It’s the bass that defines ‘Full of Hate’. By which I mean it’s a 360-degree immersive sound, the thick distortion secondary in impact to the booming frequencies. So dense is the sound that it almost submerges the mechanised drums and growling vocals. The vocals are unexpected, at least on first listen: there’s an association with screaming and full-lunged roaring as giving vent to anger, rage, and catharsis. But on ‘Full of Hate’, the vocals are controlled, focused, all the more difficult to process in context. There are some moments of dodgy autotune, but overall, it’s that sense of keeping a lid on things that suggests psychopathy, and which renders ‘Full Of Hate’ all the darker, all the more intense.

It’s one powerful, tension-blasting minute-and-a-half that’s awkward and uncomfortable, seething rather than foaming as the rage flows.

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Listen: ‘Land Lord’ by Godflesh

Posted: 31 May 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Godflesh share new track "LAND LORD" from their forthcoming album, PURGE. It’s a track which spirals out in pent-up rage from the first second, distorting and mutating 90’s drum and bass through the Godflesh filter.

About the track Justin comments, “’LAND LORD’ references ownership, entitlement and the objectification of human beings, as practised by almost anyone who wields power.”

Listen to ‘Land Lord’ here:

With the highly anticipated new album PURGE, Godflesh brings a whole host of new dirges and laments. Amongst the many layers of dirt, PURGE mangles 90s hip hop grooves and puts them through the Godflesh filter to create something futuristic in style – and utterly unique.

Both minimal and maximal, Godflesh deliver alien grooves that swing whilst also retaining the psychedelic, bad trip edge with layer upon layer of filth and heaviness – that Godflesh have always been known for. This is, and always has been, feel-bad music.

The title alone – PURGE – references directly how songwriter and creator Justin K. Broadrick utilises Godflesh’s music as a temporary relief from his diagnosed autism and PTSD. It’s the next stage in a journey he has been on since he began creating music, feeling alone and like an outsider in any scene or group, from childhood through to adulthood.

The music of Godflesh gives Broadrick the means to express a lifetime of feeling misunderstood and overwhelmed by hyper-sensitivity. The band is the vehicle to provide some sense of catharsis and transcendence; a way of communicating overload, as well as the constant disenchantment at the human condition, and man’s abuse of power and the systems that chain us.

PURGE references the cycle of horror that man always has and always will put us through; those in positions of power revel in the infliction of pain and horror upon individuals – in the name of their religion, their power, their money, their flags…

PURGE is out on 9th June.

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Benefits – Nails

Posted: 16 April 2023 in Albums
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Invada Records – 21st April 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

‘Eagerly-awaited’ and ‘hotly-anticipated’ are phrases which are often tossed about with abandon when it comes to albums, but Benefits’ debut really has had a lot of people on the edge of their seats for months, and it’s no wonder the limited vinyl and less limited CD sold out well ahead of the release.

Their rise has been truly meteoric, but if ever a band deserved to be catapulted from nowhere to selling out shows up and down the country, it’s Benefits, who’ve done it all by themselves and on their own terms, garnering rave live reviews and scoring interviews in the NME and The Guardian and, well, pretty much everywhere. They don’t only deserve it because of their DIY ethic: they deserve it because they’re an unassuming bunch of guys from the north of England (which in industry terms is an instant disadvantage), and moreover, they’re fucking incredible. And it’s not hyperbole to say that they are the voice of the revolution. It’s unprecedented for a band this sonically abrasive to rocket into a position of such widespread appreciation, and even more so when they’re not readily pigeonholed.

Attitudinally, they’re punk as fuck, but musically, not so much: while there are elements of hardcore in the shouted sociopolitical lyrics and frenetic drumming, there isn’t a guitar in sight, not anything that remotely sounds like one. They’re certainly not metal. And you can’t dance to their tunes – because ‘tunes’ is a bit of a stretch (although that’s no criticism). If their subject matter and modus operandi share some common ground with Sleaford Mods – disaffected, working class, ranty, sweary – they’re leagues apart stylistically. Whereas the Mods will joince and jockey and nab the listener with a battery of pithy one-liners, Benefits are an all-out assault, ever bar a sucker-punch of anger blasted home on a devastating wall of noise.

A fair few tracks here have previously been released as singles, although several previous singles, including the recent ‘Thump’ are notably absent to make room for previously unreleased songs, and the sequencing of the ten tracks which made the cut is spot on.

The first, ‘Marlboro Hundreds’, is a massive blast of percussion that grabs the listener by the throat with its immediate impact. Reject hate! Question everything! Success is subjective! The messages may be simple, but they’re essential, positive, and delivered with sincerity and all the fire that cuts through the bullshit and mediocrity. The grinding electronics take a back seat against the drumming, and the vocals are quite low in the mix, but with a clearly enunciated delivery and a crisp EQ they cut through with a penetrating sharpness that really bites.

The album takes a very sharp turn into darker, less accessible territories: ‘Empire’ is a dark, mangled mess of agonising noise, and defines one of the album’s key themes, namely of the dark terrain of patriotism and nationalism which defines and divides Brexit Britain, while warning of the dangers of passivity and blind acceptance of the echo-chamber of social media and the shit pumped out by the government and right-wing media outlets.

Lead single ‘Warhorse’ is the most overtly song-like song in the set. It’s raw punk with electronics, and the one that could legitimately be described as a cross between Sleaford Mods and IDLES, but with a raging hardcore punk delivery. The slouching dub of ‘Shit Britain’ offers quite different slant, spoken word rap groove.

‘What More Do You Want’ swipes at critics of ‘political correctness gone mad’ and the ‘anti-woke’ wankers and it minimal musical arrangement with stuttering percussion renders it almost spoken with an avant-jazz backing, before horrendous blasts of noise tear forth with such force as to threaten to annihilate the speakers. This is Benefits at their best and most unique.

‘Meat Teeth’ is sparse and plain fucking brutal as Hall rants and raves over a growing tide of distortion and feedback. The track packs so much fury that its impact is immense, especially in its tumultuous climax.

Arguably the definitive Benefits cut, ‘Flag’ incorporates rave elements to test through jingoism and nationalistic bullshit, taking down the kind of cunts who voted Brexit while owning a second home in Spain, the monarchy-loving casually-racist flag-shaggers who sup Carling and love an Indian while bemoaning all the ‘coloured’ doctors in hospitals and surgeries, and the Poles ‘coming over here and taking our jobs’ despite no-one else being willing to sweat it out behind the counter at Costa or pick strawberries for less than minimum wage. It’s the same duality of these so-called ‘patriots’ and past generations that provide the focus of ‘Traitors’ ‘We get the future you deserve’ Hall rages at the boomers who’ve sold out the subsequent generations for buy to let homes and destroying the planet for greed, share dividends, and skiing holidays. His voice cracks as he spits the words, the fury at this fucked-up mess. It’s powerful, and it really does occupy every inch of your being listening to this, because it ignites every nerve in our body to connect with such raw intensity.

‘Council Rust’ brings a more tranquil tone, but it’s not a calmness that comes from seeing the light at the end of the tunnel but from a sense of hopelesness, of feeling battered and bereft. Nails leaves you feeling drained, but uplifted. Yes, everything is fucking shit, but you are not alone: Benefits know, and articulate those tensing muscles and clenching fists and heart palpitations and moments where you feel as if you can’t quite breathe into incendiary sonic blasts. Benefits are without doubt the most essential band in (shit) Britain right now. And with Nails, they have, indeed, nailed it.

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