Teeside’s Benefits first came across my desk all the way back in the summer of 2020, when they were a lockdown breath of fresh air, which I described at the time as “social commentary at it’s rawest and bleakest, a glorious slice of gritty, real life.”
And not a lot has changed since then, their April 2023 debut album NAILS, was a expression of anger and disillusionment fuelled by the absolute state of this nation, railing against Brexit, Boris, pretty much everything bad about the country, and was a fiery, brutal record which ended up as one of the best of the year on this very website.
So here we find them just two long years later, and surely as everything’s so great now, you’d find them struggling for source material, what on earth could they have to moan about? (I jest, of course, sadly). The one big change that has occurred is they have gone from a proper band set-up to just a two-piece, and having seen them live recently, it’s a game-changing move, and one that has been the making of this collection of songs.
The title track opens as a moody scene setter, it’s opening line “I’m looking up in awe at a mountain of sh*t” preparing us for the onslaught that is coming our way. “We’re drowning in a sea of mass middle-class laughter”, vocalist Kingsley Hall correctly tells us, over some haunting backing vocals, and the sparseness makes you feel uneasy, just one song in.
The sonic claustrophobia is broken with the lead single, the comparably radio-friendliness bop of ‘Land Of The Tyrants’ and the Underworld-esque ‘The Victory Lap’, and the confidence that they have gained from the acclaim they’ve received so far is starting to seep through the record like a name through a bar of rock. ‘Lies and Fears’ sums this new-found try-anything attitude up perfectly, it’s a riot, with Hall screaming “Lies, Lies, Lies” over a freestyle drumming masterclass, which sees guest sticksman Neil from Therapy seemingly just be told to go for it and do what he wants.
The mid-point and undoubted stand-out ‘Missiles’ is as stunningly unsettling on record as it was live, when it left their audience silent and slack-jawed. “Alerts on my phone, a few more hundred dead”, perfectly invokes that helplessness in the world today, the seemingly never-ending spectre of everything kicking off on a worldwide scale growing bigger every day, filling us both with fear and a powerless anxiety, this coupled with the haunting sonic landscape make for quite the panorama.
‘Blame’ is the first track that sounds like it could fit in on their debut, such is the leap forward made on this, with the ending of a dance banger, and it’s hard to think of an album that could have two so disparate tracks nestling side by side to each other.
At times it can all become too much, the points where the sadness pervades the madness, but the beats help with this, their tightness filling in the sparseness, so when they disappear on the likes of ‘Continual’, it’s the music that’s not there that makes you feel even worse, but amongst this, and something very rarely commented upon, is the strength of Hall’s vocal, the controlled menace that lies within, with a clarity that is perfect for what he wants, nay needs, to get across, like a snooker ball in a velvet glove.
‘Divide’ brings a whole new feel to proceedings, it’s rapped (featuring Middlesborough rapper Shakk) closing section brings thoughts of Public Enemy, the mix of the two differing tones evoking a north-east Bomb Squad, concurrently tense and thrilling.
Hall has described their process on this album as “striving for a dark euphoria” and it’s none more prevalent than on the woozy, Pete Doherty guesting, Weak Become Heroes-esque groove ‘Relentless’, whilst‘Terror Forever’ is an breathless interlude delivered over anxious, freely improvised drumming which further showcases their ability to go through the gears over the course of the 51 minutes, as it flies straight into the juddering beats of the Flat Eric sizzle of ‘Dancing On The Tables’, surely a future single. Bearing in mind what’s gone before, ‘Everything Is Going To Be Alright’ is as ironic a title as it could be possible to have, before closing track ‘Burnt Out Family Home’ ends, as the record began, with a chill.
Benefits are a band that you would simultaneously want to become massive, so they would become part of the wider mainstream musical conversation, but you somehow want to keep them hidden, grip them close to your own heart, lean on them in times of your need, keep them all to your self, like an aggressive comfort blanket.
This is a record that could only exist in 2025, as much as you wish it didn’t have to. Stunning.
