Benefits: “‘Decency’ doesn’t make for a good headline – no one wants pop stars with principles”

nme.com:

Benefits have spoken to NME about the making of new album ‘Constant Noise’, the battle for principles in music, and making gigs more accessible and affordable.With the Teesside noise-punks’ abrasive but acclaimed 2023 debut album ‘Nails’ hailed by NME for its “raw and primal urgency” – a record that “had to be made and heard now, like government-approved sewage being pumped into a river” – their new record sees the band take a left turn to better reflect the political climate.“What we were doing on the first album was retaliating like-for-like with what I was seeing from more right-wing-centric personalities,” frontman Kingsley Hall told NME. “Their messaging seemed to be quite violent, confrontational and obvious.

What I’ve always felt is that the opposite argument to that, by its nature, is never like that.“You always tie yourself in knots by trying to argue with anything on the right wing, because to attempt to dismantle a basic argument with a complicated one makes everything unravel. ‘Nails’ was intentionally cartoonish and loud, although it wasn’t as simplistic as that.

That was just the world we were living in around lockdown and Brexit – everything became so polarising.”He added: “It still is now, but that was the first time we’d been so obviously pitted as one side against the other: you couldn’t have nuance, it had to be blatant.”For their follow-up ‘Constant Noise’ – released today (Friday March 21) – the duo have retained their untethered rage and unrest at the powers that be, but carried with more subtlety and a sonic palette of much more colour to unravel the intricacies of the band’s message.