Due on 21st March via Invada, Teesside’s Benefits return with the announcement of their highly anticipated second album, Constant Noise, alongside Relentless, their new single featuring Peter Doherty. Listen HERE.
Constant Noise follows the band’s widely acclaimed 2023 debut album NAILS, which landed in April last year as a passionate expression of anger and disillusionment about divisive, xenophobic, and toxic rhetoric, all told through the filter of brutal, eviscerating music. Prior to release, the band had generated a word-of-mouth following most artists can only dream of, and after catching the ear of Invada Records (BEAK>, Billy Nomates, and more) co-founder Geoff Barrow (as well as other high-profile fans such as the late great Steve Albini). NAILS delivered on all that early promise and then some, not only earned widespread press support and radio playlist spots, but it also appeared in the album of the year lists from the likes of Louder Than War (#1) who decreed that Benefits boast a ”Metal Machine Music style oscillating feedback re-tooled for angry ravers” in a recent Southampton show review, in addition to BBC Radio 6 Music, and The Quietus.
After such an incendiary year, one that saw the band make their Glastonbury Festival debut and tour across the EU and UK, the question facing both the band and their fans was ‘what’s next?’. ”Maybe it’s better to just give up” muses frontman Kingsley Hall. ”A year of endlessly stopping and starting, building up, getting knocked down, transforming, imploding. I’m sure we split up at one point, but it just slipped our minds, so we carried on. We felt there was no point in just repeating the first album. We’ve never been ones for simply sticking in our lane, plus, it’s been a tough few years – I’ve forgotten how many times we’ve been praised and written off in equal measure. This band is a battle.”
Rather than split up, what the band did instead was re-calibrate. After a going through a succession of drummers, Benefits have now settled as a two-piece made up of Hall and electronic virtuoso Robbie Major. ”We’re still angry and Constant Noise is an angry album, just angry in a different way to before, ” explains Hall. ”There’s plenty of bands around who are more overt and obvious in their rage – just as we were on our debut – and that’s fine, we just wanted to develop something beyond that. We wanted to create something almost joyous in its disgust at the world. If the previous record was black and white, we wanted this to be technicolour.”
The first taste of this new musical direction came in the form of their recent return single, Land Of The Tyrants. The single wsaw the band delving into bass-heavy, dance inflected rhythms and subtle industrial undercurrents. Further new material was debuted to fans over the last month with the band having completed a headline UK / EU tour, as well as supporting Arab Strap in Glasgow, and appearing at the likes of Left Of The Dial and Iceland Airwaves.
Relentless sees them move further into more ambient electronic atmospherics, combining gentle yet ominous synth lines with reserved yet smouldering vocals that focus on spurious halcyon days. The track also features guest vocals from Peter Doherty, a seemingly perfect fit for a collaboration with the band given the biting commentary on the state of life in the U.K. in his earlier work. The track is accompanied by a new video directed by Teesside filmmaker John Kirkbride. Leaning into the gritty 70s/80s uncanny late-night peep-show aesthetics, the video expands on the visual themes of the last single.
”The song is about craving for a past you had that exists perhaps solely in your memory. Yearning your lost youth, when things seemed easier,” comments Hall on the single and collaboration. ”Getting Peter Doherty involved was important not just because he’s a legendary performer but also because he was a hero to both of us when we were getting into music, linking in with the theme of the song. Peter and the Libertines were integral to our musical education and love of music, like it or not, he’s a hugely important factor as to why we do what we do. He’s part of our past and we’re honoured and humbled that he agreed to participate in our future.”
Doherty is just one of the many collaborators on the new record, the previous single also featured Zera Tønin, the singer of queerpop-electro duo Arch Femmesis, whereas Lies And Fear features Neil Cooper of Therapy?, and Divide sees the band bring in Middlesborough rapper Shakk for guest vocals. In addition to guest musicians, the album also features production work from acclaimed electronic musician and friend of the band, James Welsh (signed to Erol Alkan’s Phantasy label), and James Adrian Brown (ex-Pulled Apart By Horses, now electronic/tape loops/noise artist) who helped to guide the new direction.
The result is an album that gleans as much from the likes of Underworld and Leftfield as it does the likes of The Streets or Beastie Boys in their pomp, or even the 90s / early 00s so-called Indie Sleaze era, with some ideas mined and reworked from some of Hall’s former musical endeavours. At other times, the subtle intricacies of the more avant-garde moments such as Missiles call to mind the cinematic work of Popol Vuh, whilst other tracks lean back towards the fierce candour of NAILS such as Terror Forever, which sees breathless vocals delivered over anxious, freely improvised drumming.
Thematically, the album still has an inherent Britishness about it linking back to the themes of NAILS, digging into the misinformation touted by political parties, and their attempts to build a sense of nostalgia you’re not even sure was real in order to manipulate your future. Another looming subject is the spectre of war, the helpless fact that it is ever present in the background of our privileged day to day lives, and the realisation that our troubles and concerns are utterly insignificant buy comparison. The album also segues into the band’s most personal material to date, with Hall examining the existential dread that comes with ageing, the fast passage of time, and the journey of parenthood. It also examines mortality, grief, and the passing of his late father.
”None of this sounds joyous, but believe me, it is, we strived for a dark euphoria, plus it was a thrill to make. It’s an album we’re all immensely proud of,” Hall states. ”We knew it was going to be a risk to go against the formula of our debut, especially as it was so well received by critics, but we never wanted this band to become predictable or get stuck in a rut. We prefer being on the edge of not quite knowing what we’re doing, our discomfort driving creativity. Benefits was designed as a collaborative project and whether that means we get our mate onstage to sing a folk song or ask the drummer from Therapy to play for us, that’s how it survives, and that’s how it will remain.”
Watch the video for Relentless below:
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Benefits | Website | X | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
Constant Noise Tracklisting:
1. Constant Noise
2. Land Of The Tyrants
3. The Victory Lap
4. Lies And Fear
5. Missiles
6. Blame
7. Continual
8. Divide
9. Relentless
10. Terror Forever
11. Dancing On The Tables
12. Everything Is Going To Be Alright
13. The Brambles
14. Burnt Out Family Home
2025 UK tour dates for April 2025. Tickets available HERE from Friday 15th November
22/04 HEBDEN BRIDGE Trades Club
23/04 HULL Social
24/04 NOTTINGHAM Bodega
25/04 LONDON Lexington
26/04 BRISTOL Louisiana
27/04 BIRMINGHAM Hare & Hounds
28/04 LEICESTER Firebug
29/04 GLASGOW Rum Shack
30/04 LEEDS Attic
01/05 MANCHESTER The White Hotel
02/05 GATESHEAD Glasshouse
Photo by Tom White ©
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