Teesside noise punk band Benefits have today released their highly anticipated debut album, Nails, on Bristol based label Invada Records.

Our debut album NAILS is out on April 21st on Invada Records. Come see us play it live!
“Benefits are something different, something primal and essential that needs to be heard.” @NME
“An urgent combination of noise rock and spoken word fury.” @RollingStoneUK pic.twitter.com/vphuWXmj2x

— Benefits (@Benefitstheband) March 1, 2023

The scolding LP has already received a great deal of praise, with The Quietus describing it as a “work of volatile physicality and penetrating sincerity“.

Sincerity, indeed, comes to the forefront as the record progresses. In a prophetic mix of Mark E. Smith, John Cooper Clark and Sleaford Mods, Benefits frontman Kingsley Hall’s rageful and blistering attack on the British political and cultural status quo is a brutally honest one. But it is not only the governmental and monarchal oppressors of this country that are the targets of Hall’s indictment; the everyman, and their blissful unawareness of the corroding of the society that they live in, are too apprehended.

“Marlboro Hundreds“, the album opener, acts as a call of arms, of sort, to the ignorantly bliss, and a plea to engage with their problems (“Formulate your own ideas“, “Question everything“, “Don’t let them break you“). This optimistic rhetoric, however, is shrouded and enclosed in a bleak and decrepit setting; alongside the screeching sound of electronic industrial noise, Britain is made up of “industrial wastelands” in “Empire” and is a “prison island” in “Shit Britain“.

Watch the music video for “Shit Britain” below:

The futile and illogical love for nostalgia and past glories is another central theme to Nails. Flags are a recurring motif, and this “musty relic” (“Flag“) is a symbol of the patriotism that is being wielded as a weapon by the powers that be to keep its people in line, making them focus on past glories rather than their current woes. The album, then, is a picture painted by Hall, a picture that shows the disregard that we, as a society, have for our society’s well-being.

Watch the music video for “Flag” below:

Hall confirms this notion as he speaks to Louder Than War, stating that the album is “an attempt at a soundtrack for the times we live in. This difficult age and all that. Not sitting there with our fingers in our ears and an “everything is fine” meme plastered to our brains. I get baffled by people turning a blind eye to it all, to just carry on as if everything is normal, singing twee songs about fuck all.”

Purchase the album now here.

Benefits will also be touring the UK and Europe in support of the album’s release. You can get tickets here.

See below for tour dates:

21/04/2023 – The Rum Shack – Glasgow
22/04 – The Lending Room – Leeds
23/04 – Soup – Manchester
24/04 – Clwb lfor Bach – Cardiff
25/04 – Tunbridge Wells Forum – Tunbridge Wells
26/04 – Chalk – Brighton
27/04 – 100 Club – London
28/04 – Trades Club – Hebden Bridge
29/04 – The Hare and Hounds – Birmingham
30/04 – Cluny – Newcastle
04/05 – The Deer’s Head –  Belfast
05/05 – Kasbah Social Club – Limerick
06/05 – Workmans Club – Dublin
12/05 – The Great Escape 2023 – Brighton and Hove
17/05 – Supersonic – Paris
18/05 – Supersonic – Paris
19/05 – Benefits in Rotterdam – Rotterdam
20/05 – Benefits at London Calling, Amsterdam – Amsterdam
25/05 – Bearded Theory Festival – Walton
27/05 – Dot to Dot Festival – Bristol
28/05 – Dot to Dot Festival – Nottingham