Benefits – Relentless Review

Benefits are pulling out all the stops for their Nails follow-up. They have not ditched the rage which guided their exceptional debut but have made peace with a new sound, an articulate push into the spoken-word rock of the times. Frontman Kinglsey Hall stands tall once more on an earnest and open track, Relentless, paving the road towards new album Constant Noise. Their second single is a constant noise. It is once more a kick against the pricks in power. Such is the fundamentals of a rebellious genre. Without it, without the people working so hard to make us feel alive in a time of guttural screams against the tragedies of socio-political collapse, then the genre would be futile. Listeners would do well to keep hold of Benefits and their bold push through an increasingly dire situation. Relentless is not just a call to arms but a reminder of what we have to be, what the band represents.  

Pairing with Pete Doherty is a left-field choice but only goes to show how Benefits, the theme and message so core to their music, is affecting those around them. Their contemporaries and those inspired by them are now pushing forward, rallying against the unfair world. Where Yard Act has the flowery punk pace shining through and a bulk of the indie-oriented genre has the pub scene to fall back on, Relentless relies on the power of straight-to-the-point words of war. What we want against what we do. Punchy, often brutal lyrical suggestions found within share the discontent nature, the lacklustre strikes of a day in the life of the average person on the street. We all crumble when what little joy we have is at the mercy of the vacuum, the fun sponge experience where what we worked so hard to keep burning is sapped. Relentless pairs well with Land of the Tyrants, two sides of the brutal assessment of the UK.  

Because if it is not for the worries of our shift into management, those dreams of breaking through enough of a company to find yourself insulated from redundancy it is the cultural passing, the ignominious many who find respite in the dribbles of pop television or longstanding institutions who follow formulas to their bitter end. Everything from Desert Island Discs to the detestable period of continuing the art which enriches few, Relentless is the sharp counter to what can be defined as a cultural malaise of the early 2020s. Benefits are not keen to rest on their feet and keep moving, a volatile shift in their sound but still saddled with the same intensity, the harsh truths of the cultural and political scene of the UK laid bare by a brilliant set of working minds.  

Challenge yourself and then the world. Relentless wants you to break those pop culture chains, to rise above the crowd and stick your neck out, be it for risk or for furthering yourself in a nontraditional way. Relentless is a powerful piece, one of the very best with how blunt it is, using the Doherty feature not as a tool to push this further up the malignant Spotify schedule but as a way to demonstrate the culture of the past can still be not just relevant but rewarding. We may so often ask what happened to the likely lads, but what truly happened is those influenced by them moved to new circles, to the hopeful embrace of counterculture and its shadow hanging over the charts and the system. Relentless is the big step – the next stage of a complete musical evolution. It is hard not to get carried away by such a bold piece of work from Benefits, but then they have always been an outrageously in-touch project.