Benefits – Missiles Review

Releasing a new track on Christmas Eve is all well and good. There is no need to stop the continuous flow of great work just because a turkey is in the oven. But for those flat out with flu, barely conscious during a period of Feathers McGraw, Georgian wine, and cocoa butter presents, it is something to leave until later. What a New Year’s treat Missiles is, then. Benefits are evolving their form. It is not to put Nails down, an excellent and volatile noise rock achievement, but to seek out more. To figure out where their wordplay can work and to what end. Their escalation of homegrown worries has all the punchiness of the best in class. Anti-war messages are no surprise. To look at the state of the world and come out the other end with something of interest is a moment to be thankful for. Fear-inducing but bristling with hope.  

Some may be numb to conflict and killing. Just because the so-called king is wagging his tongue on your screen does not mean the torment stops. Missiles is, as any protest song should be, a reminder of continuous conflict. One may end but another begins. Those ongoing wars are still firing off as we sit down to our dinner. This is a song of awareness, of disgust. Benefits bring out this feeling well, brutally so. Storming through with their second album, Benefits has only prospered, both lyrically and thematically. That monotone delivery of hundreds dead and the contrast here. We feel ridiculed and ruined by the shallow high street, the social death of a country with little to show for itself. This, Missiles argues, has led to a ruinous realisation. We are dissatisfied with the everyday normalities; the triviality of these average experiences must be overcome.  

There are few better guides than Benefits. A chilling spoken word piece which can find itself tied to the festive period not just through the time of release but also because it is a week of reflection. Those lazy days in the run-up to the New Year may be filled with cheers and laughter for our triumphs, but the blind eye of the wider world will have consequences. So take those cries of positivity for what they are. Benefits are not suggesting we do away with these moments of self-care, the times of reflection where the conclusion is a bright one. But the duo does ask us to remember this may not be permanent. How we react and interact with those around us in the New Year is paramount not just to our successes and shortcomings, but to the very fabric of the world around us.  

Nothing hip about living up to your New Year resolutions if the world around you has crumbled. There are only so many daily walks you can do if the immediate area has an Elephant’s Foot level of radiation. Missiles is as anti-war as it gets for today’s commentaries, very much a Masters of War for the modern man. These are the difficulties of the real world put to song and challenge, not by a duo wanting the world to change on their word, but for the individual to challenge their choices, to maintain some small turn for the better. In individuality comes a chance for a domino effect of hope and goodwill. Surely this is the point of action taken by the average person. Together they strike for something better, and this hope certainly shines through an exceptional piece of work from Benefits.