Benefits
Constant Noise
Release Date: Mar 21, 2025
Genre(s): Electronic, Pop/Rock, Noise-Rock
Record label: Invada
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy Constant Noise from Amazon
Album Review: Constant Noise by Benefits
Exceptionally Good, Based on 3 Critics
Based on rating 9/10
With that release screaming visceral, political fury and raw energy, the band exploded to wider attention against a backdrop of benign sounding artists. Let's be honest, even with those who shared a similar attitude didn't kick as hard. Nothing grabbed listener attention like vocalist Kingsley Hall's fuck you, fuck me, fuck everything sloganeering. Whilst praised to the rafters by many, it was also seen as a very tough, unrelenting listen.
Based on rating 4/5
Wherever your opinion of Benefits' debut album NAILS landed (hard as nails or nails down a chalkboard), their music is impossible to ignore. An incendiary wall of sound smashing against angry sociopolitical spoken (or shouted) words. Divisive, but with enough popular appeal to end up at Glastonbury. Their new album's title, Constant Noise, is a knowing wink to the band's sonic reputation - the album even opens with the title track - but that implied aural punishment is replaced with a moody soundscape where that "constant noise" is instead referenced in the lyrics.
Opinion: Fantastic
"I'm looking up in awe at a mountain of shit," begins the opening refrain of 'Constant Noise', in what's perhaps the perfect metaphor for how so many of us feel right now. It's somewhat hard to comprehend the idea that the world is a much worse place than when Benefits released their 2023 debut 'NAILS', and yet, here we are just two years later, collectively entering a new era of doom. Needless to say, the Teeside outfit - now slimmed down to the duo of Kingsley Hall and Robbie Major - are responding appropriately, with their newest record staring headfirst into the abyss and trying to reckon with it all.
'Constant Noise'
is available now