Benefits return with ‘90s-leaning single ‘Land of the Tyrants’
“This is a punk move from us, this IS punk, but not as you might know it.”
By Nick Reilly
Benefits have returned with ‘Land of the Tyrants’, the first track to emerge from the Teesside noisemakers since their breakthrough debut album.
Released today (September 17), the new track is the first from the band since becoming a two-piece – frontman Kingsley Hall and electronic mastermind Robbie Major. Hall’s straight-down-the-line spoken word style remains as intact as ever, but their state-of-the-nation songs are now peppered with a 90s’ flecked rhythm too.
“Our songs are still angry, WE are still angry,” said Hall, “but we are approaching it all in a different way. This is a punk move from us, this IS punk, but not as you might know it.”
The track also takes in production from electronic musician James Welsh and a feature from Arch Femmesis’ Zera Tønin on guest vocals.
Explaining the collab, Hall recalled how Arch Femmesis previously supported the group on tour. “In the first song their singer, Zera Tønin, came out masked in a wedding veil and did the most intense, horrifying and strangely musical scream I’ve ever heard,” Hall said.
“It stuck with me for months and the more we wrote and recorded ‘Land of the Tyrants’ the more it became obvious that the entire song should revolve around that amazing vocal hook.”
Describing their 2022 debut NAILS, Hall previously told Rolling Stone UK: ““For me, it’s a document of a difficult time that we happen to be living in now. It doesn’t have answers, but we try not to shirk away from it, and try not to ignore what’s going on in the world.”
“I totally understand why people can have this conception that we’re just this Northern, angry band,” Hall added.
“I’ll go with just being called angry and political, if it gets us a bit of interest,” he says, “and then once we get that interest, I’ll try and flip it a little bit to make people realise that there’s more going on here.”