Benefits – Album Launch – Coventry – live Review

Just Dropped In Records Present Beneifits Album Launch of Constant Noise – Just Dropped In Records – Coventry – 27th March 2025

We have never cover an album launch show before, it’s a bit odd really, the whole concept and we didn’t really know what to expect. However, the fact that Benefits are just at the local record shop is enough to get us down there. What we got was something pretty special.

I got the times wrong so I find myself in the Brewery drinking and chatting with my daughter an hour and a half before the start. A growing band of like minded music fans join us as we wait. The photographer turns up and I buy my daughter Daisy a ticket, we head into the record shop. Me and Daisy end up chatting to Robbie from the band and he enthuses about the venue. There’s a decent crowd in and, from what people were chatting about earlier, expectations are high.

The two of them come onto the small stage and they introduce the set by saying that they’re very proud of the album, thanks for coming, so fuck off! Kingsley smiles, turns away and says ‘I’m looking up in awe at a mountain of shit’ synths slide in underneath and the words become poetry and then become raw emotion. Robbie Major plays a violin to add to the sound and Kingsley uses his whole body to bring out the words and how he feels about them. It’s very personal and very emotionally charged.

The droning synths rise around it all and the violin continues, another poem/song begins and it’s all about that rising and falling drone. This is wonderful. The Photographer is standing watching next to me and my daughter has her mouth open in awe. They really are that good. Beats start and immediately skip, the poetry moves on. I can’t hear the words properly so can’t make it all out, but then when he sings, wrapped in the mic cord, moving hypnotically you know this is everything to them. I hear snatches, ‘Hail to the thief’ catches me. The vocals are lost again as the beats strengthen and Kingsley is hitting the synths on his side of the stage, shouting, he sounds tortured, the beats stop and the droning carries on Then it’s thrash drums, synths echoing thrash guitars and Kingsley shouts with a perfect hard core punk vocal, the music battles the poetry and then it all falls away and it’s just the drone of noise again, synths and he just talks sense, questions that make sense.

The poetry shifts and the violin is back, the words are hitting me hard and he stops talking and sings over the droning and fills us up. He talks and I’m sorry, but I’d need to quote every word for the full impact of this to come through in my writing, just take it from me.. It’s political, personal, emotional and at this moment in time means absolutely everything. They are true Hard Core, not in the sense of Punk although that’s certainly in there and not in the sense of shocking, but again, that’s part of it too. They are lost and alone, out there in the synth drone wilderness that sweeps around the boarded up shop fronts and hopelessness that seeps through the cracks in this tired country.

The beat slips into techno and the Middlesbrough accent comes through stronger as he talks. It feels delicate and frail like the emotions are too much and the whole thing might crack, but it’s as hard as nails driven into a piece of old warped wood. Kingsley feels every word and lets us know as he pulls his tee shirt, yanks on the mic lead and hits the equipment. His face tells its own story of what these words are, he has no poker face, his heart is there on his sleeve. Robbie is making the sounds, not catching the eye and I think that’s on purpose, he is absorbed in the drones, synths and the noises he teases out of the violin. There’s nothing spare, no slack, just this wonderful groove.

My daughter turns to me and says under the music, ‘I start by writing poetry but end up wanting to shout at the world as well’ I think that sums it up pretty well. Kingsley talks, you’d think that the message would be easier to feel if he shouted but the point is made better by being softer, the emotions seem stronger. There’s no gaps for applause, they just keep going. Layers of drone and noise break into that voice again and the violin. Kingsley now looks terrifying as he just chants ‘Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah’. Then they stop and we make lots of noise.

Kingsley smiles and tells us about playing in Coventry before with his old band who played real instruments, and he talks about the record shop and how nervous they are, he says that’s why they don’t stop for clapping because when he’s anxious he just talks shite. There is lots of chat and laughter. He is self-effacing and embarrassed but when the music starts again it means more because we’ve seen the warm, friendly human behind the words. It’s guitars now, coming from somewhere in the machinery and a slice of shit life story, the violin plays and he sings ‘Everything is going to be alright’ like someone hanging on by their fingernails. It’s beyond lost. Kingsley talks again and then hands the mic to Robbie to stop himself from talking, Robbie quietly declares Free Palestine and how he has always voted Labour but what they are doing to the benefit system is reprehensible.
They do the last two songs on the album, as Kingsley says, the two most depressing, and they bloody are. Waves of synth drone and hopelessness and more brilliant poetry, Kingsley says that they refuse to finish like that, so the last song is a mass of vitriol and hate. Anger and noise which then, just stops.

Honestly, I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect to come out of that not being able to listen to anything but my new CD for the next twenty four hours, I never expected to be deflated when I realised I was away when they play down the road next month. I just never expected it to be that bloody good. Benefits, get on them now, you won’t look back once you do.

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Benefits