Judging by his on-wax persona, Sleaford Mods vocalist Jason Williamson is the sort of guy you’d cross the street to avoid. He’s a yeller, a brawler, a complainer with a quick fuse, mad about his job and whatever he saw on TV. Although the title of Sleaford Mods’ 13th album, The Demise of Planet X, references a mid-’90s doomsday theory, the environs will be plenty familiar to listeners—in Williamson’s England, apocalypse is a day ending in Y. The Nottingham outfit dramatizes the ravages of austerity and class warfare, distilling elements of punk, rap, and electronica into a chest-thumping fury. Williamson’s pugnacious lyrics are grounded in manual labor and local indignities, but Planet X’s malaise transcends any neighborhood or job site, toeing the line between angst and grievance.
The collision of genres fashions a delicate niche, but Planet X’s most striking moments are its most deconstructed. The spoken-word format of “Double Diamond” reveals Williamson’s instinctual tics, gripes about affordability and the food supply curdling into snipes at addicts and criminals. Like a man shaking a fist from his stoop, he’s an unhinged force of nature who, nevertheless, makes some compelling points. The couplets rhyme—mostly—but his rhythms are irregular, more implicit than embodied. It’s bright and unassuming vocal theater, Williamson inhabiting multiple characters, adding friction to a slice-of-life tableau.
Andrew Fearn’s production on Planet X is typically circuitous, rigid loops pumping like factory machinery. “Elitest G.O.A.T.” and “Megaton” are sturdy drum-and-bass compositions, their edges softened by repetition. There are periodic digressions: the pulsating title track grows busier and livelier over the course of Williamson’s verses, and “Don Draper” saunters into a warm instrumental hook. The discursions also make for some uneasy tonal shifts. On “The Good Life,” schoolyard taunts are bracketed by a melodramatic chorus courtesy of fellow British punks Big Special, a meandering passage about ghosts and liberation. It lends structure and contrast to the arrangement, but the pacing and imagery clash—you wouldn’t suppose the collaborators ever shared a room.
At worst, Williamson is prone to rebel-without-a-cause gesturing (“We don’t fuckin’ like anyone, the demise of Planet X/We’re not in agreement, I’ve fucked you off like Little Mix”) and the sort of jabs that would get you booed off Freestyle Friday (“You think you’re Nasty Nas/You’re just cringey as”). Planet X is testament to Williamson’s prolific songwriting and uncompromising outlook, yet its strongest tracks juxtapose him with a second vocalist, reining him in pursuit of common ground. Reggae singer Liam Bailey joins for the final strains of “Flood the Zone,” infusing the arrangement with welcome melody; on “Kill List,” Nottingham rapper Snowy veers around Fearn’s drums with righteous multisyllabic rhymes. It’s a blueprint—diatribe spelled out in dialogue—that might prepare Sleaford Mods for whatever lies ahead.
