After a further slide down the doom spiral with no change and no justice – regardless of who’s in charge – we find ourselves in something of a post-apocalyptic wasteland: deep in ‘The Demise Of Planet X’. Sleaford Mods already played the funeral march for hope in Blighty on 2023’s bruising and vital ‘UK Grim’, but ever since 2013’s breakthrough polemic ‘Austerity Dogs’, the divisive Nottingham noise duo have been barking from behind the bins against a top-down system that loves to watch you fighting over the scraps.
It comes from the gut, laying the piss-stained concrete groundwork for so many names that would fill Brixton Windmill bills and 6 Music playlists in the shouty punky wave since – becoming an institution without the international cool or the riches of others. They are essentially the Sex Pistols of today’s sprechgesang, and remain just as singular and uncompromising.
Not that they’re bitter. “I’m not punching down, lads, I’m gonna style it out,” spits Jason Williamson on opener ‘The Good Life’ – calling it a day on slagging off other bands (he recently buried the hatchet with IDLES’ Joe Talbot in time to get on his Christmas card list). Birmingham soul-punks The Big Special and Star Wars and Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie act out his inner monologue on where to place his rage in a mad world: “I’m the MAGA man with a severed hand, I’m Evel Knievel’s stunt cyclist in a nowhere fucking land”.
Williamson’s fury is soup made from “October 7, then the genocide, this new wave of nationalism in this country, the fact that we haven’t dealt with COVID”, as he told NME, stirred up in a pot with “the rot that is social media, our own problems, introspections and traumas”. ‘Double Diamond’ fights through a hangover, against all the demons waiting at the bottom of the bottle and the bag, the pop-flirting ‘Elitist G.O.A.T’ (assisted by Aldous Harding) takes down those who are activists just for a sense of superiority, and ‘Megaton’ reflects the bewilderment of livestreamed horror, social media culture wars and mass trauma.
Sleaford Mods are never in the same stagnation as the doldrums that inspire them. Williamson’s powerless rage bristles with enough humour, brutal honesty and inventive imagery to keep you guessing, while multi-instrumentalist Andrew Fearn – stepping up as co-producer on this record – adds flashes of genre-clashing colour and light to make this the band’s most musically ambitious and diverse record yet. There’s a cheekiness to the garage-tinged dance rock of ‘No Touch’ featuring Life Without Buildings legend Sue Tompkins, ‘Bad Santa’ breathes with a Massive Attack meets kung-fu B-movie menace, ‘Don Draper’ has the playful hip-hop bounce of a battered Cortina with hydraulics and the title track plays a warped reimagining of The Magic Roundabout theme to take us on a whimsical tour of the asylum.
What do you do after the end? “Buy stuff now,” Williamson offers on the darkweb ska of closer ‘The Unwrap’. You can’t spend your way out of this. Stand up. We may be in never-ending decline, but that doesn’t mean you should take it lying down.
