After a succession of line-up changes, Teesside-based punk-noise band Benefits have solidified as a duo comprised of vocalist/lyricist Kingsley Hall and electronic musician Robbie Major. Their 2023 debut album NAILS was a passionate expression of anger and disillusionment at a society rife with divisive and toxic rhetoric, delivered through brutal noise and spoken-word vitriol. The band’s second album Constant Noise (released 21 March 2025 via Invada Records) marks a bold evolution in both sound and substance, incorporating ominous synths and dance beats resulting in a dark euphoria that addresses sociopolitical crises with Hall’s lyrics acting as a fierce commentary on modern Britain and beyond. The album’s tone is uncompromisingly angry, lamenting the “mountain of shit” that defines online discourse, the constant background roar of misinformation and hostility. Constant Noise’s lyrics serve as both a furious social critique and a personal catharsis, tackling big themes with a clear political intent but also a desire to evolve artistically beyond punk clichés. Dialling back the all-out distortion, blastbeats, and white noise of their earlier work and opting for dream-like synths and doom-laden disco grooves, the music is as unsettling as before, but in a new way. There are plenty of overtly raging bands out there but Constant Noise is more interesting and multi-dimensional, turning basic kindness and honesty into a rebellious act in itself, so that humanity and compassion aren’t seen as weak or boring, but rather as principles worth shouting about.
Constant Noise gleans as much from pioneering UK electronic acts like Underworld and Leftfield as it does from punk, whilst Hall’s vocal delivery owes a clear debt to acts like The Streets and even the Beastie Boys. The album mines ideas from the 90s while moving between genres track-to-track from Faithless-esque bangers to skull-crushing hardcore, with a roster of guest artists and collaborators, welcoming friends and heroes from various genres to contribute. The Libertines frontman Peter Doherty adds a poetic spoken-word passage on Relentless, vocalist Zera Tønin of Nottingham queer electro-punk duo Arch Femmesis appears on Land Of The Tyrants, and British-Iranian rapper and grime artist Shakk trades verses with Hall on Divide, injecting fire and heart.
We caught up with Kingsley Hall to find out more about the themes, sounds and collaborators of Constant Noise:
Hi Kingsley! Constant Noise feels like a real evolution. What were you most afraid of repeating?
Our first album was brutal in pretty much every way and in the end it really took its toll on all of us. We were shedding bandmembers every few months, Robbie’s own brother even quit the group early last year. It was impossible to keep a drummer and we’d lost a bit of the gang camaraderie we needed to keep us going. Benefits only works as a collective with shared goals and ambitions so in the end we went down to our purest and most effective form – just me and Robbie. Even if we wanted to repeat the stylings and fury of the first album we couldn’t really, 18 months of touring it absolutely destroyed my voice. Much of the new album was recorded after some really tough shows and I can hear how broken and cracked my vocals are, there was no way I could have done another album of shouting, let alone tour it. I was sick of spitting blood after shows every night. Plus, why repeat yourself anyway? We’re not a big enough band to have a signature brand or style of music, we can afford to change, some acts get a little locked into a pattern as they have to appease fans or a big label. Luckily, or unluckily, we’re not that popular.
What was the first track that set the tone for this new direction?
The title track was the first one we wrote for the album. As soon as I had the opening line of “I’m looking up in awe at a mountain of shit” it all pretty much wrote itself, and the lyrical theme of the album just flowed from there. Everyone was fed up with were we were at as a band I think, or just shattered, but I was desperate to write something. I didn’t have a synth at the time, so I sung an imagined synth line into a microphone and layered it up with more vocal elements creating this melancholic choral thing. I think people maybe had this preconception that Benefits were a horrific shouty electronic noise monster so it was fun to flip that with hushed spoken word and lush harmony.
Are there songs that grew out of specific events or political moments?
Yeah. All of it. The album is an anti-war album predominantly. There’s numerous references on it to TV sets in the background of our lives set to mute with children screaming away in silence on them, or how apathetic we are to the plight of the most vulnerable in society as we go about our safe western lives. The song Lies And Fear is obviously way more blatant with talk of “hospitals, graves, schools, floored, and not a word from your speakers or billboards, there’s silence about violence from your corporate vocal cords”.
Were there records you returned to for inspiration while making Constant Noise?
Not really to be honest. One of the lyrical themes of the album is reminiscence and we felt it was important to have that feeling mirrored sonically, so I was remembering back to records I loved from the past without actually listening to them. So, albums by Faithless, Underworld, and Leftfield were pinging about in my brain along with memories of that mid 00s scene that my old band was a bit part of. I tend to listen to trash music mostly anyway, ropey 80s rock, music to jog to.
Talk about what it was like inviting your teenage hero Peter Doherty onto your own record.
The guy’s a legend! The Libertines were a massive part of mine and Robbies musical education so when the opportunity arose for us to get him on a song we took it. He’d heard us do a poem on BBC6music and liked it, we met him and things went from there. He was a tricky bugger to tie down to record but we’re really happy with how it turned out. It’s ghostly, ramshackle and unexpected.
What made Zera Tønin the right choice for Land Of The Tyrants?
We played with her band Arch Femmesis in Nottingham and she walked out through strobes and smoke in a wedding veil and proceeded to deliver the most terrifyingly beautiful scream I’ve ever heard. My brain was ticking immediately with thoughts as to how we could try and utilise something like that in one of our songs. We had “Land Of The Tyrants” pretty much done and dusted but it needed a hook, something to dent its sleekness. Zera and her operatic terror was the perfect fit.
How did the collaboration with Shakk come about? Talk about what he added to the song.
I’ve been following Shakk since lockdown. He’s a local rapper and I really admired the fact he didn’t down tools during covid, he was out making videos and spitting rhymes and making beats. Our song Divide needed some pep to push the intensity, I can’t rap to save my life so I asked him to add some bars and he came back to me in less than a day with a thousand ideas, all of which were awesome. We’re not a big band but we have a little bit of a profile and I think it’s important to bring people up with you if you can. Benefits IS a collaborative project, it always has been, it just depends on how much you want to contribute. Shakk gets it and it’s thrilling for us to be able to bring him along to shows and let him blow everyone away.
Do you see Benefits as part of a wider musical movement?
I see us as being aligned with the philosophies of a lot of bands that are around right now yeah, but I think that’s just common decency. We’re anti-war, anti-genocide, anti-hate etc. I’d be concerned if there’s bands out there who are on the opposite side. In musical terms I think there’s a really interesting thing happening where the sort of acts you see at small music venues is evolving and getting pretty thrilling. There’s still loads of guitar and drums bands obviously, there always will be, but there’s now people just turning up with MP3 players and giving it their all on stage for 30 minutes, or samplers, or decks. There’s a really cool variety now at grassroots level that I find fascinating and inspiring, plus audiences are really accepting of it too. Look at someone like Meryl Streek, just a phenomenal performer, but with the most basic set up imaginable. Music, and touring in particular is a bloody expensive thing to do but we can’t just let it become the pastime of the privileged as they’re the only ones who can afford to do it. Only having to get a single hotel room as opposed to putting up a five piece band and crew makes a massive difference.
What does success look like to the pair of you?
It’s an interesting thing as we never intended for any of this. We’ve both been in bands before and were kinda done with the whole industry really. So, when we started Benefits it was just to hook up every week and make a racket, there was no grand plan to push it any further than that. I think because of that looseness, and subsequently the constraints of lockdown, we started to create music in all sorts of styles that we weren’t really familiar with – there was no “oh let’s write a song for radio” ambition, we were just writing for the hell of it. We had no rules as we weren’t trying to appease anyone, it was a really freeing experience. When we’ve tried to write a song for a specific purpose that’s when it’s all fallen apart. Success for us is anything and everything. Getting the chance to play any stage is success. Someone buying a t shirt with our name on it; liking a post; putting our record to the front of the rack in HMV; downloading a song illegally; it’s all success.
What is the ultimate goal of Benefits?
To play in Ibiza.