Frontman Kingsley Hall talks to Louder Than Wars Ged Babey about the bands second album Constant Noise which is released on Invada on Friday 21 March 2025
If you have heard the three tracks released so far; Land of The Tyrants, Relentless and Divide then you partially know what to expect from Constant Noise. A whole new chapter and new sound from Benefits the Band, now just Kingsley Hall and Robbie Major.
I’ve spoken to Kingsley before, several times and finally met him in person and saw them live in October 2024.
We have a strange artist/journalist relationship in that Kingsley and I always tend to disagree. Not on-purpose, we just do. (There are differences in age, background, tastes, outlook and so on).
Apparently, I try and portray him as things he is not: – ‘spokesperson for a generation’, punk iconoclast, heroic class warrior… and so on. He is not any of those.
He destroys my preconceptions every time I speak to him.
He ridicules me (for fun) He loses his temper with me (in private) I get frustrated with him, but worry about him. I wonder if he’s got ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’ – that’s not a serious amateur diagnosis, it’s a joke – but the best jokes always have a tiny kernel of truth…
(GB) Constant Noise is a stunning piece of work and the way you have adapted is great – due to circumstance: losing members, not getting a permanent drummer… and by design – not wanting to repeat yourself… so yes, album number two is brilliant – Artistically and in terms of socio-political importance – but I think the running order is not quite right …. You needed the ‘punchier’ dancey tracks FIRST….
(KH) I don’t care what you think.
It’s predictable as hell to frontload albums with punchy stuff: hits first, prick up the ears, grab the attention etc. Boring. As. Fuck. Plus, more importantly, we don’t have any hits.
I know we live in this age where attention spans have been left to rot but come on, we’re just trying to give the audience some credit. The pacing is totally deliberate, I’m glad it’s pissed you off. Count yourself lucky that we didn’t go for our original idea where you’d have to wait even longer for the beats to kick in, to absolutely test your patience. For a time I didn’t want to put any heaviness in until about six songs in, so be grateful I was talked out of it. It’s all about the build-up and when it peaks, and we figured the best place to do this would be the middle of the album not the start.
The beginning is your French onion soup, the middle is your roast dinner with all the trimmings. Yorkshire puddings, the lot. This is art you fucking heathen.
I do love that the album has a lot of variety on it – and the people collaborating have had vital input (the scream on Tyrants, Shakk on Divide…)
We’ve always been a collaborative band really; it was the whole point of the band when we started. We’d turn up to a practice room on a Thursday night and make a racket, but it was rarely the same people two weeks on the trot, you were free to dip in and out. People have always been welcome to be as involved or uninvolved in this thing as they want to be, but our way of doing things works for some but not everyone. We’re not proper traditional musicians who create songs in practice room sessions through blood, sweat and vape smoke and we don’t jam. Me and Robbie send each other emails and finalise songs via text – we created both albums without being in the same room as each other at any time. Likewise, with Shakk and Zera Tonin, all done through texting. The whole album is initially a collaboration between me and Robbie, and then with the producers James Welsh and James Adrian Brown, but we never all sat down and chatted about it or plotted it out. We just got our heads down and got on with it. I get what you’re saying about there being a bit of variety on the album but it’s way more coherent than NAILS, it’s got focus.
I absolutely love the first four seconds of the album: no music, just your voice saying; “I am looking up in awe at a pile of shit.” What an opener! Is that meant to be comical?
I’m very glad you enjoyed the first four seconds of the album. We peaked too early obviously.
Ok let’s talk about “I’m looking up in awe at a pile of shit” … and I don’t mean your Facebook feed Ged.
Ahem, assume rock star voice, I think you can take it in a serious way or a comical one, no rules here, it’s fine. There’s a couple of things going on really. Firstly, it’s designed to stop you in your tracks as it’s a ridiculous statement. Secondly, I suppose there’s a bit of an in-joke about us being a band with a reputation for previously pushing noise and volume to the max, yet here we are opening an album ominously called “Constant Noise” with no harsh power electronics or heavy drones, just a single voice leading into a subtle choral section. But yeah, I mean, it is a ludicrous line, isn’t it? I think the next line is funny too – “piled on after pile on after pile on after pile on” – so there’s pile on in the fighting sense of piling on; pile on meaning quite literally piles of shit on top of piles of shit; pile on but maybe it’s pylon; and pile like piles, haemorrhoids, which aren’t funny really, but they feature in Viz quite a bit. There you go, a couple of jokes to open the album. Laughs galore from the Benefits boys.
Constant Noise (track 1) seems to be about you weighing up expectations of yourself /Benefits – What will I be required to hate today?
Maybe yeah, seems like another little in joke when you say it like that. We’ve presented ourselves over the last few years as a group that likes to have a bit of a moan haven’t we? All this complaining, all this politicking. Just shurrup lads, cheer up. Sing us a nice song. Chippy shouty northerners manging on about whatever has upset them this week. Yeah, in that respect it would seem like a bit of a self own but that’s accidental. It’s all about that shitty feeling of waking up, clambering for your phone at the bedside, pinging it on and blearily looking at what horrendous drivel greets you that morning. Some war. Rapist freed. Royal visit. Then you swipe to the next site and it’s more of the same. Then the next. Then the next. Endlessly scrolling through pages and pages of ill-informed bile, dog memes, football results, celebrity gossip and fascism. And you suddenly realise you’re ten minutes late for work but thankfully know everything about this year’s Eurovision entry.
Tell me about this couplet – are you on about social media (which you seem to spend far too much time on, because you are the bands PR man) We’re drowning in a sea of mass middle class laughter. / An avalanche of twee self-congratulation for the nation.
Not necessarily social media, it’s everything, it’s everywhere, admittedly amplified by the dreaded socials. It’s pub chat, window displays, advertising, telly, supermarket magazine racks, choreographed dance moves, politicians, the lot. It’s about not being able to identify with the dominant voices in society. Know it all fucks on all sides who don’t seem grounded in reality. Obsessed with some sort of glorified good times past that didn’t exist, whether that’s a rose-tinted fantasy land of tea parties and Britpop, or a proper good old fashioned Empire of conquest and bloodshed, where misogyny, bigotry and massive chunks of history are casually swept under the big union flag knitted carpet. It’s modern smugness, knowing winks to the cameraphone, condescending tones. And you know what, maybe it’s me. I’m the one with the problem. Why can’t I just cheer up and go along with all this stuff, take a picture of my dinner, put a nice filter on it, say something like “you know actually he has a point” when some egotistical crank spouts the usual hate filled drivel, and just crack on, regain my ignorance. But I can’t, and I know you can’t either, you’re worse than me. It’s not like I’m longing for the old days either as they were a load of shit too. Just feels like there should be better options.
You seem very self critical and very determined to stop any myth-making about the band – you “over-share” on social media explaining every move you make – is this deliberate demystification?
Again, it’s just a continuation of one of the principles we’ve had with the band from the start – to try and break down the various façades that surround this crooked industry, yeah. Look, we’ve all been in bands before, and we know how easy it is to romanticise about good ol’ rock and roll – the bravado, the posture, the pose – it’s intoxicating. From a fan point of view – and I see myself more as a music fan than anything else – the mythology of it all is a huge draw, Bowie is my favourite artist in the world and his whole career was based on it to an extent. I get it. As a performer the allure is even worse. The temptation to dip into tired old cliches is strong, everyone falls for it and I don’t blame them, I know I have.
It wasn’t even the realisation that the antics of Freddie at Live Aid were sadly out of reach that made us rethink how we should present ourselves, I’m pretty sure it was mainly just boring things like chronic stage fright and anxiety. Plus, from our previous bands we’d seen behind the curtain a bit – the egos, the bullshit, the grimness – and struggled in wanting to be part of it again. It seems like it’s all just singing songs and pratting about on stage, but this is no game for the weak, it will defeat you in the end, you need to be strong, and I don’t think me and Robbie are cut out for it. We like a battle, and we’ll gladly fight for the things we believe in, but I’m not sure we believe in the music industry.
We’re just being realistic and honest about our limitations, nothing more. Saying that though, I find the music industry fascinating, it’s exciting yet repellent, the playing field is comically uneven and, as with most things in this capitalist hellscape, the game is absolutely rigged.
A Victory Lap For Surviving is a great title. You are quite an accomplished poet (although I know they are written for performance with music).
I put it you Kingsley, that you are really a POET hiding behind being a musical performer. Your ‘words’/ lyrics have the flow of poetry, if not sticking to the conventions of the form, the lyrics on Constant Noise are 2025 Grim Northern Shakespeare at times. They really are fucking brilliant.
That’s very kind champ but what I do isn’t poetry and I’m not a poet, I just enjoy writing. I was going through a bit of a miserable period in the first lockdown and reached out to Tom Robinson for a bit of guidance. He spurred me on to try writing in less conventional ways and to stop being so self-conscious about it all. It was a freeing experience, so I just started to write with no concern about verse structure or chorus hooks, not for writing for radio or even if the thing rhymed – to just write from the gut – to not dilly dally about trying to be clever – suck it up and get punchy and expressive. It’s not poetry though, I know proper poets and have seen how they work and perform, it’s not my game.
You are also accused of having the presence and moves of a (semi-pro) DANCER – you are great onstage – and in the videos, the way you move is balletic at times. I’m sure you have had dance-training at some point – if not, you are a natural.
Hahaha! Sadly not!! I do love prancing about on stage but nope, I’m not a dancer. Always been petrified of the dancefloor. I remember when I was a kid getting the dance to some Black Lace songs totally wrong on holiday, absolutely humiliated in the kids club. I never really recovered.
Do you work out at a gym or just exercise at home or jogging/running round the neighbourhood … (or was that just for a video way back?)
I just like running about with headphones on. When my old band split up over ten years ago now, gawd, I was a bit of a wreck and didn’t look very well so took myself to the doctors and told them about all my various ailments, aches, and pains which – long story short – resulted in two major operations and a fun variety of pills and injections to keep me going. I tried to get fit to help with my recovery and it went on from there really. I was really unfit and the first run I did was brutal. I think I went about 100 metres in some cut off shorts and it felt like my lungs were on fire. It’s a mental thing now as well as physical, it’s vital to unplug yourself from all this modern toss, go get some fresh air. Saying that though, the fittest I’ve ever been in my life was when I worked on the bins. It was a fun job but I treated it as exercise, lost a jeans size within a fortnight and jogged from bin to bin for miles every day, absolutely loved it. Not so much fresh air mind.
Am I right in thinking you don’t drink / don’t smoke / don’t do drugs – so what do you do? To unwind?
I still have the occasional drink but nothing like I used to. I’ve thankfully developed an ability to stop or say no, attributes I sadly didn’t have in the past. I took a can of lager to a video shoot the other day – the most recently bought can of lager in the house – thought I might need it for Dutch courage purposes. Turns out it was a year past its sell by date. As for smoking, just quit. Just stop immediately. I know you probably know this, but I care about you and it turns out they’re really, really, really bad for you. The whole packet tells you how they’re going to kill you, and you stink. Your clothes stink, your breath stinks, your hair stinks, your house stinks. You stink of death. I regret every single one.
I also think you have a secret yearning buried deep, to be an ACTOR – you will deny it – but those videos – the camera loves you with ya chiselled cheekbones and coal-black eyes. Maybe five years time? If a great script came along like Dead Mans Shoes you should do it.
Dam right I’ll deny it. My screen ambitions are simple: I’d like to read a bedtime story on CBeebies. I’m good at them now. When I first started reading stories to my little girl it was all a bit uncomfortable, you go through the motions, you don’t live and breathe the story, you play it straight. Not anymore though, I do voices, movements, the lot. If you’re half decent at a couple of different accents, it’s a total breeze. Use Cornish for anything pirate-y or farm related; Yorkshire is good for giants; and reserve your best Cockney twang for baddies.
the final track Burnt Out Family Home, – There has got to be a ‘back-story’, but I hesitate to ask, as it sounds very personal-to-you, so there is no reason why you should tell me, unless you want to?
All the songs are stories Ged. The album is pretty descriptive I think, I hope it’s evident as to what most of the songs are about, whether that’s anti-war, anti-capitalist or whatever. That song is an interesting one I think and I’m glad you’ve picked it out. I used to live in a seaside town not too far from here and I’d walk the dog every morning from the house to the seafront, via a fairly forgettable section of suburbia. Anyway, one morning I walked past a house that had burnt down in the night or the day before and on the lawn were scattered bits of furniture, melted toys and a couple of bouquets of flowers. The song is effectively a memento of that moment and a reminder of my own mortality. I wrote most of it years ago from when I was still living by the sea, but with events of recent years like watching my daughter grow up and the death of my father, I dunno, it felt like a good time to revisit it.
Land of the Tyrants is an outstanding piece. Who is ‘the thief’?
You are.
Have you heard of Oppositional Defiance Disorder?
Decent band, I liked them before they were famous.
I’m gonna talk to Robbie next time.
