The Nottingham, UK-based Sleaford Mods’ newest offering, Demise of Planet X on Rough Trade, is a screed against modern society delivered with a thick East Midlands accent, slang, and a fed-up point of view, set to electro post-punk bump-and-grind.
The duo of Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn have been at this for a long time, and the group’s thirteenth studio album expands their sound with a few more restrained/nuanced beats along with a host of special guests and collaborators. Williamson’s in-your-face, flat, angry delivery will not be for everyone as he snidely rails against technology, politics, male loneliness, morons, and nuclear annihilation. Acting as some twist between spoken word poet, MC and angst-ridden punk, Williamson falls outside of all those traditional roles with his observational statements about the shitification of it all.
Fearn delivers music back to him that touches on a host of genres, including post-punk, warped electropop, bizarre dub, and minimalist new wave, repeating beats and slowly adding instrumentation to keep things from becoming dull. More than in past records, the songs take time to stretch out, as the duo pulls them along and the words.
The best offering hits right from the get-go, “The Good Life” feat. Gwendoline Christie & Big Special is a manic blast of self-questioning rage. Christie (making her musical debut) begins the track with a cackle, before the vibrating beat drops. A gorgeously ghostly chorus warbles out around Williamson’s verbal spitting before Christie returns to rage out, giving voice to the pain most of the world is currently feeling.
Other guests hit their mark as well. Aldous Harding plays the perfect sonic foil to Williamson on “Elitest G.O.A.T”, and Sue Tompkins gives added floating vocals to the stuttering “No Touch”. Liam Thomas adds a strong effort to the Steve Bannon-sampling, politically based “Flood the Zone,” while Snowy drops a powerful verse on the dub-adjacent “Kill List”.
On the less successful side, “Bad Santa” is stuck in neutral, the distorted electro pop (complete with harpsichord) of “Don Draper” runs on too long, and the super cool beat of “Double Diamond” feels wasted behind the straight yelling vocals. Likewise, the singing from Williamson never rises to the polished dance beat of “Gina Was”. Better paired are the huge bass blasts and minimalist bleeps and twitches on the upbeat “Megaton” and the album-closing “The Unwrap,” which sarcastically pushes consumer culture over some of the most engaging music on the record.
Pulsing, abrasive, and unrepentantly unhappy with everything, Sleaford Mods Demise of Planet X is a snapshot of a band/generation disgruntled in current life and who are just fine with letting you know all about it.
