Do you miss off the wall 70s eccentrics Devo? Do you yearn for the cartoon rave-punk of Hadouken!? Are the three Michael’s (and The Shoe of course!) of Slime City one of your favourite live bands? Do you revel in the music of Glasgow legends The Mickey 9’s? If you answered “yes” to any, or all, of the above, then your new favourite band comes in the form of the anarchic comic-nihilism of Hens Bens.
The bands genre-bending debut album is World’s Strongest Band, thirteen tracks of chaotic electro-punk pandemonium. You could equally change one of the vowels in the album title and it would be equally true, the music being so radically leftfield in its offbeat eccentricity, and with some riotously outlandish lyrical tales meaning its general weirdness causes a wide grin to spread across this listener’s face.
Listening to World’s Strongest Band creates a welcome distraction from the realities of 2025, you cannot help but give the album your undivided attention, the songs are a massively welcome detachment from the WTF reality that is now the norm in worldwide society, a society whose leaders seem to be intent on hurtling headlong into an Orwellian/Atwoodian dystopian future.
The album hurtles chaotically into your conscience with the 30 second instrumental, Wake Up Hens Bens. If this gloriously discombobulating electro punk clash doesn’t grab your attention and drag you into Hens Bens fucked up world of tumultuous noise, you’re clearly not listening properly. Before you know it, the insane racket continues into first song proper, Fuck Off Phillip, an intense headfuck of searing guitar riffs, effects heavy vocals, and synth lines coming together in one highly infectious clamouring cacophony which has me reading several scenarios into the story ultimately wondering what the fuck Phillip did to offend so…
There is a Hens Bens autobiographical thread that runs through the core of the album, songs like Cabbage with the addition of its analog computer game bleeps and bloops that run alongside the the intense pulsating electronic beats and crunching guitar riff head rush and provide the insanely discordant heartbeat of the album. A heart that feels likely to burst at any time, the songs injected with the proverbial steroids they allude to in the song, in which they decide to become the worlds strongest band to stand up to the bullies of their past. Perhaps those bullies came in the form of the Wanker in the following song, “you were a wanker in school, you were a wanker it’s true, I saw you on the news, and you’re a wanker now too”, I’m sure we all remember at LEAST one of those…?
The end of Wanker comes to soon… and before you know it, the intensity of the album comes down slightly for Your Favourite Band is On Drugs Again, a hilariously on point song about <insertwhicheverbandpopsintoyourheadwhenyou listentothelyrics>, which lists all the tropes you’ve witnessed with desperate bands making a comeback as all their money has disappeared up their nose (or similar).
The maniacal pace dials up again on I Don’t Feel Very Well, perhaps a commentary on the bizarre memory of what happened a mere few years ago… before jumping into the future, 2095 to be precise, and blending it with the past, the reformation of Hens Bens by their ancestors on Son on Hens Bens welcomed by the addition of a melody that wouldn’t have sounded out of place when you beat a “big boss” on a retro computer game. If at all possible the pace steps up several notches on Thirsty, the clamourous noise created is like a whirlwind of epic proportions which is almost enough to overload my tiny mind, millions of neurons firing off simultaneously. I guarantee Chief will have you wryly smiling about every over the top US action movie you’ve ever seen, a bit like the unbelievable movie reality of the current US Presidency, before things are brought back closer to home with the autobiographical I Used to Work in Tesco (they did!)
If you want to find out what happened to the Worlds Strongest Band then Macho will reveal all. I did say that this album would take you away from the dystopian reality of 2025, this wasn’t quite true, as there is politics involved in this song, but when I say this alludes to a situation when the near annihilation of the planet is precipitated by a queue in Greggs, you’ll catch my drift. The album nears its own explosive zenith with penultimate track the self explanatory I Had an Argument with the Guy From Sleaford Mods on Social Media… but musically there can only be one song to end the album as the intensity builds to furiously incendiary levels, the over stimulation of all my neurons firing at once while listening to I Can’t Draw Hands nearing critical levels… but the album ends in contemplative style with some Space Invaders type analog computer game noises and the big question that is now surely on everyone’s lips “will I ever see Hens Bens again”?
If you think you can handle the Worlds Strongest Band, their album launch show is on March 6th in Sneaky Pete’s alongside Michael M and Arrows Meet.