Sleaford Mods - The Demise Of Planet X
★★★★
ROUGH TRADE
Back in the 1980s in his native Grantham, Jason Williamson was wrestled to the ground by a mob of female schoolmates who stripped him from the waist, mockingly nicknaming him The Maggot Man after having a peer at his genitalia. It all came back to him as he pieced together Sleaford Mods 13th LP, the bleak electro throb of Gina Was finding his inner child forever pinned down “on the dirty concrete” struggling vainly to get his dignity back.
A study in personal and global humiliation, The Demise Of Planet X continues Williamson and musical partner Andrew Fearn’s campaign to document fear and loathing in 21st century Britain. With a musical universe constructed entirely of broken parts of The Fall’s The Man Whose Head Expanded, Sleaford Mods’ hand-cranked hip-hop encapsulated the desperate mood of the Brexit age, but if they outlived the Tory government, 2025’s killer combo of war and incipient fascism proved much worse.
The Demise Of Planet X maps this fractured landscape; Williamson expertly spears septic sad-lad banter on Bad Santa and rips into little Englanders on the title track over a grotesque misappropriation of The Magic Roundabout theme tune. However, the target he hits hardest is himself.
A funky cousin of Crass’s Sheep Farming In The Falklands, opener The Good Life morphs from a rant about lame bands to a meditation on Williamson’s need to lash out. Game of Thrones actor Gwendoline Christie shrieks his inner monologue: “Like everybody else alive, I think there’s only this pain in me.”
Gina Was asks difficult questions (“Why do I get so lonely? Why do I get so bored?”) while The Unwrap’s sideswipe at pious musicians’ glib hot takes forces him to re-examine Sleaford Mods’ irascible MO, Williamson concluding: “It’s been done to death to the point that even I feel like: ‘Same old boring cunt in a band’.”
There are sweet moments on The Demise Of Planet X – not least guest appearances from Aldous Harding (Elitist G.O.A.T.) and Life Without Buildings’ Sue Tompkins (No Touch) – and a more delicate musical palette, but the overwhelming mood is one of weariness; with the state of the world and the tedious, endless gotchas. As he puts it on the manic Shoving The Images: “I don’t fucking want a life on social media going, I’m so smart.”
Over a skittish beat and a hellbound bassline, The Unwrap concedes defeat, Williamson admitting that scavenging through other people’s rubbish on Vinted is his happy place as World War III rages around him. “What the fuck are you supposed to do?” he asks. Foul-mouthed but thoughtful, The Demise Of Planet X suggests there is no way out of the global red mist until we identify the inner source of all this rage. Until then, here we are – stretched out, vulnerable, hoping the nightmare will end soon. A bleak situation, but The Maggot Man at least has the tiny consolation of having been here before.
The Demise Of Planet X is out January 17 on Rough Trade.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
Tracklisting:
The Good Life Feat. Gwendoline Christie + Big Special
Double Diamond
Elitest G.O.A.T. Feat. Aldous Harding
Megaton
No Touch Feat. Sue Tompkins
Bad Santa
The Demise Of Planet X
Don Draper
Gina Was
Shoving The Images
Flood The Zone Feat. Liam Bailey
Kill List Feat. Snowy
The Unwrap
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