Benefits have announced they’re embarking on a UK and European tour this autumn.
READ MORE: Meet Benefits: an instant punk battlecry against flag-shaggers (and Chris Martin)
Taking to Instagram, the Teesside punks wrote: “NEWS! We’re touring in October! It’s our first time out since we released our debut album early last year! It’s been AGES! In with the new, on sale FRIDAY 10AM.
“We’re really excited to be going to a fair few places we’ve never been before, bringing the electronic radge to Huddersfield, Lancaster, Aberdeen, Stirling, Preston, Utrecht, Ostend, Margate and Newport for the first time.
“As well as returning to towns and cities we love like Glasgow, Edinburgh, Boro, Liverpool, Rotterdam, Southampton, Brighton and London. It’s going to be epic, please get involved, share the joy, share the anger, bring strobes and earplugs.”
Tickets are available on their website at 10am BST this Friday (July 12).
Benefits’ 2024 UK and European tour dates are:
OCTOBER
05 – HUDDERSFIELD, The Parrish
06 – LANCASTER, Kanteena
07 – GLASGOW, Huge and Pint
08 – EDINBURGH, Wee Red Bar
09 – ABERDEEN, Tunnels
10 – STIRLING, Tolbooth
11 – MIDDLESBROUGH, Play Brew
12 – LIVERPOOL, Shipping Forecast
13 – PRESTON, The Ferret
17 – ROTTERDAM, Left of the Dial
18 – UTRECHT, ACU
19 – ROTTERDAM, Left of the dial
20 – OSTEND, Cafe de Zwerver
22 – SOUTHAMPTON, Joiners
23 – BRIGHTON, Hope and Ruin
24 – MARGATE, Where Else
25 – LONDON, The George Tavern
26 – NEWPORT, Le Pub
Last year, NME caught up with Benefits before they performed at Glastonbury’s Left Field stage on the invitation of Billy Bragg, with frontman Kingsley Hall touching on the progress of their second album.
“We want to get stuff out as soon as possible,” he said. “The point of the band originally was to react to current urgencies: political, social or whatever. It could be 750 people drowning in the Med or five millionaires drowning in a submarine, that could be child poverty going through the roof in my constituency. We’ve been promoting ‘Nails’, but now we need to knuckle down and get things sorted.”
In a four-star review of the 2023 album, NME wrote: “The beauty of ‘Nails’ is in its raw and primal urgency; it had to be made and heard now, like government-approved sewage being pumped into a river. However, there’s a sense that the band are yet to assume their ultimate form – their power is still brewing. Hell, they’ll get their chance.”
More recently, the band were among a slew of artists who reacted online to Labour’s landslide victory in UK General Election.
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