There’s no act as consistently fascinating to me as 9 o’clock Nasty. They are prolific, yet their work never stales or drops in quality.
By Graeme Smith
Their latest album is Chaos the third part of “a bit of a trilogy” that includes previous releases Crowland and Culture War. “We just kept writing and recording,” say the band. “Our philosophy has always been that if you’ve got ideas, you should record them right away because it is our incredibly good fortune to be blessed with a flow of stuff. We know that could stop tomorrow.”
I hope it doesn’t because Chaos shows the band at their most relevant. At this point the Leicester-based lads are so steeped in satire that they’ve come out the other side to astute social commentary. The tracks on this album lampoon so many absurd features of modern society that it’s unreal.
It feels the perfect reaction to what’s being going on in recent years. “The premise of the album is that the weird and dangerous future we were all worried about has happened,” explain 9 o’clock Nasty. “It isn’t a question of whether the world will become a less tolerant, more dangerous, more stupid place. It has. Chaos is almost like our diary of waking up to that.”
Vanity, delusion, and the soul-sucking nature of the corporate world are all in the crosshairs. Treatises are delivered against a background of big beats, Beastie Boy-style calls and responses, and floor-filling dance rhythms.
I asked the band about their recent influences. “We listen to a lot of music, and that inevitably spills through. De Staat and Viagra Boys have been on our speakers a lot, and I’ve overdosed on the Sleaford Mods.”
They also namechecked brothers and sisters-in-arms including Boilermen, Obi Denim, The Qwarks, The Margaret Hooligans, I Am The Unicorn Head, and Bad Toaster, some of whom have also passed through our pages.
The key to 9 o’clock Nasty’s music is a process that aims for perfection but acknowledges its unreachable. Each track is subjected to scrutiny. “We can be quite brutal in the recording process,” the band say. “Beast was nearly deleted a fair few times.” When I asked them which track they were most proud of, they name-checked that one.
“You are always making a journey to somewhere; perfection isn’t a place you can arrive at,” they say. “We think we’ve done pretty much everything we can in that really high-impact electro-punk space. We’ve made the big beats, the throbbing bass, and heavy chorus tunes we wanted. Right now, we’re experimenting a little.”
A next chapter promises some more pure rock, post-punk, and stripped back hip-hop, which I suppose marks Chaos as an end of an era. “The working title for the next project is ‘The Dirty South’ and we’re really enjoying trying some quite new ideas for us to freshen up what we do,” the band say.
They’re also promising more gigs. “We’re playing more and enjoying it. Still haven’t made it to York, but the time will come,” they say. I’m sure the Fulford Arms gang would love them.
If you want to keep up to date with all 9 o’clock Nasty are doing, you can do so by checking out their website, and by following them on Facebook, X, Spotify, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Chaos is out now, and you can listen to it below.
