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Name changes are always tentative and sensitive grounds for any band, and for one with applause earned, albums bought, looped and revered, and intense loyalties forged over a twelve-year run, it’s something that always looks more likely to piss off the most ardent front-row fans than have them share in any artistic sentiments and moral principles.
Isaac Holman (vocals and drums) and Laurie Vincent (guitar) had a lot of work to do when they announced in 2022 that they would be ditching the name Slaves due to shared discomforts over its obvious and serious historic connotations. Despite this sensible reasoning, the backlash was quite forthcoming, something the duo likely anticipated.
Many thought it distinctly “un-punk” for a band then known as Slaves to make a feeble, surface-value attempt to pander to an audience on presumed grounds of so-called political correctness. And for others, they wagered it was their favourite band committing to a complete image change, and with that, a stark and bounding movement away from the sound they had previously defined and gained their fanbase with. Ultimately, it posed a question: how does a punk band, now having shed the name that defined them as much as their sound did, prove all the naysayers wrong?
In short, by telling everyone to f*ck off, and writing an album.
‘Punk’s Dead’ was the first single out of what would eventually become album five ‘Heavy Jelly’, and their own way of answering part one of the above. It’s nearly a year old now, but the track sets the tone for the album to come with Holman and Vincent’s sincerely hilarious attitude to the name change backlash. It's a blistering punk rock cacophony of dense, thundering drums and infectious mosh-pit-inducing guitar work, and Holman’s vocal self-deprecations (directly lifted from all the messages they received because of their name change) change the track into some kind of meta middle finger for all the detractors to sweat over. In short, it’s about the most vindicating way to get back at the overly critical side of a band’s own audience released for some time.
And with part one of their name change quandary now attended to, all SOFT PLAY had to do now was continue the writing process. This bore further fruit with ‘Mirror Muscles’, a tongue-in-cheek homage to bodybuilding resting alongside Vincent’s notably filthy guitar lines that drive and groove alongside Holman’s staccato spoken word and thudding drums.
A few months later came ‘Act Violently’, arguably the most unhinged punk-rock offering to appear on the new album. It is pure circle pit accelerant; barely audible vocal stabs move in tandem with crushing guitar, only opening in the chorus with the revolving anthemic mantra “You make me wanna act violently”.
Undoubtedly the most surprising single release is ‘Everything And Nothing’. Gone are the furious guitars and drums, and instead surprisingly gorgeous mandolin melodies accompany refrained drums and bass, with occasional string swells. Most poignant are Holman’s vocal contributions, a pained and raspy spoken word occasionally melding into the overarching track melody. Holman speaks of keeping above water, reconciliation with loved ones, and rather beautifully, an inward glimpse into a kind of persistent sadness that pervades the attempts to “keep my head above”. It’s an effective duality of gorgeous instrumentation paired with an insistent angst and seeming sadness, and in terms of the album, the only logical way to bring closure to the album. SOFT PLAY may not be known for tracks dealing in introspection and melancholy territories, but let it be known this track is proof of their ability in the opposite.
Where does the rest of ‘Heavy Jelly’ sit alongside the single offerings?
It opens with ‘All Things’, second only to ‘Act Violently’ in terms of unhinged anger, and a worthy introduction to the blistering to come. Notable is the false start, incorporating popular Christian hymn ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’ for all of nineteen seconds before, even more notably, Vincent’s guitar erupts into a swirling cascade of riff and power chords. Kick-drum and snare accompany, and Holman begins his verbal tirade, twisting the evangelical roots of the track’s namesake into something brutal and harsh, equally abusive in his proclamation that “I’m the nicest dickhead you’ve ever met” as his underlying honesty in “Selfish and thoughtful / Selfishly awful I’m all things”. It's that duality of niceness and ugliness, framed around the bastardisation of that quintessentially British glory that marks a solid beginning for the album.
‘Punk’s Dead’ and ‘Act Violently’ throw you into the mosh soon after, and then the mood and sound grows even denser with ‘Isaac Is Typing…’. Swinging drum thuds open the track, before Vincent throws out a slow, sludging guitar riff that carries alongside Holman’s throat-tearing screeches. Then, a beat change in the chorus, no longer swinging, but a forceful, slow tempo thud to elicit further headbanging, and the guitar changes to sweeping riff and chord, broken only by gruff and piercing harmonics - a front-runner for best song on the album if forced to pick.
The end of the previous track immediately heralds ‘Bin Juice Disaster’, a two-minute punk anthem picking apart with serious flippancy the life of a man who has his own bins tipping out onto the floor. Holman’s the protagonist here, likening his situation to “day-time drama” or “disaster movies”, all while the repetition of “Bin juice disaster, what a palava / Bin Juice disaster, day-time drama” moves alongside breakneck drumming and grotesquely low-end guitar.
The tempo shows no sign of slowing at this point. 'Worms On Tarmac' consists of Vincent’s constant guitar chug, a descending riff broken at point with quivering guitar lines. Propulsive drums carry forward the length of this guitar line, all the while anxious guitar feedback slowly creeps up in the background. 'John Wick' does much of the same here. The shortest track on the album, its defining qualities are drums that seem impossibly dense, fuzzed out guitar, and Holman’s vocals now a shrill and cacophonous screech.
‘Mirror Muscles’ pushes us into the mosh pit once again, and then you’re greeted by 'Working Title', arguably the most alt-rock track out of the album. The drums groove along with a shuffling guitar riff punctuated with guitar harmony screech. There’s some synth line bouncing around in the noise, and all the while Holman disparages the “champagne lifestyle” with a convincing ebb and flow. Most surprising is the out-of-nowhere drop in energy at the track’s close, concluding instead with a soft kind of melancholy. Surprising, but not a bad way to end things.
The final dose of familiar punk energy before 'Everything And Nothing' is 'The Mushroom And The Swan'. Nothing more than what you’d have already come to expect at this point – colossal guitars, vocals completely disregarding throat health, breakneck drums, a notable bridge section that builds the tension before that final closing explosion and a penultimate track that surely now, at this point, proves those lingering naysayers wrong about those lost punk credentials.
In a sentence – well done SOFT PLAY. It’s an album that proves all a band needs to do is follow the music and motivation, disregard the criticism, and move forward in a project that, now released to the masses, arguably stands as one of the most explosive, inventive, yet decidedly SOFT PLAY releases.
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