Demob Happy

From “OK Computer” to “Screamadelica,” history has proven that a band’s third album is when it all starts to get real. When, after an “introductory” debut and a second album that experiments with new sounds, the particular alchemy of a group finally comes out in a unique, extremely recognizable way; when the chatter and hype has died down for a moment and all that remains is a perfect cocktail of mutual trust, skill and momentum towards the future. It’s a theory that has been proven time and time again, and which Newcastle trio Demob Happy underline with their latest album “Divine Machines”: a third album that best encapsulates its delicate thread of heaviness and melody, sweetness and riffs , and rides it until it reaches a perfect sound.

“It takes almost insane levels of resilience and belief to be an artist, but we’ve put in the work over the years,” begins drummer Tom Armstrong, while frontman and bassist Matthew Marcantonio says, “This is no longer pub music or bars, they’re great songs for great venues.”

In fact, since they formed more than ten years ago in their hometown of Newcastle, Demob Happy have achieved small and large goals step by step and with insistent determination. They have been playing relentlessly, building on the slowly growing interest stemming from 2015’s debut “Dream Soda” and 2018’s “Holy Doom”, traveling the world and touring the United States four times, as well as adding multiple tours from bands support (Jack White, Royal Blood). Meanwhile, they continued to meticulously hone their manufacturing skills to the point where they became independent.

Although, aesthetically, “Divine Machines” comes from a Bladerunner-style sci-fi bent, lyrically the band moves away from the themes of political corruption and modern-world dystopias they have previously described and yearns for something more promising, that comes from within. “I really see what is happening to the human race as a moment in a hero’s journey. We’re at the point in the James Bond film where the bad guys reveal themselves and tell us the plan. We have Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, these absolute supervillains with their rockets doing whatever the fuck they want, and software guru Bill Gates buying up vast swaths of farmland for who knows what. They’re all revealing their plans to humanity and we keep saying, ‘Let’s hope they’re good guys!’” the singer begins.

“What we need is inspiration to change because we will only win this war if the change starts with us. There are huge ripples of that in society, and it’s all distorted through social media, but you can also see people becoming more self-aware. That’s what I wanted to write about: inspiring that change.

These great appeals to empathy constitute the true heart of the new Demob Happy. From the gigantic, rumbling slow build of ‘Earth Mover’ – “a rallying cry for the human race to get off its knees” – to the fizzy, irrepressible rock of ‘Voodoo Science’, “Divine Machines” is an album that truly believes in power of people. The almost AC/DC-esque ‘Tear It Down’ is about “breaking down the lies society has told us and reprogramming ourselves to not see things in this binary way”, while closing with the track ‘Hades Baby’ – recorded with an orchestra at what is now Abbey Road (in Studio Two, no less. “Ironically, it’s a song that challenges billionaires, and we played it for a session on Amazon. Bezos paid for it,” Adam chuckles.

Furthermore, “Divine Machines” also features some of the most emotionally soft songs the trio have written to date. As a whole it’s the product not just of a strange period of sustained work – both on the album and on themselves – but of an entire career spent committing, tirelessly believing in what the band is doing and, slowly but surely, watching the world start to do it with her. “We have never chased success, even though we were encouraged to do so, but we are not interested in doing it that way. We’ve always done what we wanted, but now it seems like it might align with what others want too.”