Hot Milk are back with the first look at their second album, the apocalyptic 90 Seconds To Midnight. They told us how they’re getting heavier, how they’re getting angrier, and how they got Frank Skinner in the video…
It’s already shaping up to be a busy 2025 for Hot Milk. The Manchester band are about to head off to the U.S. on tour, before coming back for Slam Dunk in May. Now, they’ve just announced that their second album, Corporation P.O.P, is due to drop on June 27.
Leading duo Han Mee and Jim Shaw decamped to LA last October to write in “basically a compound” with producers Zach Jones (Scene Queen) and KJ Strock (Machine Gun Kelly) for the follow-up to 2023’s A CALL TO THE VOID debut. Here, as well as seeing the Sunset Marquis hotel where fellow Salford son Morrissey resides (“Have you seen it? It’s a shithole,” says Han), they operated with the idea of getting the whole thing done in one swing, feeling like a band, working with real amps, rather than doing everything into a laptop like before.
Then they went on tour, came back for Christmas, and finished the record in their Manchester lock-up. Now, they’ve just dropped the first single, 90 Seconds To Midnight. Not only that, they managed to rope in Brit comedy legend Frank Skinner for the video.
Speaking exclusively to Kerrang!, they reveal how Corporation P.O.P is heavier and angrier than before, with a political lean, and a sarcastic streak of humour.
You’re launching the album with 90 Seconds To Midnight. The Armageddon Clock is at 89 seconds now, you know…
Han: “Exactly – that just shows how you how dire the situation is, and how relevant the song is, because it's already changed. But it's kind of a tongue-in-cheek look at the end of the world. ‘If I'm going to go down, I might as well go down smiling and saying something about it all.’ There’s some philosophy in there. There's bit based on The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. There’s a reference to John Betjeman, who wrote the poem Slough – ‘Come, friendly bombs…’ There's some references in there that are nihilistic viewpoints, I suppose, which is kind of us all over, being aware of this oncoming doom. But it’s also being like, ‘Let's talk about it, but let's give it one of them (puts middle-finger up) and smile at it, you know? It's a balls-to-the-wall, riffy song. It slaps you in the face straight away.”
Jim: “This record is definitely heavier across the board. I don't think there's many songs that are like the old Hot Milk. It was written for live. We were thinking the whole time about how things are going to work live.”
Han: “We've written it all analogue, and it all feels a lot more fucking slamming. The best bit of being in this band is when the four of us are up there playing together. I could just play forever and do it for free. That’s the exciting bit. That's what I wanted from this record.”
You’ve got Frank Skinner in the video. How on earth did that happen?
Han: “He’s a Hot Milk fan. We met him at 2000trees.”
Jim: “He’s a good dude. We played at 2000trees, and afterwards someone from the guitar company who endorse me came up and went, ‘Can you come and meet Frank Skinner and his son?’ We had a good chat, he's a lovely lad. And then I messaged my friend from the guitar company after saying, ‘Could you ask if he’d be in this video?’ We were looking for the protagonist, we call him Charlie, he’s the guy who's ready for these bombs to drop, he's well happy about it, he can't wait for the fucking world to end. Frank was just like, ‘Yeah, I'll come do it. Just get some fish and chips.’”
Han: “I thought it was interesting with the tie-in with Room 101, which is obviously an Orwellian thing, it's in 1984. And also the fact that he wrote Three Lions, which I didn't even know, works with this album, which feels quite British at heart as well. It was a happy accident, really, but he's nailed it.”
British in what way?
Jim: “The album cover was shot in my back alley, and the video was shot literally a five-minute drive for both of us. I used to rent a house in the place where we filmed. So it’s all local, it’s all part of us.”
Han: “We walk them streets daily. We wanted the video to be in the streets we walk about, and the rest of the videos will be as well. Why look further afield when we've got all we need here in Salford?
“I guess… When you're younger, you tend to look further away from home, because you think where you are is shit. But as you get a bit older, you become a bit aware that, ‘Actually, I'm really proud of what we've managed to do locally, like all the bands that came before us.’ Things like that. I've definitely been more accepting of where I'm from, and more proud of it, for sure. I always wanted to run away, and I've done that. I've run away, and it didn't get any better. So I came home, and that's when I finally started to be happier, to accept that, actually, I'm alright here, and I'm meant to be here. That was a big part of the journey of this record: accepting ourselves and not being runaways.”
What’s the meaning behind the album title, Corporation P.O.P?
Han: “We had the title before we had the fucking album. The first time I ever heard the term ‘corporation pop’ was when my granddad used it for water out of the tap. I’d go, ‘Can I have a fizzy drink?’ And he’d say, ‘No. Go and have some corporation pop.’ When we were writing I thought it’d be a funny little turn of events if I called the record that, being signed to a major label. But then also, as the album narrative unravelled, we thought we'd call it P.O.P, because even though this is a political album, we should be talking about the pain modernity has caused us all to neglect. It stands for ‘Payment Of Pain’ – it's the commodification of pain. It’s a bit of a social commentary this record, a bit of an opinion piece.”
Jim: “We originally wanted it to be an entity in itself. But when we were trying to pull all the lyrical ideas into this weird place, it didn't quite work. I guess the corporation, Payment Of Pain, is the New World Order – the world leaders that are earning from our suffering.”
You’ve said it’s almost political in intent. Where’s that sprung from?
Han: “I've always wanted to write a politics record. I have a degree in politics, so it's always been something that I've wanted to incorporate throughout Hot Milk’s past. We've threaded bits and bobs in – we had a song called California's Burning, around the time of the BLM protests. I think there's no better time than right now to do something this. I don't think anyone wants to hear about my break-ups or my emotions about being sad right now. I think I'm quite angry, so there was no choice in the subject matter. It just flowed out of me very, very easily.”
You wrote a lot of it in LA, and you’ve said you basically went out with nothing prepared. How did that go?
Jim: “Circumstance didn't really allow us to write. Writing on tour is not a thing – it’s impossible! We bought a whiteboard and we wrote Corporation P.O.P at the top, and then basically wrote a step-by-step list of how we wanted the album to feel. And that's all we had. We knew we wanted to go in and do a whole album in one go, one cohesive piece, rather than going away and doing three months here, and then a single here, and then this, that and the other. We got into the studio and it was fucking stressful trying to track at the same time as writing. I enjoyed it, but it has also taken years off me.”
Han: “I think it was probably my least favourite record to write, but now we’re like, ‘Okay, that was worth the pain.’ I didn't enjoy the process so much on this one, but I think it's just being in LA. Now I'm done with being in LA, because we wrote a lot of it there, and I was feeling like, ‘I fucking hate it here. I can't wait to go home.’ We wrote 14 songs for the record, and there's 14 on it. We didn't pick and choose any. It just is what came out in the first instance, and we've only moved one song in terms of the order we wrote them on the board.”
What was your daily work routine out in LA?
Jim: “We basically had a 20-minute drive to the studio, where we would listen to the songs and talk about what changes we wanted to do, where we wanted to take them, lyrical ideas, whatever. And then we'd go do a full day in the studio, probably go get a quick bite to eat, or sometimes we were in an Airbnb, so we cooked. And then we’d load it up again at the Airbnb, and work on more stuff at home. We did that for three-and-a-half weeks: bam, bam, bam, bam. We got back and had to immediately go on tour. Oh, my God. It was burnout.”
Han: “We did go partying a little bit, but we tried not to. It's really difficult when you've got mates and they know you're there going, ‘Are you coming out?’ and you're trying to be strict. I've only ever used LA as a fucking sesh place, I’ve never used it as a creative spot, really. So it was really hard when all your fucking sesh mates are messaging. ‘No, I've actually got to do some work, bro!’”
Corporation P.O.P is released on June 27 via Music For Nations. The band play Slam Dunk Festival in May – get your tickets now.
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