Skindred: “We needed to regenerate and solidify that it’s the three of us”

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There’s a celebratory air as K! sits down with Benji, Arya and Mikey in an east London bar, the light dappling on the water nearby, while a gentle breeze blows the flags atop the moored canalboats. The camaraderie between this trio is similarly sunny, exhibiting the kind of excitable interplay you’d expect from a band teeing up their first album rather than their ninth. Today happens to be Benji’s birthday, which he’s spending doing one of the things he loves most, celebrating Skindred – specifically the forthcoming LP You Got This – before he and his wife Julie head back to Newport to continue the festivities.

The sticker story is told not just because it’s funny, but because it illustrates the DIY spirit Benji still employs in championing the band he’s fronted since 1998. He even gets the stickers printed himself, regularly ordering 200 at a time, while continuing to haggle over the price when he does.

“He asks me for 50 quid,” Benji says of the supplier, “and I say, ‘I’ll give you 25!’”

Benji remains an irrepressible force of nature who, like the very best frontmen, never appears to be ‘off’. During the course of a few hours in his company, he sings at the top of his lungs, throws shapes and has at least three outfit changes – the most striking being a combination of green blazer, yellow shirt and black slacks, accessorised with a huge red hat that appears to be made from the fur of the Download Dog.

As a result, we barely walk a few hundred yards between a photo studio and this bar before he’s recognised by two guys in their mid-20s, who excitedly admit they had a selfie taken with him at a show a decade earlier – this time, however, they opt for fist bumps and compliments.

Despite being an iconic presence who radiates charisma, he never misses a chance to heap praise on Mikey and Arya, who he refers to as “the geniuses behind me onstage”.

“They’re the people who keep me standing up front,” says Benji. “I couldn’t do it on my fucking own. We’re a gang.”

At the end of last year, that gang lost a long-standing member, following the departure of bassist Dan Pugsley after 27 years of service. It’s a change that was deftly communicated via a statement at the time, as well as a social post from Dan, with little comment made since. Not because there was any major drama behind it, mind – it was simply a matter of changing priorities.

“We have absolute respect for how long he was in the band,” explains Benji, sipping a beer. “And we have respect for his talent, commitment and contribution – everything. There’s no bad blood towards that, but it was very obvious after making [You Got This] that [Dan] wasn’t happy, and he hadn’t been happy for quite a while, and that unhappiness filtered into us. So, unfortunately, a parting of ways seemed the only logical thing to keep this band together and moving forward, because none of us wanted to split up.”

These days, bass duties are handled by Tommy Gleeson, former touring guitarist with Feeder, who’s long been in Skindred’s circle, having covered for Mikey a decade ago when the guitarist’s daughter was born. In the interim before Tommy’s appointment, they had performed as a trio with bass parts on tape, which they admit wasn’t ideal given they played two massive shows in the Philippines that necessitated Benji and Mikey having to cover more ground than usual. But it was something they felt they had to try to confirm they were capable of it.

‘No retreating, no surrender,’ as the lyrics to their song Kill The Power remind us.

They also needed to try writing and recording as a trio, which they got the chance to do on the album’s title-track. For a time, Benji had wanted the name of their latest album to be ‘01633’, the telephone area code for Newport, before the affirmation ‘You Got This’ delivered by an encouraging spin class teacher took him in another direction. Feeling they were missing a lead single, following Dan’s departure, the remaining trio penned You Got This the song – an opportunity they welcomed, given that the record’s creation didn't have the happiest associations up to that point.

“We needed to regenerate,” explains Arya. “And the best way to regenerate is to write and solidify that it’s the three of us.”

The results, no doubt galvanised by the good vibes in the studio, is a delightfully raucous ragga-metal banger. And the sound of a band who have most definitely got this.

Another new development for the frontman centres on writing. On previous records he’s covered themes of rebellion, fighting the forces that oppress us, love and acceptance. But as the years have passed and the albums piled up, he’s begun to focus more on his own life, particularly his experiences as a kid who was orphaned by the age of seven, growing up in Wales, where there weren’t many black kids listening to the Sex Pistols, let alone pledging to become a rock star.

Skindred’s most recent single, Can I Get A, is a prime example. Despite its soaring melodic irresistibility and Arya’s Phil Collins-inspired drum break, its words touch upon a childhood of deprivation (‘Sleeping on my mate’s damn settee / Trying not to sleep in an old dirty shed / Where the rats run past’) and the lengths one occasionally goes to in making ends meet. Despite admitting he was ‘crap at crime’, Benji’s lyrics recall an incident when he stole from someone’s purse then helped them look for it, knowing the money was in his pocket.

Was he ever reluctant to include less glamorous details about himself, given his characteristic positivity?

“It’s therapy,” Benji says of his willingness to be open about his past to illustrate his remarkable trajectory to the life he has now. “The best lines in that song are, ‘I can have anything, anything I want / Anything I put my mind to, I’m gonna get it’ – it’s from the perspective of an orphan who’s got fuck all, back when I spent a lot of hours as a child worrying about my life. I’m not ashamed of that. If I can do this after where I’ve come from, then people listening can be – and have – what they want.”

Arya agrees with his bandmate. “That song could have a different meaning to people if its mantra wasn’t, ‘I can get anything.’ Benji has never shied away from his background, but this is the first time in a song that he’s discussed it in a linear way, with a message.”

“Everyone around me had parents growing up, a mum and a dad,” adds Benji. “I was feral, but I was also scared. That’s why, as I say in the song, I was crap at crime. So instead of stealing cars and acting like a prick, I preferred to stand outside the fish shop, singing songs and begging people for 50 pence for my efforts. I thank God to this day that I didn’t want trouble, and I never had trouble.”

How, then, do the members of Skindred stay out of trouble within their own ranks now? Benji, evidently, has changed a great deal, but has their ethos altered over the course of its almost three decades?

Towards the end of last year, when K! caught up with them in the studio, they didn’t shy away from the fact that their creative dynamic continues to be the subject of push and pull, between Benji’s expansive storytelling and Mikey and Arya’s drive to condense and compel, sonically. And while the process continues bearing delicious fruit, it doesn’t necessarily get any easier.

“When I write, I give birth to these beautiful babies,” is how Benji put it at the time. “And when I take them to the rest of the band, they start pulling those babies apart. It can be gut-wrenching, but I’m cool with it, because I know in the end it’s all for the greater glory.”

“In 2026, the culture is: talk to each other, especially as grown men who weren’t necessarily brought up to be able to talk about what’s happening,” explains guitarist Mikey of why it all works, both creatively and personally. “We have to be those people who communicate in order to keep things moving in the right direction. Because people who don’t have that don’t stick around.”

It’s important to note that Benji’s explorations of his own life on You Got This aren’t limited to his past. Glass is a slower, dubbier offering, with the frontman’s vocals switching between longing on the verses and a mixture of anguish and celebration on its chorus. Much like Saying It Now from 2018’s Big Tings, it finds him reflecting upon loss, as the past eight years have been replete with the deaths of more friends and loved ones, including his childhood pal Trevor, the only other black kid Benji knew who shared his love of the Pistols.

A couple of days after this interview, it’s announced that former Motörhead guitarist and fellow Welshman Phil Campbell has died, aged 64, following a major operation. Phil, you may recall, provided the scorching solo on Skindred’s song Machine from 2018’s Big Tings, while Benji co-wrote the track Dead Roses from Phil’s sole solo album, 2019’s Old Lions Still Roar.

‘The topic of payment for the same came up,’ Benji recalled of writing Dead Roses in a social post following the news of Phil’s death. ‘Phil left the room and returned a few moments later, carrying a shoe box. “I know you’ll like what’s in here,” [Phil] said to me. He paid me with a pair of killer shoes, which still tickles me. I was very happy with the arrangement and still wear those shoes on special occasions.’

“As you get older, people become more important to you and, sadly, you begin to lose them along the way,” says Benji now, his voice becoming mournful. “But your memory of what they did for you stays with you. I’ve lost people who encouraged me as a child and as a young adult. There are people who came to our show in Cardiff in support of our last record [2023’s Smile] who have since passed, so they won’t get to see the things we’re going to achieve. That’s why the song talks about raising a glass to those who have empowered you.”

Even when revisiting his own losses, he does so through the lens of educating listeners, readying them for hardships they may yet to experience.

“Death came to visit my household a lot when I was a child, and I think that never leaves you,” reasons Benji. “It makes you want to prepare others for that pain, which doesn’t go away and it doesn’t heal.”

In the absence of healing from these emotional fissures, his next best option is celebration in the form of You Got This’ closing track, Give Thanks. In it, he acknowledges those who have made him the man today, whether it’s his bandmates (‘For my good, good bredren next to me’), his wife Julie (‘For my girl who is the backbone for me’) or his older sister, Lynette, who died in 2018 (‘For the memory of my sister Letty’). In addition, with its vibrant bounce, Give Thanks is a full-hearted embodiment of the Jamaican sound system tradition, which brings a community aspect to music – something Skindred have always advocated.