Sleaford Mods have announced their new album ‘The Demise Of Planet X’ with the cathartic new single ‘The Good Life’. Check it out below along with our exclusive interview with frontman Jason Williamson.
Arriving at the top of 2026 on Friday January 16, the noise duo’s eighth album sees guest turns from Life Without Buildings frontwoman Sue Tompkins, Aldous Harding, and collaborations from fellow Nottingham artists, soul singer Liam Bailey and grime MC Snowy.
Teased by the recent rallying single ‘Megaton‘, the follow-up to 2023’s aggressive but colourful ‘UK Grim‘ could be the band’s most open, diverse and ambitious work to date. Inspecting “a life lived under immense uncertainty, shaped by mass trauma”, the next taster of the record is ‘The Good Life’. With guest vocals from Star Wars and Game Of Thrones star Gwendoline Christie and Birmingham soul-punks Big Special, and accompanied with a video by High-Rise and Kill List director Ben Wheatley.
“I’m not punching down, lads, I’m gonna style it out, I’m gonna make out I’m not doing it but in reality I am,” offers Williamson’s opening lines over another infectious Andrew Fearn beat, looking back over his headline-grabbing past of various wars of words with the likes of IDLES, Noel Gallagher, Alex Turner and many more – something the frontman told us that he’s learned to put to bed.
“I was going for this idea of slagging bands off,” William told NME of the song’s inspiration. “There’s nothing wrong with critique, but I took it to an extreme. It’s like, ‘Why am I doing that?’ You’re doing it, and then you’re ripping yourself up inside. It trails back to experiences as a child predominantly, and not being seen.
“When I started to uncover this in going for therapy, I realised it was a thing. I’d denied it for a long time and it was just stupid. What I tried to do with this song was just start by not being able to control myself and say, ‘You’re shit, you’re just copying me’. The idea with Gwendoline was to bring her in and for her to be my inner voice. Along the same lines, the Big Special are coming in with a chorus that says, ‘I’m happy, the good life is where I should be and I don’t feel guilty about that’.”
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Williamson continued: “While at the same time, I don’t think I’ll ever stop doing it because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with healthy critique, the self-obsessiveness thing and not being seen is not about them – it’s about me.”
‘The Demise Of Planet X’ came from an era of Williamson reflecting on his past behaviours and mental health to find a more peaceful place to be. “More importantly, it has harmonised my immediate surroundings: my family, the way I have a relationship with my children and my wife,” he explained. “That to me was the most important thing because I grew up with not that at all. I wanted to break the cycle with my family and I’ve managed to do that. That’s first and foremost.”
From there, the 55-year-old frontman and actor said he was better equipped to “regulate your own speed in the way that you react to things externally”.
“I have a lot of problems with people critiquing me, and that was ongoing,” he admitted. “It got to a point where I was like, ‘Why am I bothered about people critiquing me so much?’ I spent a lot of time in therapy talking about that amongst other things.
“It took me a good five or six years to talk about everything and move on to. I found it very interesting. You’re just peeling back the layers.”

Still, despite Williamson’s self-reckoning and Fearn’s more colourful palette of sound, ‘The Demise Of Planet X’ is still an album driven by anger – how could it not be in this era of Trumpian post-truth and doom-scrolling – but perhaps a more nuanced kind.
“I don’t know how people translate my lyrics,” offered Williamson. “People talk about society being desensitised to horrors, to anything that we see on the news. I’m kind of desensitised to my own lyrics. I don’t know if it’s angrier or less angry. I’m a little bit more subtle these days – I won’t mention names because I don’t feel I have to. I don’t want these people to have five minutes on my behalf.
“It is angry, but at the same time it’s quite introspective. I think the last two records have been like that [‘Spare Ribs‘ and ‘UK Grim’]. In some respects, it’s a continuation of that as well.”
As comedian Stewart Lee once put it, what Sleaford Mods offer is a unique brand of “powerless rage”.
“I don’t have to get myself into the mind-frame of it before a gig. I just go on stage,” added the frontman. “I just let it build. I think it’s hatred, I think I’m still dealing with not being seen, with envy, with jealousy. I’m not as bad as I was, but it only comes out if I feel it. I’m not going to put it on and make it theatrical. There are theatrics to a performance of course, but emotionally and the way that you feel is just a dead cert. It’s organic.”
Check out the rest of our interview with Williamson below, where he tells us about collaborators, new sounds, working at Abbey Road, and writing about the world gradually crawling to its end.
NME: Hello Jason. When we discuss each new Sleaford Mods album it seems hard to believe that the world can get any worse – but here we are!
Jason Williamson: “It’s definitely got worse. You’re either freaked out by it or you’re just living with it. A lot of people are freaked out by it even though they don’t think they are. I wanted to try and capture that on the album.”
What’s been freaking you out?
“It’s just recent events: October 7, then the genocide, this new wave of nationalism in this country, the fact that we haven’t dealt with COVID, the response from people around me to these things and what I see online. All of these things go into a pot. The rot that is social media is ongoing, along with your own problems, introspections and traumas. It’s always ongoing. It doesn’t seem to shift. There’s always something to look at.”
How do you view social media now that you don’t engage with it as much?
“Those on the left are just arguing with themselves. Those on the right are ironically the ones that are managing to achieve some kind of progression in their cause. It’s not so much of a weird one anymore, it’s just that it’s looking you in the face: do you want to join the noise or whether you want to stand alone. A lot of the people who aren’t joining the noise are often seen as outsiders or people who have got it wrong, but sometimes they’re just taking it all in and thinking for themselves.”
Is it better to take your time rather than rush to an opinion?
“You are expected to express, you are expected to release statements, you are expected to do the right thing. There’s almost a fascism attached to that and I find it really interesting. I understand that people want to help, that people feel and are empathetic and compassionate towards other people that are going through horror. At the same time, it’s a double-edged sword – it can then turn into something that is completely ineffective.”

You’ve said that the backdrop of this album is a grim midlands club you went to in the ’00s. Would that be a Nottingham club?
“No, it was a club in Grantham [Lincolnshire] actually. Is it also my reaction to being exposed to uncut working class culture again? In Grantham, where I’m from, that is what it is. All the people I know are like that. I come from a working class environment. I moved away to London then to Nottingham, I was mixing with people from all kinds of classes. Is this my indifference with that as well?
“What I’ve found so intriguing about it was that it was completely hopeless – it was dark, it was grim. I really got a lot of inspiration from that.”
Did that club mood lend itself to the lighter corners to the sound on this album?
“Initially, what made this flourish a lot more was that Andrew stopped engineering quite so much and started producing with myself. ‘We’re going into other studios and we’re paying someone to co-engineer anyway. Let them do that and me and you will just produce’. As soon as he did that, it completely opened up. I would send him really crude ideas on acoustic guitar on a voice note and say, ‘This is what I want’ then I would send him various vocal melodies.
“It always works best when I let him just please himself, and he comes up with something really interesting all the time. He was coming up with these almost ska-y type ideas – especially ‘Elitist G.O.A.T’ and ‘Flood The Zone’. For ‘Bad Santa’, it was this more kind of weird, I don’t know what it was. I let him get on with that and that’s just what transformed.”
Beyond ska, what was inspiring you while putting this together?
“I got myself into Bowie’s approach to music on ‘Station To Station’ and ‘Low’ – not so much vibing off the songs, but more figuring out how he did it and what drove him to it. It’s about putting yourself in that position as well and trying to be a bit more free with everything. ‘Scary Monsters’ as well. The sounds are great and some of his lyrics are terrible, but it all works. He’s got these layers of backing vocals and a lot of doo-woop stuff and Motown melodies that you don’t quite catch.
“My wife is a big fan of Barry White and I was just honing in on those bass lines – particularly for ‘Elitist G.O.A.T’. I nicked a bass line for that. Bowie’s vocal is so cutting – it goes from high to low and this to that. At the same time I was listening to a lot of Danzig and starting to get back into rock stuff, which I’m kind of obsessed with at the minute. I wasn’t listening to too much hip-hop, if any really. If you hear a good beat, you just start rapping.”
As well as your usual spot of JT Soar in Nottingham, you spent time recording at Abbey Road. How does being in a legendary space like that help shape things?
“They’ve got a canteen from midday to 2pm, which reminded me of my days working in a knitwear factory! There was something really traditional about it. To a certain degree it was like any other studio because you’ve got to work, but at the same time there was something very, very magical about it. Obviously The Beatles made it that in some respects, but it’s a beautiful space.”
You also worked at Invada in Bristol, the studio belonging to Geoff Barrow [Portishead, BEAK>]. Were you fishing for any of that magic intensity?
“They don’t allow you to! Geoff’s certainly not one for wearing his medals. He’s got no time for it. They just get on with it down there. They’re almost working with what they’ve got. It’s a fully-established studio and you still get the impression that they’re working with very limited materials. They don’t quite know what they’re doing, but they do. I think it was Andrew Weatherall who said, ‘I’m on the fine line between complete amateur and fair-to-middling musician. That’s how they see themselves a lot of the time.”
Let’s talk about the guests on the album – starting with Gwendoline Christie…
“She followed us on Instagram, which obviously we couldn’t believe so obviously we followed her straight back. She’s just a singular, powerful figure. Her acting is brilliant, but what she does with fashion and the passion she’s got for that is amazing.
“We asked her to be in a video and she said, ‘That’s too fucking far away’, so we said, ‘OK, do you want to come in on a song?’ and she went ‘Yes!’ I wrote a part for her while I was on holiday in Paris with the kids. She came in and she did it all in one take, before she held court for two hours. She’s got such a magnetic personality. It’s like being in the company of a true screen star. I don’t know whether she’ll hate me for that, but these words aren’t good enough. She’s a beautiful person. I don’t want to sound wanky when I say that, but it’s true. She’ll just text you and it’ll just be full of such positivity.”
And what made you want to work with Big Special?
“Joe and Cal came on tour with us in 2023, just before they released their debut album [‘Post Industrial Hometown Blues‘]. They sent me a copy of it and I just loved the ‘Black Dog/White Horse’ single. Andrew sent me the loop for ‘The Good Life’ in Australia at the end of 2022, I wrote something immediately, and after a while I realised I couldn’t cut the chorus. This is where guests come in. If I can’t do something, I’m going to find someone that can.
“I just popped the question to them and they recorded it with us around the beginning of 2024.”

You’re quite close friends with Aldous Harding, right?
“Yes, she’s lovely. I’ve known her for five years and I consider her a very good friend. I’m a massive fan of her music so it was just about finding the right idea for her. As soon as we did this song at Abbey Road, again I couldn’t cut the chorus. I realised she was the one. Luckily she was in Bristol recording her album so we just got together.”
Getting a rare appearance from Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings on ‘No Touch’ is quite the curveball…
“She’s absolutely fantastic. I wasn’t aware of Life Without Buildings or Sue before the sessions. We’d been liaising a lot with Rough Trade on this album because of their wealth of knowledge. We had a meeting about it and they were like, ‘Have you heard of Sue Tompkins?’ I hadn’t, so they sent me their album and her voice was just beautiful. We had a lengthy phone call, she came to Bristol and she did it in about three hours. She had a cold as well, which kind of adds to it. You know it’s her, but it reminded me of ‘Debut’ era Björk. It was quite punky.”
And you’ve two hometown Nottingham stars with Liam Bailey and Snowy?
“Liam has always been on our radar – his last album [‘Zero Grace’] was a masterpiece in my honest opinion. I just wanted him littered about on the song. I’d been listening to a lot of The Specials and The Selector. Because Andrew was doing this ska-y thing with it and I just got bang into ‘80s ska. Liam came down to Invada and he did it, bang.”
“Snowy is certainly one of the highlights of the Nottingham scene. He’s completely obsessed with grime. We had the beat for ‘Kill List’ and thought he’d sound good on it.”
Some critics often don’t appreciate what Andrew Fearn is really capable of and what he contributes. Do you think this could be the album that changes that?
“I think they are already. There’s a lot of jealousy, naivety and ignorance. I don’t think it’s a given that believe he does fuck all, because he just doesn’t. We’re not interesting in playing instruments. Although I’m listening to a lot more music where people are these days and I see the beauty in it, but the main reason that we gelled before was this complete dissatisfaction at four and five piece bands, because we’ve been in so many and it seemed like a drag.
“We’ll see. The unfortunate thing with Sleaford Mods is that those people with those attitudes just refuse to think anything else!”
Sleaford Mods release ‘The Demise Of Planet X’ via Rough Trade on January 16, 2026. Pre-order it here and check out the tracklist below.
‘The Good Life’ feat. Gwendoline Christie + Big Special
‘Double Diamond’
‘Elitest G.O.A.T.’ feat. Aldous Harding
‘Megaton’
‘No Touch’ feat. Sue Tompkins
‘Bad Santa’
‘The Demise Of Planet X’
‘Don Draper’
‘Gina Was’
‘Shoving The Images’
‘Flood The Zone’ feat. Liam Bailey
‘Kill List’ feat. Snowy
‘The Unwrap’
The duo will be hitting the road for a UK and Ireland headline tour in 2026. See full dates below with tickets available here. The band are donating £1/€1 from every ticket sold to War Child.
Sleaford Mods’ 2026 UK and Ireland tour dates are:
FEBRUARY
6 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
7 – Academy, Manchester
12 – O2 Academy, Leeds
13 – O2 Academy, Liverpool
14 – Great Hall, Cardiff
19 – 3Olympia, Dublin
20 – Limelight, Belfast
21 – Cyprus Avenue, Cork
26 – O2 Academy, Oxford
27 – Rock City, Nottingham
MARCH
5 – Bristol Beacon, Bristol
6 – Brighton Dome, Brighton
7 – O2 Academy Brixton, London
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