PENGSHUi REVEAL NEW VIDEO FOR THEIR NEW SINGLE 'IDKWYBT'
On top of the release of “IDKWYBT”, PENGSHUi are thrilled to announce the details of their forthcoming album ‘Destroy Yourself” set for a January 28, 2022 release on MVKA.
The record was written and produced with Flux Pavillion alongside production from longtime collaborator Pete Cannon and was recorded & mixed at Greenmount Studios in Leeds with Lee Smith & Jamie Lockhart. ‘Destroy Yourself’ is the sound of a band reaching their ultimate form on their most complete piece of work to date.
Full tracklist is as follows:
1: Break The Law
2: Eat The Rich
3: Little Brother
4: Ain’t No Love
5: Move The World
6: I’m Sick
7: This Is My Youth
8: Ursa Minor
9: IDKWYBT
10: Shellers
11: Destroy Yourself
12: Nothing Ever Changes
MC and frontman Illaman says, “ I think we've managed to capture our live energy on this record. With our first album, people said you have to see it live to fully get, which was cool, but we wanted to give that live feeling from the first track with this record so then when you do see a show, the energy is doubled. There is a lot of emotion and pain in this album for me, the reason we named it 'Destroy Yourself' is because it's about breaking yourself down and taking yourself apart then looking at what feels wrong, what makes you unhappy, the addictions you have, the life and death, love and loss and allowing the lessons from all that to help you grow. These new songs sound great to us in the rehearsal room and we genuinely cannot wait to play them out to a room full of people. I think fans of our sound will have an emotional attachment to these tunes too and that energy will be present when we get back on stage in February for the tour. These tunes are bangers on a different level to our previous stuff. We're settled in now and we are 100% comfortable with what we are and are doing.”
“We want your fucking chest to rattle,” says PENGSHUi drummer Pravvy Prav. “If your chest isn’t rattling, then it’s not good enough.” There couldn’t be much more of a perfect manifesto for PENGSHUi than that. Their self-titled 2020 debut was a riveting soundclash of punk, grime, dub and drum ‘n’ bass – with a DIY attitude of no-fucks-given while bringing rage to the rave. Since their first single ‘Control’ in 2018, they’ve won fans across genres, from JME to Enter Shikari, and were even invited to remix fellow firestarters The Prodigy.
Gathering major support from the likes of BBC Radio 1, Kerrang! Radio, Metal Hammer, Kerrang! Magazine and more, PENGSHUi are on the rise. The trio’s molotov cocktail of sound is born of the different cultures the trio hail from. Prav originally grew up as a heavy metal kid in Dubai before mixing it up by DJing jungle and drum ‘n’ bass in his teens. Guitarist Fatty grew up in Blackpool before studying jazz in Leeds and forming the Ninja Tune-signed Submotion Orchestra and going on to play with the likes of grime duo Newham Generals and P Money. Frontman and MC Illaman meanwhile, had his tastes formed while surrounded by the reggae music his Jamaican grandfather would play on his council estate in West London, before finding himself surrounded by the worlds of pirate radio, rap, rude boys and skaters. His genre-smashing first band Flict would support Skindred and work with members of Cypress Hill during their nine years together, before meeting his PENGSHUi bandmates when all three were working as session musicians and their twisted alchemy would come together on Fatty’s boat on the River Lea. That was where they became who they were always meant to be.
“We grew out of the dubstep scene and we were all playing in those raves, we knew what worked,” says Fatty. “We knew how to recreate those sounds but had also grown up playing in metal bands so we could merge things in a way that was authentic to both sides of the spectrum.”
Illaman agrees: “We’ve all been around the block. Now it’s about doing what we love. It’s this combination of everything that we genuinely love. The thing I’ve been told a lot was, ‘You found your home’. I like shouting. When I’m hosting for Flux Pavillion or working with Goldie, I take a different approach as it’s someone else set. These tunes rile me in another way, I can’t do what I do with PENGSHUi with those guys, PENGSHUi is 100% me.”
For the energy that first inspired ‘Destroy Yourself’, Illaman didn’t have to look too far from his actual home either. “I'm from Mozart Estate, near Ladbroke Grove. Grenfell Tower was a big thing for me,” he says of the 2017 blaze in his neighbourhood and the scandal that still surrounds it. “It kickstarted my political brain and got me a bit frustrated and angry at the government.” One day, he saw himself trawling Twitter to see a clip of Tory MP Jacob-Rees Mogg stating that the victims of Grenfell lacked “common sense”. Illaman’s rage saw him bite back with the class war call-to-arms of ‘Eat The Rich’: “We’ll be left with nothing if we don’t stand up”.
“I had a friend who passed away in Grenfell,” remembers Illaman. “I’ve been in Grenfell a few times because it’s on my doorstep. Mogg and his lot have probably never been in a building like that in his life. They’ve never been in these environments or around some of the people that would have lost their lives in that building. It was obviously due to negligence. I needed to start saying this stuff in the music and have a bit more of an opinion on the government, the rich and these people who have no idea of what life is like for people in these areas.”
There’s a lot of sabre-rattling on ‘Destroy Yourself’ (see also: ‘Break The Law’s fiery riposte to a patronising, hypocritical society), but there’s also a lot of heart and rebirth. “The last few years have seen anxiety, depression and mental health in men become a lot more of a conversation,” he says. “I’ve suffered, and was never really aware of how to process it, how to speak on it, and how people were going to take it – especially in grime.”
Now, feeling “a bit older and a bit wiser”, Illaman found his true voice on ‘Destroy Yourself’ – a record about taking yourself apart before rebuilding. “You’ve got to find out what makes you tick. It’s OK to be depressed, it’s OK to be anxious, it’s OK to be stressed out, it’s OK to cry and it’s OK to feel. The whole record is just about growth, and being open, honest and not afraid to address certain things in your head and your heart. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s a scary thing to face your demons.”
You can feel that very real reckoning on the feral exorcism of the title track (“Have you ever wanted to unstitch yourself and the entirety of the human race and embrace the coldest fringes of everything that isn’t you or who you thought you were,” he spits), the simmering and tortured ‘I’m Sick’ (“I keep circling absurd shit, I’m definitely not right”), Illaman reaching out to his sibling on the bruising ‘Little Brother’ (“I’m a demon and the world created me”) and the intoxicating dub of ‘Nothing Ever Changes’ screaming away the clouds of feeling “depressed, stressed, anxious and horrible forever” (“sometimes I find myself stuck in the recovery position, and I sob at the thought of my own solemn sense of recognition”).”
‘Destroy Yourself’ is the sound of a band reaching their ultimate form on their most complete piece of work to date. “Dave’s written exactly what he wants to write about, while Prav and I have written exactly what we want to play live,” says Fatty. “It was all very organic.” Elaborating on the album’s vibe, Prav adds: “After playing live so much, now we really understand who we are and what we want. We’ve put all of that into this in a really honest and unfiltered way. We asked ourselves, ‘Where do we want to take it and why don’t we take it there?’”
Held up to their own standards, this is more than a record that rattles the chest – but also touches the heart and ignites a fighting spirit. “It sounds cheesy, but people have told me that they can hear the pain and the struggles through these songs,” adds Illaman. “I just want to give people a bit of hope, a bit of light, a bit of love and something to spur them on in life.”
That desire is written all over the group’s sound, a feisty combination of genres that’s attracting a fast-growing fanbase. Since forming in 2018, PENGSHUi have dropped a critically acclaimed debut album, the trio have released multiple cult singles, and won a Kerrang! Radio Fresh Blood competition for a slot at Download Festival and bagged appearances at Glastonbury and Boomtown festivals.