EP REVIEW: BE N!CE – It’s Getting Harder (self-released)
BE N!CE are a London-based punk band who are fast shaping up to be one of the most exciting new talents on the scene.
After making their Rebellion festival debut this year on the Introducing stage, they’re back with the follow-up to 2025’s debut EP Where Am I? (reviewed here).
It finds a band increasing in confidence all the time, with six new tracks showing they’re unafraid to tread where other bands might dance around the perimeter. They don’t rely on traditional song structures, preferring rhythm and repetition, and the vocals are generally spoken, not sung, with the odd scream thrown in for good measure.
This EP, funded entirely by fans, opens with For The Attention Of…, built almost entirely from real, cringe-inducing, increasingly desperate messages a stranger sent to the band’s email trying to ask out their singer Pol. It doesn’t half make you think about the shit that women have to put up with from men.
Oopsie, up next, is a nu-metal-influenced song previously released as a single. It’s aimed at shitty landlords who allow tenants to live in unhealthy conditions, and lots of people will empathise as Pol decides rather drastically: “Might as well burn down this house/Only way I could get the mould out.”
The jaunty Buddy, another single, tells the slightly disturbing and hopefully tongue-in-cheek story of a bloke called Dave who wants to be treated like a dog and walked, flogged, choked and chained up. Each to his own and all that, but it’s another banger.
Iknowgirls is a short, sharp transgender protest song, a punky thrash whose breakdown ends with a chorus of real trans voices – a moment of collective defiance packed into a track that doesn’t last much more than a minute.
Pol’s experiences of being let down by the healthcare system, particularly during their time spent in teenage mental health wards, is the subject of Guess I’ll Die, an unflinching account which is as personal as BE N!CE have ever been.
It’s a powerful commentary of how far this country has declined as they explain: “A government that would rather I die than fund the services I need to live/Instead pushing the narrative that I’m lazy and have nothing to give.”
Finally, the riff-filled Green Burial, also a single, carries an important environmental message, based around the darkly bleak premise of people laying down to die to be reclaimed by the land, fertilising the trees being lost through mankind’s global neglect and destruction.
From societal commentary through online perversions and deeply personal topics, BE N!CE handle a plethora of topics with skill, and I can’t wait to see if they can maintain this standard of songwriting for their debut album.
- It’s Getting Harder is available digitally and on CD from the BE N!CE Bandcamp page HERE.
