Jools - Violent Delights Jools

UK punk collective Jools announce debut album Violent Delights out 6th June via Hassle Records.

Violent Delights is an anthology of stories that meanders through themes of grief, rage, desire and identity. There are stories of the toxicity of addiction, and growing up around religion; stories of overwhelming obsession, isolating abandonment, and empowering anthems of identity, and stark laments about sexual violence. They are each lived experiences, laid bare, reclaimed with every syllable whether dripping in spite or swagger, anger or anxiety.

“Loss is a central theme of the album,” explains vocalist Kate Price. “For us, we have our own specific version of what that is in these songs, but for anyone listening, it could be the loss of something else – a loved one, a relationship. But we’re never mourning loss. We’re celebrating it. Loss is almost universally looked at as a negative, but we’re finding the positives in those moments. We had to go through hell to get to heaven. Violent Delights is about looking back with gratitude, and even fondness, the closing of one chapter and beginning of another.”

Jools - comprised of Kate Price, Mitch Gordon, Chris Johnston and Callum Connachie, Joe Dodd, and Chelsea Wrones - has been a name on the lips of clued-up fans and tastemakers since its collective of musicians found each other in the earliest days of 2023. Quickly gaining a reputation for their cathartic, unpredictable and specular live performances, the band have been consistently championed by BBC Radio One, including two ‘Tune of the Week’ placements on Daniel P Carter’s esteemed Rock Show.

Violent Delights was recorded across two week-long stints at Southampton's The Ranch studio in August and December of 2024, with Lewis Johns helming production and mixing duties. 

When pressed, Jools may identify as a punk band – in its truest sense that punk is a mentality, rather than a sound – but Violent Delights equally lends from the worlds of metal, rap, post-hardcore and hip-hop as much as it does the post-punk of its surface layer. Gordon and Price are as likely to point to Turnstile, Mannequin Pussy and Amyl & The Sniffers as influences on the record as they are to Little Simz and The Streets’ Mike Skinner. “We don’t necessarily look at music in sounds or structures,” nods Gordon. “Instead we look for attitudes.”