Benji Webbe - Skindred - 2009

If someone described Skindred to you, you might have trouble picturing it, let alone deciding if you’d actually like it. A middle-aged Welsh rasta fronting a party metal band with a penchant for dub samples, drum’n’bass beats and the best live show you’ll ever witness.

Without a plug-in scene to support them, the quartet (Benji Webbe, Mikey Demus, Dan Pugsley, Arya Goggin) have built their loyal fanbase from scratch using only their bare wit and knuckle grit. With such a big gap between their first and second albums (Babylon, 2004 and Roots Rock Riot 2008), they decided to step it up and deliver their third album, Shark Bites And Dog Fights, in just under two years. While they’re not the biggest band on the circuit, each fan is just that: a fanatic; and most are baffled as to why a band who have so many bases covered (the songs, the show, the style) seem trapped under a glass ceiling from success. The band and its members have suffered some of the worst aspects of music industry bullshit, but now, with some changes behind the scenes, a critical mass folllowing and an awesome new record, could there be a new hope for the band, will the Newport massive become massive?

“I always wanted to play music but I was smoking too much weed to get anything done,” explains engaging frontman Benji Webbe of his musical roots. “I was like, ‘I want to get in a band’, but four weeks would pass and I hadn’t done anything. Soon as I stopped smoking weed it all started to happen. I got serious, met some guys and started a band.”

But what about when you were younger? Surely you weren’t smoking weed when you were 12!

“I was! That’s par for the course where I’m from bruv!” he laughs. “As a kid I was drawn to frontmen: people like Elvis Presley, Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger - people with shazaam. I was riveted by the way they could control a crowd with just one finger. I didn’t set out with a pen and paper to do that with music, I just did what came natural to me.”

And luckily what came naturally was the ability to command a crowd with the power of a particularly dexterous puppeteer. 

“I started out performing in classrooms,” he says. “Being sent out, being told to stand in the corner. We weren’t a musical family, I just loved being a ham: that kid on the corner with his hands on his head.”

Benji’s natural charisma and mischievous charm made Skindred’s predecessor, Dubwar, a cult favourite. But relations soured with their label, Earache, and the band decided to disband, only to regroup as Skindred shortly after. 

The childish hi-jinx of mischievous kids is one thing, but all too often things get out of hand, people take the wrong path and many get hurt. While Benji is adamant that while he was no saint, he managed to avoid becoming just another predictable product of his environment: learning hard lessons in the school of hard knocks.

“Being a black kid growing up in South Wales, first thing you’re going to be called is a n*****. And if you let it get out of hand, everyone’s going to be calling you a n*****.  So you gotta be kicking ass from an early age, making sure you’re not a push over. And there’s a difference between being not being a push over and being a bully. I grew up fighting my way through Newport. There was a bunch of us – we weren’t a gang but we hung out together – and we had each others’ backs.”

And so much of what you hear in Skindred comes from these life experiences, “especially the violence.”

As well as being the irrefutable focal point of Skindred, Benji brings genuine sentiments to the mic first hand: from tales of struggle, conflict and violence to words of hope, guidance and unity. So many bands simply pump out disingenuous heavy metal claptrap. While those bands narrate objective, Benji brings an effortless veracity.

“Where I come from is a pretty gnarly area,” he says of Newport, South Wales. “I’ve seen machetes coming out and people losing limbs. It’s not that I walk around with a t-shirt that says ‘I’m from a rough area’ but I am from a rough area.”

Benji now splits his time between his hometown and new home in sunny Florida. As he explains, while his American fiancée from Boston, Massachusetts, sees Newport as “fucking crazy!” Benji still loves to return.

“Better the devil you know,” he says ruefully. “I know most of the junkies, I know most of the bad people and I know most of the good people. When I’m not in Florida, I prefer to be here, because I can trust it here. When I’m sick of Newport I go back to Florida, and when I’m sick of Florida I can come back here.”

“A lot of the people I went through all that bullshit with are still going through that bullshit it on a daily basis,” he says with a hint of sadness. “If it wasn’t for the music, I’d still be here up to my neck in all sorts of shit – in fact I probably wouldn’t be here. Metal saved my life.”

“Metal saved my life.”

As well as out on the streets of Newport, Benji has found myself at war in the music industry. It is well documented that Dubwar had ‘issues’ with the notorious Earache label, before reforming as Skindred and signing to major labels, and more recently, the US-based Bieler Bros imprint.

“When the Earache thing first happened, I thought, ‘these label bastards’. But since Earache I’ve really tasted what it’s like to be beaten up by labels. After dealing with RCA and BMG and all these other three-letter evils, I realized that I was in a good position with Earache. It’s only when you get treated worse by other people that you appreciate what you had.”

Whether anecdotally or hypothetically all of this is evident in Skindred’s music. The frontman delivers his message through personal and heartfelt lyricism not the objective rhetoric of posers and fakes or the bookish third-party social commentary of conscientious objectors. As he explains, Rudeboy For Life, from Roots Rock Riot, is a warning not a boast. “I see people around me getting into shit, and they’re like [adopts Ali G-esque voice] ‘I’m a rude bwoy, I’m a soldier’. I’m like, ‘shut up you prick’. If you choose that life, then expect the trouble that follows.”

And speaking of trouble…

“Trouble is about what happened in a kebab house one night,” he says, animatedly. “This brick shit house guy starting picking on this little guy. Then in comes the Crack Crusader Of Pill! That’s me that is. It ended up with us running down the street being chased by six Irish guys the size of fucking punch bags.”

And the new album carries on the tradition:

 “That night in the kebab house I stood up for someone littler than me because I can’t stand that kind of bullying. And that’s what [album opener] Stand For Something is about. More people should do that.”

Musically the album is more of Skindred’s distinctive sound: heavy and bouncing metal riffs, occasion junglistic splashes and dubby reverb; Ragga toasting, visceral screams and anthemic choruses that lodge like wrecking balls in your ears. 

“Corrupted is about the credit crunch. These banker assholes have been walking around with loads of money - other people’s money, peoples’ pensions - so when people come back for it, they say, ‘Oh, we haven’t got it’, even though they’ve bought themselves a boat or whatever.”

Tell us what Who Are You? is about.

“So many young people in bands come up to me and say ‘I’ve done this demo, and we sent it to a label, but they said it was shit’. I think, ‘who the fuck do these labels think they are?’ They could focus on the positive things like, ‘work on your songs’ or ‘keep trying’ or ‘work harder’, but no. I find it hurtful, so the song is a finger pointed at the people who kill the seeds of small bands.”

And Invincible? 

“This song is to do with persevering through the pain of the trials of life. As an artist we have to tolerate so much bullshit, we have to be invincible. If it was my band this would be the first single. Hopefully we’ll get to play it live.”

Diplomatically we point out that despite being a grown man, his passion and fire hasn’t dimmed or mellowed with age.

“If I had a million quid in the bank maybe my lyrics would change,” he says vividly. “‘let’s go shopping!’ or whatever. But I’m still striving and struggling, still trying and still working hard. There are still so many lessons still to be learned in life.”

“I think the fire comes from [my] passion for music. I love this shit. When you watch me on stage it’s never just another gig. Even if the venue is the size of a boxing ring, even if it’s just 14 people in there that wanna rock, I’ll give them as much passion and fire as when we do the big festivals.”

“I’ve seen machetes coming out and people losing limbs.”

And it’s not over yet. Until recently, the band had only had US management, but now with a UK manager to join the dots between great albums, great shows and something real to say, it looks like the band might finally get what they deserve.  However, Benji remains cautious.

“It’s just another chapter. I’ve had loads of promises, but the proof is in the money in the bank. There’s excitement and there’s naivety. And I can’t just be naïve. No one’s promised tomorrow, so we just have to keep pushing forward.”

And either way, no one can take away what Skindred have earned: an immovable collective of advocates, thousands of open-minded metalheads who know how to party large.

“The good thing about being where we are is that while I see bands blow up and play Brixton within a year, by the end of the next year they’re back to playing The Square club in Harlow! I’d rather play ULU and sell it out forever than play Brixton for one week.”

“I’ve taken some beatings from this industry but the passion will never die.”

Fantasy Fights

Benji vs Zakk Wylde

This really would be the Clash of the Titans. Zakk’s has the strength of a National Trust oak, but Benji has run-round energy of Tigger.

Benji vs Zach De La Rocha

Yes he’s angry, but we wager the dreadlocked Rage frontman wouldn’t stand a chance against the Crack Crusader of Pill.

Benji vs James Hetfield

This would be an interesting match: Benji and the Metallica frontman are as nice as they are hard so the likelihood is slim anyway.

Benji vs BrokeNCYDE

This would be like that final scene from Aliens where the mother just rips Bishop in two with the ease of a man putting on a hat.

Benji vs Mikey Demus

Benji has stated that despite appearances, Benji would not like to end up in a fight with the Skindred guitarist.