There is something wonderfully perverse about attacking the music industry’s gatekeepers with a song that sounds like it should be blasting from inside the very club they control. On ‘The Nepo a Go Go’, Body Horror turn nepotism into nightlife, constructing an imaginary venue where privilege gets you through the door, and everyone else gets to dance to the absurdity of it.
The London-based band’s new single introduces their forthcoming debut EP At The Nepo, but its fictional setting gives them considerably more to play with than straightforward industry criticism. Vocalist Gethyn Thomas has described an affection for songs about places, citing Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’, and here that tradition is dragged somewhere considerably sweatier, stranger and more hostile.
The Nepo A Go Go is part nightclub, part satire and part nightmare. A relentless central riff provides the track’s engine, surrounded by industrial electronics, biting guitar and percussion that seems constantly on the verge of spilling out of control. Thomas delivers his lyrics with a pointed rhythmic intensity, while the chorus pushes repetition towards something increasingly hypnotic. Somewhere between post-punk gig and 3am rave, Body Horror find a sweet spot where agitation becomes remarkably danceable.
That matters because ‘The Nepo a Go Go’ isn’t merely observing its subject from a safe distance. Thomas places himself inside the fictional venue, acknowledging his own position while examining the privilege surrounding him. The wonderfully grotesque image of “a womb with a view” and an “heirloom umbilical” turns inherited advantage into something biological: access supplied before birth, connections attached like a cord.
Yet the song becomes more interesting when the accusation turns back towards its narrator. Rather than presenting nepotism as something conveniently practised by everybody else, Thomas introduces self-reflection into the satire. The result is messier than a simple protest song, recognising how difficult it can be to criticise systems of privilege while simultaneously existing within them.
Producer Syd Kemp proves an ideal accomplice for that discomfort. The production retains Body Horror’s rough edges rather than polishing them away, allowing distortion, electronics and guitar to scrape against one another. References to The Prodigy, Viagra Boys and The Birthday Party make sense, but the combination of rave physicality and post-punk confrontation increasingly feels like Body Horror’s own territory.
That collision looks set to define At The Nepo. The four-track EP promises to expand the fictional world surrounding the single while continuing the band’s preference for music that is confrontational without sacrificing movement.
And movement is crucial. For all its commentary, ‘The Nepo a Go Go’ works because Body Horror remember that satire becomes considerably more dangerous when people can dance to it.
The result is a protest song disguised as a night out: sweaty, abrasive, funny and deliberately uncomfortable. Everybody might be welcome at The Nepo A Go Go. Some people, naturally, were already on the guest list.
