There’s a song towards the end of Corporation P.O.P. called Asphyxiate, which features a fairly clear melodic callback to Hot Milk’s first single Awful Ever After. That came out in 2019, and in the time since, the band have grown out of that era to an incredible degree. It came rather quickly, too; their debut EP is the only one that could wear a pop-rock tag with any certain level of comfort. Ever since, the music has gotten progressively harder and more charged as post-hardcore and alt-metal have become more integral to their makeup.
But to bring that cue back on Corporation P.O.P.—which is inarguably the heaviest that this band have ever shot for—does have an air of deliberacy to it. On its face, the Hot Milk of 2025 is ‘reinvented’ in direct parallel with six years ago, though that’s a very reductive way of telling the story. ‘Reinvention’ implies some immediate, ground-up change; for Hot Milk, this has been on the cards for years. The build-up has been gradual and planned, and instead of how an acute swerve into something they’re not equipped for would feel, it’s come naturally. The pop core hasn’t gone away, as much as it’s been augmented for the cyborg powerhouse of Hot Milk to run rampant.
Further to that is a band whose Britishness hasn’t been yanked away by how much international clout they’ve amassed. What could’ve easily and realistically been another case of a pop-rock band wooed by Americanised glamour has gone in the complete opposite direction, to where, between this album’s shared creative environments of an LA live room and a Salford flat, it’s not hard to tell which has had the greatest influence. It’s a perfectly executed melding of impulses—tough, grey exteriors meet a hard-bitten execution, which in turn meets the grind of counterculturalism directly resultant from Britain’s ever-looming shadows of austerity and decay. It’s not coincidental at all that Swallow This’s punch-ins of electro-wubs sound so like The Prodigy. By the same token, the lockstep, cold textures and vocal effects of Hell Is On Its Way and Warehouse Salvation have such a blatant industrial feel in mind.
Then there’s, of course, Hot Milk themselves, and how much they’re leaning into the overlap between tougher firebrands and an act defined by feeding that through an unmistakable English lens. They’re practically rubbing it in your face with a single called Insubordinate Ingerland, in which any subtlety of intent is shredded through the spoken bridge in Han Mee’s caked-on Manchester accent. In just that small bit, though, there’s more personality displayed than some similar bands will muster in their whole catalogue. The key thing to note is, while Hot Milk can be filed among hard-edged, provocative alternative bands with a penchant for playing within genre bounds, it’s in service to more than attention curried through being the loudest and most obnoxious.
Thus, there’s a musical element of Corporation P.O.P. that’s actually worth talking about. On continues Hot Milk’s streak of undeniable hook construction, with the vehicles for their poppiest impulses this time being Chase The Dragon and Asphyxiate. Fist-to-the-face choruses come thick and fast outside of that, naturally, but they’ve been built up to fit inside precision-cut rock on The American Machine, or an approximation of scruffy, scrappy punk in 90 Seconds To Midnight. In its more adventurous swings, though, Corporation P.O.P. feels like Hot Milk playing with whatever their increased prestige—both in the industry and the general populace—will allow. The yearning for metal is more deep-seated than ever, and pulled off admirably on Sunburn From Your Bible’s nu-metal impression (with scratches and everything!) and Jim Shaw’s emphatic metalcore roars on the back ends of Warehouse Salvation and Sympathy Symphony.
Speaking of Sympathy Symphony, it’s worth bringing up when the rest of it contributes to the biggest shortcoming of Corporation P.O.P.—a bit of a weak ending. Of the closing pair, Payment Of Pain is arguably worse for missing its sense of punch, but neither are quite as grand or impactful as they want to be. It’s a bit of a downer ending to another otherwise great Hot Milk album, but still far from a travesty. After all, the rest is great, and Hot Milk haven’t stopped progressing at a rate that, really, no other mainstream rock band is. As far as agreed-upon standard-setters for their scene go, Corporation P.O.P. stands bolt upright in Hot Milk’s favour, just like everything else they’ve ever done. When flourishing progression is built into the very fibres of your band, the results look exactly like this.
For fans of: RedHook, Bring Me The Horizon, Wargasm
‘Corporation P.O.P.’ by Hot Milk is released on 27th June on Music For Nations.
Words by Luke Nuttall
