Across three albums as Slaves during the second half of the 2010s, Kent duo Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent established themselves as a playful, charismatic arm of UK punk, earning a Mercury nomination, festival headline slots and the patronage of Mike D, who produced 2016’s Take Control. In a tale as old as rock ’n’ roll, though, their bond dimmed in a fog of miscommunication and weariness. By 2019, the band had been indefinitely decommissioned as they worked on solo projects and contended with personal upheaval, including Vincent losing his partner to cancer in 2020 and Holman living with OCD. However, when Blur sounded them out towards the end of 2022 about a support slot at Wembley the following summer, it catalysed the gentle steps Holman and Vincent had been taking towards a reunion. Beginning to write together again, they changed their name to SOFT PLAY, having reflected on criticism they’d regularly faced as two white males trading under the name Slaves. Thus HEAVY JELLY arrives as a reset, and it’s the sound of a band revitalised by recovering the joy and love in their friendship. “We’re obviously older and have gone through some shit, and in a way life is totally different now,” Holman told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in May 2024. “But we found the original recipe and it just feels like super fun again. We’re not thinking about anybody else—we’re just enjoying having a laugh together and making some tunes, and it feels like good stuff’s coming out of that.” Nowhere is that more obvious than on “Punk’s Dead”. When they announced their new name on social media in December 2022, it raised anger in some corners of the comments sections, and here, against pummelling riffs, they turn an amusing flamethrower on themselves as well as people whose punk fundamentalism became reactionary foot-stamping. “I don’t like change,” spits Holman, mocking the outrage. “Punk’s dead/Pushing up daisies/Come and get a load of these PC babies.” To pour a bit more fuel on the ire, they then invite Robbie Williams to sing the middle eight while some of their critics read out their Instagram comments to the sound of a crying child. This is the duo’s heaviest-sounding record to date, embracing a childhood love of nu metal on “Mirror Muscles”, a tale of feeling intimidated and inadequate in the gym. It’s also their most vulnerable. Holman examines his OCD on “Worms on Tarmac” and “Isaac Is Typing…”, while folk-rock closer “Everything and Nothing” is a heart-grabbing study of grief. However heavy the jelly gets, though, there’s always that playful humour to leaven the taste. Speaking to Lowe about writing “Act Violently”—a profane outburst of excessive rage inspired by the pair almost being knocked over by an e-scooter—Vincent said, “You have to give yourselves permission to write the song, and it was similar back in the day when we wrote [2014 single] ‘Where’s Your Car Debbie?’: You see a wry smile from the other guy and you think, ‘Can we actually get away with this?’ And then, when you’re in a good place—which we weren’t before now—we can give each other permission to write the song.”