Reactionary Review | Benaaihilism | Van Pletzen
Benaaihilism has to be the dumbest album released in recent times. Big, dumb, and 3am Eternal beautiful. This is a collection of songs entirely for driving from Pretoria to Stellenbosch to meet a girl at Aandklas, and discovering she’s hooked up with someone else, and getting brandy and coke existential about it.
Musically it’s unremarkable, unless of course you’re on bumbles and 23 and should be studying for your finals. It’s fuck-everything music, interspersed with one-liners that are either really lame or really fokin diep depending on where they find you. Van Pletzen seems to have conceived of Benaaihilism entirely to tour it to university towns so that students can get fucked up and shout along, and what nobler reason is there to make music.
Getting tits-out drunk and speeding toward regrets that will make you question everything. Die beats slaan harder than a homemade bong. Benaaihilism constantly tells you what it is, and then is what it is. It literally smells of Tippotinto, Sparberry and crystallised sweat. It takes real skill to make something this stupid and infectious.
Also… Afrikaans is a beautiful language, one that can conquer up that exhausted oke on the dancefloor at sunrise without mentioning him at all.
The bastard child of Darude and 7de Laan, taking in the aural aesthetics of karaoke slow jams and school playground rap-battle flossing, a full third of Benaaihilism exists for the purpose of saying, “did you hear that?” to a mate while giggling. It’s fucking epic and totally forgettable.
Wear sunglasses on the dancefloor, air punch in the smoke and lasers, never grow up.