Album review: Delilah Bon – Evil, Hate Filled Female

Delilah Bon went for too long without being heard, so she had to get louder. It's paid off. After years of grafting away in music under multiple guises in multiple projects, she’s finally having her moment. It’s no wonder, then, that her second album is overflowing with confidence. Seizing her chance with an iron fist, she’s more outrageous than ever, and even when she’s raging it’s undeniable how much fun she’s having.

Anger’s always fuelled the Barnsley brat-punk’s music, but Evil, Hate Filled Female doesn’t contain anything as sobering as, say, her call-to-arms War On Women or the visceral Dead Men Don’t Rape. The closest she comes to those songs is the claustrophobic Freak Alert, where she recounts chilling – and all too real – stories of harassment from men in public spaces (with a powerful payoff at the end).

This time around, she’s throwing tomatoes instead of punches. The Internet might be a cutting indictment of online culture, but it opens with a mocking, almost Slim Shady-esque monologue as a troll called Harry Dick ('Feminism will be the death of all!'), while I Am The Best (Just Ask Your Momma) playfully inverts hyper-masculine tropes of getting rich and shagging an enemy’s mum with a queer, feminine twist.

There’s a lot here that might make you laugh, from talk of putting cocks in a blender and freeing cows meant for roast beef, to two very well-placed uses of the word ‘willy’. On the flipside, there’s plenty to get you screaming from the rooftops, too. There's the snarling empowerment anthem Maverick – 'Who’s that bad bitch in the mirror? / Who is she, she is me, I wanna be her' – to the sassy, saxophone-led Villain. Crucially, it’s both fresh in sound and sentiment, the sort of record to re-energise you when existing under the patriarchy feels too exhausting.

Delilah Bon sounds like the leader of the most fun feminist revolution around. One that might involve chopping rapists’ dicks and hitting the dancefloor straight afterwards.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Scene Queen, ALT BLK ERA, ZAND

Evil, Hate Filled Female is released on September 13