If Hot Milk’s 2023 debut album ‘A CALL TO THE VOID’ was the band’s high-octane mission statement, the world isn’t ready to meet its fierce, rough-and-ready older sibling. Roaring into their next era, Hot Milk now proudly present ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’ – an extravagant, uncompromising assessment of the perilous world around us, examined through a sharp British lens that is both witty and universal. “We were looking at ‘American Idiot’, ‘The Black Parade’ – albums that felt like a whole piece,” reflects guitarist and co-vocalist Jim Shaw. “‘American Idiot’ is a 21-year-old album that is incredibly present,” adds frontwoman Han Mee. “It still makes sense – you can interchange Bush for MAGA. Humanity lives with an innate selfishness in us, so the feelings are always going to be there.” Snapshotting the gloom of the present and unloading very real fears for the future, the sentiment behind ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’ might feel locked inside a time capsule. But fast forward two decades, and time will surely prove why this record carries the hallmarks of something timeless. Since Han and Jim first met inside a bar in Manchester’s Northern Quarter (“Born in Preston, made in Manchester”, as Han neatly sums up) and started the band – who are completed by Tom Paton (bass) and Harry Deller (drums) – Hot Milk’s story so far has already confirmed their status as the city’s unlikely alternative success story. “I wanted to be purposely annoying on this record,” grins Han. “I want posters around Manchester saying ‘The new sound of Manchester: Hot Milk’.” Gracing the cover of Kerrang! (numerous times) and receiving acclaim from the likes of BBC Radio 1 and Rock Sound, ‘A CALL TO THE VOID’ propelled them into the international arena. Meanwhile, global rock titans are queueing up to book Hot Milk as their openers. Whether it’s stadium shows with Foo Fighters in the UK and Australia, discussing aliens with Tom DeLonge on Blink-182’s stateside run or warming up Limp Bizkit fans on the English seaside, Hot Milk’s bucket list is going to need a few extra pages. This summer, they’ll open some European shows for Green Day, who Han has seen 55 times – and that’s not including the goodnight kisses she used to blow to her poster of Billie Joe Armstrong. “They [inspired] me to do a politics degree,” she says. “Since day one, I've always said that Billie will come to me. He needs to knock on my door and I’ll go, ‘Y’alright?.’ That’s my narrative arc.” That particular politics degree comes in ultra-handy on ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’ – where Hot Milk unleash the pent-up anger experienced en masse around the globe. “I've always felt like a bit of a white knight – it's my duty to save the world somehow,” says Han. “I feel very, very impacted by the world’s issues, consistently. I wanted to be an MEP [Member of European Parliament], that was my dream.” When Manchester’s next mayoral elections roll around, it’s not that far-fetched to predict that Han Mee might even be one of the names on your ballot paper. Confronting the world head-on – with a renewed splash of heaviness – ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’ represents Hot Milk at their most urgent and frantic. ‘SWALLOW THIS’ rugby tackles the lies and empty promises we’re expected to accept by the “psychopaths” who run the world, while ‘THE AMERICAN MACHINE’ tears down the hateful right-wing MAGA rhetoric that is worryingly on the rise (“The founding fathers would be turning in their graves,” shudders Han). “Pain is control,” says Jim. “They want a divide, because as long as we’re divided, we can’t attack them.” The eerie ‘PAYMENT OF PAIN’ (you guessed it – P.O.P.) is a crash course in haunting pop-rock that has blown up the likes of Bad Omens – calling out to an album title which the band had in the locker before any of the songs. “We wanted to create an entity,” declares Jim. “‘Corporation pop’ is what my grandad used to call water out of the tap,” reveals Han. “It flows through all our homes and lives, this popular mindset flowing through us all.” Then there’s the rampant ‘INSUBORDINATE INGERLAND’, a quintessentially tongue-in-cheek take on Hot Milk’s home turf, their own accidental World Cup anthem for the “lads with tops off in bucket hats.” It might be dressed up as an open-top bus parade, the song’s sarcastic undertone encapsulates the album in a nutshell – “Listen, it’s a social commentary / Calm down”, Han reminds us. This is Hot Milk’s two cents – they aren’t telling you how to feel, they’re merely looking to spark healthy conversations. “We want to show every single person that represents England... I want old Asian grannies having a cup of tea with an old white man,” declares Han. “It’s satirical, poking fun at the gammons that think Britain should just be for fucking British people,” adds Jim, who himself is half Malaysian. “We’d be a fucking beige nation, without the tapestry of cultures coming through.” Despite the abundance of anger at the surface level, Hot Milk are very much feeling that collective generational uncertainty – which has its place on the album. Apocalyptic, rapid-fire lead single ‘90 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT’ and the precarious ‘HELL ON ITS WAY’ highlight these fears to a T, with the latter’s dagger-like riffage existing neatly alongside prevalent fears of all-out nuclear war. “The crux of the album is that we're terrified of how the next 10 years are going to play out,” says Jim. “We're at a really big moment in history.” Despite its global outlook, ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’ is an album that takes root in Manchester and Salford, exemplified by the band’s decision to shoot all of their videos in their hometown. “Newt Gingrich, who was a US politician, once said ‘All politics is local’,” says Han. “I’m trying to look local and be involved locally so I can affect my world. This is how I survive, because the world can feel overwhelming. “Manchester is the best fucking city in the world,” she continues, getting somewhat emotional, having recently u-turned from a permanent move to LA when Manchester came calling back to her. “We started this band in Manchester, it’s intrinsic to me and who I am. It has to bleed into the art we create, because it helped me create it.” Arguably the biggest curveball on ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’ is ‘WAREHOUSE SALVATION’, which channels the duo’s long-standing affiliation with dance music and Manchester’s rich ’90s heritage (“Manchester’s hold never felt so cold / But there’s no other that I would call home”) into a Nine Inch Nails meets Charli XCX rave-punk megamix. “That song was inspired by The Warehouse Project – I think I wrote some of the lyrics in a portaloo!” reflects Han, who says “all she listens to at the minute” is Underworld. You can sense Hot Milk’s killer instinct throughout ‘CORPORATION P.O.P.’, a result of the intensive writing process in LA and then Manchester, where all 14 songs that were initially written for the album now prevail in the final form. In an age where bands often whittle down the cream of the crop from hundreds of songs, any shackles are well and truly off here – the band are making the music they want, with unified trust and zero outside pressure. Previously adopting a heavily digitised approach in Jim’s bedroom, the primary focus this time was on real amps and pure sounds – which is where producers Zach Jones and KJ Strock came in handy. “They have 20 synths! I think we spent two days pedal shopping,” beams Han. “We’re not internet people. The record needed to feel raw... and match the way that [playing] live feels to us.” After that intensive stint in LA, Hot Milk returned to Manchester, unable to shake that innate DIY mindset. The album was finished on home turf, under the watchful production eye of Jim, bringing things full circle. “Lo and behold, I ended up doing so much – again!” he jokes. Armed with their primal, larger-than-life live show, Hot Milk’s forthcoming headline slot on the Kerrang! stage at Slam Dunk Festival is but one more live highlight among a career which is earmarked to be littered with them. Bulldozing their way into the future, they’ve kicked and scratched their way to the forefront of the UK alternative scene. CORPORATION P.O.P. may yet be their catapult to the summit. “We just roll with the punches, we don’t take anything for granted,” concludes Han. “I cannot understate how far away this world felt as a kid.” She signs off with that ever-present glint in her eye, the same glint that we see pouring out of their lyricism and personalities. “It’s silly that we’re here... the side quests are complete. The main quest continues.”