Getdown Services - Massive Champion Review
Imagine if Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse started a post punk band. That’s Minehead’s own Getdown Services who embrace the chaos with an unpretentious party starter of a record that proves why they’re Massive Champions.
You can count on one hand the bands that have come out of that area somewhere between North Devon and Somerset known as Minehead. That honour belongs to the explosive, iconic Getdown Services, who have had a great couple of years. Right from that memorable Ritual Union show, they’ve proved why every band on afterwards, including the likes of Gurriers and Billy Nomates, was asking the crowd: “how the fuck are we meant to follow that?”
Because bluntly, how do you follow Getdown Services?
Having already supported Viagra Boys at Alexandra Palace, they’re surely on course to headline venues of that size themselves. Their explosive indie sound feels like the state of the nation in 2026, delivered by a two-man band doing things very much on their own terms. A lazy man would compare them to Sleaford Mods, but Getdown Services give off almost the complete opposite energy to the “old man yells at cloud” routine. They’re pure fun.
They’re billed as the joke band, the gimmick band, but Massive Champion is so much more than that. This is the depth album, the one that proves there’s substance behind the moustaches, topless performances and songs about crisps. A highlight of their live shows has involved asking the audience to yell out towns they thought were shit, only for the band to threaten to boo them out of the venue if they named somewhere Getdown Services happened to like. ‘Poor Bannister’ fits that mould, taking on the instantly relatable experience of throwing up on a train after a bender.
‘I Can’t Die Like That’, meanwhile, finds distraction in the mundanity of everyday life. Sycamore Gap gets a mention before the album switches gears into garage rock for ‘Probiotic’, where Getdown Services have as much fun with the lyrics as they do the music: “your all-time low is my personal best, I’m clean living with beans down my chest…”
‘Cha Cha Slide’ embraces the nostalgia of being six, when the highlight of the party experience started at 4pm, 9/11 happened to Big Ben and all you wanted was to be like the coolest kid in the playground, Dennis, right down to styling your hair like him. Beneath the ridiculousness, though, there’s something surprisingly poignant about wanting a mother-like figure to tell you what to do when your mum isn’t there, and the childhood anxieties that can linger long after you turn six.
It’s moments like this that make Massive Champion more than a collection of jokes. Getdown Services can be completely ridiculous while still finding something recognisable underneath it all. To headline two nights at the Roundhouse with a song about living with beans down your chest as the high point of your existence should be impossible, but they embrace the daft qualities of their lyrics with a wit and personality bursting with life. Across thirteen tracks, the record proves the duo could probably have a second life as stand-up comedians if they wanted to. Imagine a post-punk band fronted by Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse and you get the idea. Justified’s very own Boyd Crowder, Walton Goggins, counts himself a superfan, and you should too.
That humour only works because Massive Champion has enough musical range to back it up. The slower approach of ‘What’s on Your Mind’ contrasts with the funkier ‘I Can’t Die Like That’, while single ‘The Radiator’ is a barnstormer, an energetic party-starter built to cause chaos live.
Then comes ‘A Crazy Story’, a spoken-word phone conversation that feels purposely designed to allow the moshers to come up for air. It also provides an inroad into a very particular corner of working-class British life: the anxiety of deciding what to buy an acquaintance for their birthday when you don’t really like them but still need to perform the role of someone who does. You’re exhausted, but you have to go anyway. You have to put effort into the card and the gift. It can’t be too expensive. Chocolate, less than five pounds, but enough to show that you care. It’s mundane, ridiculous and instantly recognisable, which is exactly where Getdown Services thrive.
Minehead remains important to the band, who recently listed their five favourite things about the town for the BBC. On ‘The Definitive Map’, they use the record to turn their attention towards battery farming near their hometown: “Now I’m in the battery farm with all the chickens / we’re all fucking sick of it / Bob Dylan went electric / he went fucking shit.”
Somehow connecting Bob Dylan, battery farming and Minehead in the space of a few lines gets to the heart of Getdown Services’ fly-on-the-wall humour. The joke lands immediately, but there’s anger underneath it. It’s part of what makes Massive Champion feel more substantial than the gimmick-band label suggests.
At thirteen tracks, there are moments when that constant barrage of ideas threatens to become exhausting, and the band's live chaos is always going to be difficult to capture completely on record. Yet Massive Champion largely succeeds because Getdown Services know when to break things up. The slower moments and spoken-word detours give the record enough room to breathe before the next ridiculous lyric, synth line or punk explosion arrives.
Easy to overlook on a release day that also brought new records from King Gizzard and Phoebe Bridgers, but considerably harder to ignore once you’ve heard it, Massive Champion emerges as a highlight of 2026. Getdown Services might still sing about crisps, shit towns and beans down their chest, but there’s enough going on beneath the jokes to prove they were never really a gimmick in the first place.