Hadouken are the exclaimed band originally behind the New Rave revolution of 2008. Well, thats what the magazines and blogs were saying. They are a self described Grindie band, a mix of Grime and Indie, from the North. Smashing together vocals of a Rapper or a jumpy teenage band sometimes, they are accused of breaking the Rock music code by adding something so dangerously un-cotia. This is tastefully put together with their keyboard and guitar dominated music. This new album has shocked old fans by moving well away from all teen antic based lyrics and any guitar to create a very Dub and Drum'n'Bass induced coma. In the meantime creating soemthing new and fresh sounding without being too technically clever. The last album "Music for an accelerated culture" despite being lyrically more appealing lacks the dancefloor filling fills that can sell that is found in the second album.
The first song on the album, "Rebirth", sounds very Klaxons but then something unexpected happenes, a choir joins in singing! A brash harmony with the heavy, in your face lyrics from James. Their first releases from the album have been blogged about previously. The singles aren't representative of the album.
Some very interesting quick beat, dance riffs come from "Evil" and "Bombshock" but these aren't the stand out songs. The best achievement on this LP is the lento that the Dubstep inspired songs "House is falling" and "Lost". Its incredible how this can make a song so heavily bass inflicted, yet euphoric. You get that feeling of your sleeves vibrating and your chest pounding when you let these tunes loose. The way ugly morphs into a bouncy and feet tapping centrepeice is genius.
Is it all that good though. Can you be Nu Rave without the rock side to things? No. But then lets not just judge on what it isn't, what it is, is important! The lyrics are left wanting, i find myself laughing at the irrelavance of the most of words and some are just plain funny, "you're ugly like your sister, boy!" , or, "I'm gonna fuck your face up, Break bones with this bass line, Break your nose with a faceplant." Not a bad effort though as long as you don't treat it too seriously. The obvious Chase&Status, Prodigy and Pendulum influences make this widely avaliable to anyone!
Album Rating: 6.5/10
