andygates

The album is tighter and more symphonic, less dancey-hardcore, certainly not as heavy as Hold Your Colour. Weirdly it's not all that bassy for drum 'n' bass - mixed down for a wider audience appeal, perhaps? The lyrical leitmotif (if such a thing matters) is the subversive paranoid future: "They" feature heavily. There are fewer guest vocalists so less jarring difference between tracks, on the flipside it's more samey. Fewer samples too, which is a pity, as I like people who play silly buggers with samples (the Willy Wonka ones from the previous album are still nightmarish). Production is as tight as a gnat's arse - but we expect nothing less.

Ongoing review as I listen (and headbang) at work: Showdown is a 2am fast-driving grin; Wipeout stuff. Different has the great line "Don't mind the cameras: Let them see your black heart" and belongs on an anime rooftop surrounded by cyborg helicopters. Propane Nightmares is a huge rambling thumping epic full of choral pads and with more than a hint of Muse about it. Visions has a nice loopy hook that doesn't go anywhere but does it nicely. Midnight Runner just falls short of being another stonking Wipeout track; it's fine Podrunner fodder. The Other Side gets back to the symphonic sample-heavy stonk we know and love. Mutiny is bouncy and silly (poppy? who cares? happy bum!). 9,000 Miles goes warm and almost ambient with a sentimental hook that will end up on TV - not quite Propaganda but in the same postcode. Granite teases with a Portishead opening bar but gets down to some straight DnB. The Tempest is a lovely club background track - it's one to stalk through a club in a huge black coat to. You know what I mean. It's let down by that mix, though - this needed some really pounding bass to offset the grinding guitar loop. It's there if you mix it up, but c'mon lads, people who buy drum 'n' bass aren't scared of bass.

Overall? It's a grower, but so was Hold Your Colour. It's not as slamming and outrageous, doesn't leave me as breathless. Some of the more aimless tracks will remix up a treat.  Rumours that they've run out of steam are greatly exaggerated, but preview before you buy because the current single is the best thing on the album.

Michael Crighton's Prey:  An enjoyable page-turning pot-boiler, written in movie-vision, but with a cast of annoying jerks and psychos and a narrator so achingly dumb you want to slap him.  Cute denouement, occasional moments of menace, but it all felt like a short story stretched out too long (which fits: good film scripts are about the length of a short).  Main criticism (apart from the character stupidity):  How many times can this man re-write Frankenstein before Mary Shelley's ghost breaks his writing arm? 

Wolf Creek: One of those "you took a wrong turning, kids" horror movies.  Nicely built nastiness but no real tension - even the chase scenes just play themselves out.  That and the unusually rich characterisation of the baddie may be because it's based on a real-world story; reinforced by the handycam cinematography and realistic dialogue.  I found myself thinking more in line with the bad guy than the kids, though:  If I were a dehumanised old bugger alone in a vast space, would anything stop me from realising my most atavistic and nasty urges?  That question made the film stick, much more than the actual story being played out, and for me gives this movie the edge over pure torture-porn like the Saw series.  +1 for the Mad Max homage engine-revving; +1 for the head on a stick.